Mark Bittman provided one of my all time favorite recipes in a New York Times’ Minimalist column during the height of Summer 2009. It’s just two simple lines (with a one word editorial comment): “Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.” I gave it a try. It actually was astonishing. Since then, I have kept up with developments from Mark Bittman – following him through articles, his fantastic app, videos, columns, editorials, and books in an effort to eat fresh, flavorful food, simply prepared by me at home.

But am I ready to be a vegan before 6 PM? This is the central challenge of his new book VB6.

My first observation about VB6 is that this is more of a lifestyle book than a cookbook. His initial story of an epiphany at the doctor’s office several years back resonates with me. Bittman didn’t want to take Lipitor for the rest of his life, especially with food so central to his life and livelihood. I am primarily worried about long-term brain health (I’ve read widely on how to keep the noggin sharp and research is fairly clear that what you eat really matters), but I wouldn’t say no to dropping a pound or twenty either.

VB6 defines six basic principles that really reflect what Bittman has been preaching (in a really good way) for a long time. The most important principles are to eat only vegetables, fruits, and other plant-based foods before 6 PM and after that hour to reduce your consumption of animal products. He also encourages us to cook our own food – and of course to avoid all junk and processed foods. After these basics he goes rather quickly into helping you determine how to make this new way of eating appealing to you (and your family or your lifestyle).

I confess: I’m having trouble sticking to my reading. One Sunday, after reading the tip on making healthy snacking more convenient, I realized I didn’t even need to go shopping to get down to business and prep some healthy snacks for the week. Suddenly I was digging into the fridge to fish out the carrots, potatoes, and yams to roast them up in sage and thyme for use as sides all week. I had some aging broccoli and cauliflower too, so I steamed, sautéed, and pureed into a fabulous veggie mix as well. And that wasn’t even dinner.

VB6 can serve as an inspiration for healthy eating even if the concept of being a vegan puts you off. I love the balanced approach of this lifestyle – Bittman encourages the readers to adapt as needed to suit your lifestyle. In general he encourages us to stick with it even if we cheat for a day or a month. So he’d probably be okay with my initial adaptation: vegetarian before 6 PM plus splash of milk in coffee (not as catchy -- VB6PSMC -- but potentially more sustainable). It’s early days, however, and I am going to give it a try – check back in a month and I’ll let you know how I have done.

Recipes from VB6 by Mark Bittman.

The concept of free will is inescapable. We see it in religion and morality, in law and public policy, but also on more personal levels in our thoughts and feelings. According to Sam Harris, the author of Free Will, the concept of free will “touches nearly everything we care about.” His argument, however, states that this concept is an illusion and that “our wills are simply not of our own making.”

Harris is the bestselling author of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. In Free Will, Harris utilizes both his philosophical and scientific backgrounds to break down this fundamental concept.

In regards to the science, Harris cites the EEG results from physiologist Benjamin Libet that showed the brain makes decisions before consciousness becomes aware of them. Three hundred milliseconds may not seem a big distinction, but how can we claim to be the conscious authors of our actions if the results suggest that the brain has already determined what we will do before we are aware of it? Harris expands on these findings by stating, “You can do what you decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”

The most interesting aspect of the book is when Harris examines the illusion of free will as a necessary one. He seems to fully recognize how ingrained we are with the concept and how initially the dismantling of the idea can appear off putting. For Harris though, he claims that losing the belief in free will has not made him fatalistic but in fact increased his feelings of freedom due to a deeper understanding of his biochemistry.

Free Will may not be considered beach reading, but if Sam Harris should be applauded for anything, it should be for how accessible he makes the material – and not just for PhD candidates in philosophy or science. The book is not as heavy as it seems. He uses simple, concise language to construct his argument and pulls it together in fewer than seventy pages. It’s the kind of book you can finish in one sitting but think about for days and days.

Mary Roach’s new book, Gulp, is not for the squeamish. But then, none of her books are, and that’s what makes them all so delightful. Her first work, Stiff, looked in detail at everything we think we know about cadavers. Now, this is not a topic that most people find humorous, but she somehow found a way to talk about the science of death in a way that was informative and yes, frequently hilarious. In her newest book, subtitled “Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” she takes on chewing, spitting, digesting, and, uh, so on. She’s got a chapter called “The Ick Factor.” Sign me up!

