Fifty Books for Our Times

The Way We Live Now

A list of fifty books recommended by Newsweek. The selection criteria: how much are they related to the most important issues of nowadays. The selection of the most important issues? The way they are considered in US. Which makes sense: an American magazine sees the issues as they are seen in America. Not all issues are the same everywhere.

I would add: the slection of the most important issues as they are seen by Newsweek: which is normal. Not all American magazines see the same issues.

So it's not a list of the best books ever; not even of the best books of today: just a list of books for today.

And it's not list of books written only now. Some of them were written long, long time ago; but they are relevant for our concerns.

By the way, on the top of the list, a book published firstly in 1875! The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope: it's about the moral and financial crisis in Victorian England. They had everything we have now, even a forerunner of Madoff. So, it's very relevant for our times.

Anyway, the crisis is considered the most important of our issues. It makes sense.

On the second place, a book about 9/11, how it happened and why: Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower.

On the third place, a book abut contemporary China: Zhao Zyang, Prisoner of the State. That's very interesting: after crisis and terrorism the most important subject for America is China!

And the list of books (and of problems of today as they are viewed in America) goes on: computers, environment, the role of the media, urban poverty, Iraq, God, Holocaust, and so on, and so on.

Read the whole, it's instructive:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/204300?gt1=43002

(A Life in Books)