Roach takes an immersive approach. To learn about taste science, for example, she visits a company that makes pet food flavor additives. Discussing a new product being tested, “one of the techs mentiones that she tried some earlier, and that the white morsels are chicken. Or rather, 'chickeny.' I must have registered surprise at the disclosure, because Theresa jumps in. ‘If you open a bag and it smells really good -- ‘ The tech shrugs. ‘And you’re hungry …’  Eeew. But, why? For that matter, why do Americans have such a hard time with the idea of eating horse, or dog, or even inner organ meats, when other cultures are clearly comfortable with the idea? (Hey, don’t look at me. I’m a vegetarian.) Anyway, she looks at that too.

When Roach gets to the stomach, things get weirder. Gulp takes on a rumor about swallowing something that could eat its way out from the inside, Alien-style. This really is science, so we find ourselves soon enough at the University of Nevada, where a professor obligingly sets up an experiment. At one point, they are calling around to local markets, trying to find a fish stomach. “’No stomachs of anything? No. Okay.’ John Gray lifts his head and says, in his quiet way, ‘I’ve got a dead leopard frog in the freezer.’ Everyone takes a break while Gray goes to defrost his frog under a warm tap.” The scientific method eventually yields an answer: urban legend.

By the time we get to the bottom half of the tube, I found myself frequently laughing out loud. Emergency rooms and what people put inside themselves? Check. Death by constipation? Check. A visit to a prison to discuss how people smuggle iPhones into the big house? Check. (An inmate tells her, “The rectum will stretch. Believe that.”) There is a chapter titled “Fun with hydrogen and methane,” and a visit to a research institute that investigates flatulence. Look, someone invented Beano. And if you found the anecdote about pet kibble troubling, imagine what these researchers are smelling all day. It’s not just hydrogen sulfide.

In the introduction, Mary Roach addresses her reader. “I don’t want you to say ‘This is gross.’ I want you to say, ‘I thought this would be gross, but it’s really interesting.’ Okay, and maybe a little gross.” She nailed it.

Editor's Note: Broughton Coburn’s latest book, The Vast Unknown: America's First Ascent of Everest, chronicles the first American expedition to Mt Everest, in May 1963. In his telling, Coburn combines riveting adventure, a perceptive analysis of the climb’s historical context, and revelations about a secret mission that followed. Here, the author shares eight facts he uncovered in his research for the book. 

1.In the past century, at least 240 people have died on Everest’s slopes. That’s 1 death for every 25 successful summits. In 1963, twice as many people had died on Everest’s flanks as had reached her summit.

2. The median time of day that summit climbers reached Everest’s peak, and survived, is 9-10 a.m. The median summit time for those who reached the top, but perished while descending, is 1-2 p.m. In other words, with each hour that a climber is delayed in reaching the summit, their statistical chance of death increases dramatically.

3. The mortality rate for climbers above base camp is 1.6% for foreigners and 1.1% for Sherpas. This percentage approximately doubles for those who climb above 8,000 meters (an elevation about one camp below the summit), and most of these deaths occur on the descent.

4. About 14 people have reached the summit of Everest via the West Ridge (or some variation of the route), and about 16 people have died trying. That’s more than a 1:1 ratio of deaths to successful summits by that route.

5. Nepal opened to foreigners for the first time in history in 1950 – the year that high altitude physiologist Dr. Charles Houston was with the first party to visit the Sherpas’ homeland on the south side of Everest. They concluded that the mountain was likely un-climbable from that side.

6. The 1963 American Everest expedition’s transport officer, retired British Army Lt. Col. J.O.M. “Jimmy” Roberts, inherited many of the tents, sleeping bags, pads, tables and chairs at the end of the expedition. The following year, he registered Nepal’s (and possibly the world’s) first “trekking agency” with His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, and named the outfit “Mountain Travel.”

7. 1963 Everest veteran Richard Emerson, the team’s sociologist, was a member of the respected Tenth Mountain Division, and served in Italy during WWII. “Tenth Mountaineers” subsequently founded more than 60 commercial ski areas in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of the troops who survived went on to work in the ski and outdoor industries.

8. Of the 37 Sherpas hired in Nepal to carry loads to high elevations on Everest, at least that many of their children and grandchildren now live in the greater New York City area. The Sherpa community in New York recently purchased a church in Queens, which has been converted into a cultural center and also doubles as an assembly hall for Sherpa Buddhist monks.

Editor’s Note: Dan Drollette is a foreign correspondent whose book Gold Rush in the Jungle: The Race to Discover and Defend the Rarest Animals of Vietnam’s ‘Lost World’ was just published by Crown. Here, he shares with Everyday eBook an interesting story of a species near-lost – and then found again.

Anyone who’s been to Hanoi has probably seen the lake in the city’s center. Known as Hoan Kiem, or “Lake of the Returned Sword,” it is a murky-green body of water, hemmed in by concrete, surrounded by dense traffic. The lake’s name refers to an ancient legend in which a peasant was given a sword by the gods of the lake, which he then used to rally the Vietnamese and defeat their hated Chinese invaders. After the victory, a turtle – sort of a demi-god in Indochina, where it is considered one of four sacred animals – emerged from this lake to reclaim the sword and return it to the depths, where it could be kept it safe through the centuries until the next crisis.

It’s a charming legend, set in the most unlikely place. It’s hard to believe that anything could live in this slimy, muck-filled, heavily polluted liquid, steps away from the motorcycles and bicycle-cabs, aka “cyclos.” But researchers found that the lake contains at least one giant, six-foot-diameter turtle. And not just any turtle but a specimen of Rafetus swinhoei, or Vietnamese soft-shell turtle, one of the most endangered creatures on the planet.

The species’ surprising, Lazarus-like rediscovery was a wildlife rescue drama with as many cliff-hanging twists as any soap opera. As someone who reports on wildlife biology, I was used to hearing about creatures being on the knife edge of extinction when they were down to the last few dozen individuals. But finding an undiscovered individual when you could count their total numbers on the fingers of one hand?

It seemed amazing, if sad. With no known females of its species, this animal seemed destined to mirror the fate of “Lonesome George,” the Galápagos Island Tortoise who was the last of his kind and died recently. Besides the Hoan Kiem turtle, there were only two other turtles of this species living, both male. One of the males lived in Dong Mo Lake, east of Hanoi, and the other lived in a zoo in China’s Jiangsu province.

Then, in 2008, something miraculous happened. Biologists found an eighty-year-old female Rafetus swinhoei at another Chinese zoo, located in Hunan, China. Nicknamed “China Girl,” it had been purchased from a traveling circus a half-century earlier, unidentified until someone noticed how much China Girl resembled the picture in a notice on a Wildlife Conservation Society “‘Urgent”’ circular. What’s more, while no spring chicken, she was still able to lay eggs. “You can imagine the excitement,” said Tim McCormack of the Asian Turtle Program.

The male turtle from Dong Mo Lake was moved to the Hunan zoo in China and slowly introduced to China Girl. After a few days, the two began sniffing each other through the fence. Considering that the creatures had not seen another turtle of the same species in about fifty years, things went well, and mounting attempts started in a few days.

China Girl has since laid 300 three hundred eggs (still infertile unfertilized as of the time of this writing, but biologists were pleased with the progress). In the time since then, the researchers discovered that the Hoan Kiem turtle is a female, not male as previously thought. If true, that means that there are now two known females and two known males of this exceedingly rare species, like something out of Noah’s Ark – an astounding turn of events which lends credence to the turtles’ reputation for divine connections. It remains to be seen whether the turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake can lay fertile eggs as of this time. But biologists have much more cause for hope about the species’ chances than they used to.

While I am hardly a Civil War expert, or even close to being one, I found Bruce Levine's The Fall of the House of Dixie a very original and different take on the Civil War and that critical period in United States history. Levine does not concentrate on battles, or much on politics, but more on the effect of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation on the psychology and social fabric of the South.

Levine uses the voices of the people who lived it. Through dedicated research of their diaries and letters, Levine unearths what and how the people felt, both slaves and slaveholders, during this time when slaves had no voice. The book's title comes from the diary of Katherine Stone, a Louisiana plantation owner and holder of more than 150 slaves, who made the Stone family life one of "luxurious ease." While Stone was keeping her diary, she was reading Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, and the irony of that correlation to what was going on in the South made for this terrific title. It is through hers and similar perspectives that we witness the dissolution of the South as a way of life and a state of mind.

The portrait of President Lincoln is fascinating. The man is hardly depicted as a saint, but more as a shrewd politician who would do anything to hold the Union together -- and some of those options he considered may shock you -- until he runs out of options and the Union bursts at its seams. Lincoln then does whatever he must to reunite the States once more, and we witness the results of those actions for himself and for his re-United States.

In a time that "celebrates" the anniversary of The Civil War, there are dozens of titles about this bloody conflict, but I think The Fall of the House of Dixie may stand alone for its originality and heart.

Eadweard Muybridge. To many, he's an unpronounceable name. To film students, he's a piece of trivia. But to historian Edward Ball and the fortunate readers of his enthralling The Inventor and the Tycoon, Muybridge is a man who steals the show. He's the keystone to Ball's rapturous retelling of nineteenth-century America, when railroad tracks studded the ground of a lawless frontier, and when a robber baron and an eccentric inventor became the unlikely founders of modern cinema.

Long before Rhett Butler could tell Scarlet O'Hara how little he gave a damn, Muybridge was tinkering away in a darkroom, perfecting his photography skills and eventually building an apparatus that could replay live action, something like a rudimentary projector. But rewind too far and Muybridge, the future inventor of stop-motion photography, suddenly becomes Muybridge the murderer-on-trial.

You see, October 1874 wasn't the first time Muybridge had suspected his wife, Flora, of infidelity with Harry Larkyns, but it would be his last. A picture of his baby son, Florado, sat on a sitting room table. It was odd that Muybridge hadn't seen it before, and odder still to find the words "Little Harry!" -- that is, not "Little Eadweard!" -- scrawled in his wife's handwriting. This Maury Povich-worthy reveal reduced Muybridge to rubble. To the maid present, Muybridge, all "haggard and pale," broke down with "the wildest excitement." By the time his Smith & Wesson #2 connected with the chest of Larkyns, he was sure he'd hang from the California gallows.

Only, he didn't. On trial, Muybridge's lawyer knew the all-male jury had untapped empathy, easily swayed to side with a man enraged by an unfaithful wife. This was California, after all, a place where defending one's honor was grounds for murder. This place was also new, Ball reminds us, and the unspoken law of the land was simple: When land is new, there is no law. Muybridge was spared his life, and lived to enrich everyone else's.

In The Inventor and the Tycoon, equal attention is also paid to Leland Stanford, the moneybags behind Muybridge. But it says a lot of Ball's storytelling prowess that a man of such historic importance as Stanford -- a railroad magnate who connected the West to the East, as well as the eponymous founder of Stanford College -- gets second billing to the eccentricities of Muybridge. Much the same way artists in the 1900s were commissioned to colorize the frames of black-and-white film, Ball retouches Hollywood's past with cinematic flourishes and sly narrative twists, painting his settings with an unpredictable palette of infidelity, larger-than-life characters, and murderous redemption. What Edward Ball does is nothing short of brilliant. He risks sidelining readers with an obscure subject, and instead enlightens and entertains us, sending us running to the theater to imagine the murder, money, and ingenuity behind that beaming screen.

We aren't what we eat so much as how we eat. Such is the theory behind Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat. Equal parts historical text and cookbook, Consider the Fork is an anthropological study of how, since the beginning of our existence, humans have turned the necessity of eating into a way of life.

After the first happy accident of caveman fire, humans discovered that cooking food made it both easier to digest and more delicious. When we learned to contain fires in hearths, our whole hunter-gatherer culture changed to center around those dancing flames, which provided generations with nourishing meals that gave us strength, energy, and more time to grow our big human brains. Even as the hearth gave way to roasting pits and then the ovens of modern day, the lifeblood of a household seems to flow from the same central point: the kitchen.

But some culinary habits aren't so familiar. It's hard to believe, but up until the mid-seventeenth century, it was typical for every person to carry around his or her own eating utensil in the form of a single dagger-like knife. Similarly strange were the Italians, pre-fork, twirling their pasta with wooden rods. What seems most remarkable, however, is that even as we shaped these utensils out of metal and wood, they were shaping us, too. The slight overbite of human teeth is only a recent development in our evolution: As we began using forks and knives 200 to 250 years ago, it became no longer necessary to tear away at our food with our teeth with the edge-to-edge bite of our chimpanzee relatives, thus forming the alignment our teeth tend to have today. It seems such a simple, everyday object, but from the fork comes not only our table manners and social norms for eating, but also our smiles.

We may think the evolution of our food culture ended in modern times, but this isn't the case. The onset of refrigeration changed our diets to include fresh fruits and vegetables previously only available in their respective seasons. Wilson suggests the refrigerator, with its cornucopia of fresh food, is the hearth of the twenty-first century. And you can't forget the often misjudged microwave, which provided mid-century families with a unique pleasure (or, to some, a pain): leftovers. The dynamics of our eating habits and food technology affect one another in a constant cycle of change.

A food columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, Wilson keeps her erudite style seasoned with wit, nostalgia, and compassion for the hopeless cooks who charred and minced their way through history. We may have the shiny gadgets of the future -- food processors, stand mixers, and microwaves, -- but deep down we're still cavemen staring in wonder at our fires.

"Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus: We shall rise again from the ashes; we hope for better things." -- Detroit's motto

You've seen the burned-out houses, the abandoned train station, broken windows pockmarking vacant factories -- seductive and illicit, we call it "ruin porn." Or maybe you've heard about how the artists have descended on the city, where you can buy a house for less than one month's rent on a studio apartment in New York City. Native Michigander Mark Binelli heard the same stories, and returned home to Detroit in 2009 to find out for himself what was happening in and to the city. Detroit City Is the Place to Be is the result of Binelli's exploration of both the blight and the beacons he found in a city that has long symbolized the larger American narrative, from industrialization to recession and, possibly, resurgence.

The "Arsenal of Democracy" in the heady years of Fordism and Motown, Detroit today is a "city of outlaws and eviction and perpetual fire." In fact, as Binelli describes, Detroit is constantly burning, fueled by the huge number of vacant buildings, incredibly high crime rate, and absolute lack of resources. There are abundant and terrifyingly vast problems facing the city, from the dismal public school system, the political corruption, the pervasiveness of the drug trade, the extreme poverty, the rampant wild dogs, the astronomical crime rate. Binelli explains that there is a "dominant tone of absence" in Detroit: of people -- the city has long been hemorrhaging population, a fact driven home when the 2010 census dropped below a million; of buildings -- burnt, demolished, vacant; of jobs, of money, of viable public transportation, of any kind of municipal budget.

In surprising ways, the space created by these absences allows for growth. Nature has started to retake the city; some urbanists suggest that the huge amount of unused land in Detroit -- larger than the entire city of San Francisco -- could be farmed to create an entirely self-sufficient city. The space created in Detroit has also brought growth and excitement in the arrival of "homesteading artists" from the world over. This migration (it's not even gentrification, there's so much vacancy) prompts comparisons to post-wall East Berlin and claims about the potential to become "the TriBeCa of the Midwest." Binelli is refreshingly skeptical that Detroit will be saved by the creative class alone: "Urbanists ... may want Detroit repurposed as 'the world's greatest bio-urban hub,' but lots of people in the UAW simply want their old jobs back."

Binelli does an excellent job of balancing a realistic portrayal of the startling blight in the city and the many ways in which it has been abandoned, alongside optimism that change and growth is nascent and possible. Detroit City Is the Place to Be is essential reading to understand the past, present, and potential future of a city that has long led the way for the rest of the country. Detroit could foretell the fall of the American empire, or it could pave the road to a new future. I'm with Binelli; I can't help but hope.

I once knew a woman whose mental illness was mostly controlled by medication. Speaking of her occasional lapses, she observed, "There is always a pink rabbit in the corner, but it's only a problem when the rabbit starts talking to me." Most people would say that a person who perceives a talking pink rabbit is obviously nuts. But Oliver Sacks is not like most people; he has an admirable ability to observe virtually anything with curiosity and without judgment. In fact, his intriguing new study, Hallucinations, invites us to think about all the ways that humans routinely perceive things that don't exist. When we do this, labeling something as "crazy" suddenly gets more complicated than we might have initially thought.

Consider a soldier who still "feels" his amputated leg, or his sister, who awakens suddenly from a nightmare. There is the student who "sees" a talking fire hydrant while taking a hallucinogenic drug, or the migraine sufferer who pictures geometric patterns connecting and dividing, just before her painful attack begins. In these cases and many others, we recognize things that aren't objectively real, even though they feel completely real to the people who perceive them. Hallucinations delves into the mystery of how we all see things that aren't there and, in the process, we stretch our understanding of how our brains work.

We now know, for example, that epileptic seizures can be induced by stimulating certain surfaces of the temporal cortex. This has led to insights into how memories are stored and recombined. For that matter, we can even draw some good conclusions about the biological origins of such "otherworldly" creatures as ghosts, witches, and doppelgängers. All of these sensations may be awfully real to the people who experience them, though invisible to the rest of us. Sacks puts these phenomena in a broader context of medical history and scientific method.

Though he is a scientist, Sacks doesn't pretend to be purely objective, and he is always willing to describe his personal experiences. He chose to become a neurologist "to study how the brain embodies consciousness and self and to understand its amazing powers of perception, imagery, memory, and hallucination." Motive, meet opportunity: After all, Sacks was a neurology resident in California in the early 1960s. In a chapter that is both entertaining and revealing, he chronicles his experiments with marijuana, LSD, morning glory seeds, amphetamines, morphine, and more. Somehow, lab notebook in hand, Sacks manages to convey real insight about brain activity even as he is in the middle of a deep conversation with a talking spider.

Recent news reports have suggested that President Obama will soon propose a large-scale research project to map the human brain. In a decade, today's knowledge of neurology may seem quaint. Future readers, though, will still find Hallucinations to be a valuable contribution to our collective story. Oliver Sacks brings us humanity, perception, and curiosity, and these things never become outdated.

A book doesn't need to effectively alter the social or corporate landscape in order to be a contribution. I don't even think that was Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg's immediate aim. Her intention with Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, it seems, was to start a long overdue conversation about gender biases and the lack of female leadership in the workplace. To that end, Sandberg has offered us an invaluable contribution. Below are five takeaways from Lean In.

Believe in your own abilities. 

Capable people are often plagued by self-doubt. Being confident or even "pretending that you feel confident ... is necessary to reach for opportunities." Alice Walker wrote, "The most common way people give up on their power is by thinking they don't have any." Sandberg notes, "Women consistently underestimate their ability ... Men, on the other hand, consistently overestimate their performance and abilities."

Take risks. 

"Career progression often depends upon taking risk and advocating for oneself." Taking initiative pays off. Sandberg quotes the Chief Technology & Strategy Officer of Cisco Systems, Padmasree Warrior, who said: "It's your ability to learn quickly and contribute quickly that matters. One of the things I tell people these days is that there is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have."

The desire to be liked by everyone will hold you back.

"Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark [Zuckerberg] and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress. Mark was right."

Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.

"The most common metaphor for careers is a ladder, but this concept no longer applies to most workers ... ladders are limiting -- people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There's only one way to get to the top of a ladder, but there are many ways to get to the top of a jungle gym. The jungle gym model benefits everyone, but especially women who might be starting careers, switching careers, getting blocked by external barriers, or reentering the workforce after taking time off ... Plus, a jungle gym provides great views for many people, not just those at the top."

Don't leave before you leave.

"Anyone lucky enough to have options should keep them open. Don't enter the workforce already looking for an exit. Don't put on the brakes. Accelerate. Keep a foot on the gas pedal until a decision must be made. That's the only way to ensure that when that day comes, there will be a real decision to make."

One of my favorite quotes from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was featured in a review by the Wall Street Journal: "People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible." This is a sentiment that emanates from every page of Sonia Sotomayor's memoir, My Beloved World.

We first learn about Sonia's parents, who were Puerto Rican immigrants. Her mother, Celia, grew up poor, but made her journey to America by joining the First Women's Army Corps in Puerto Rico. Once in the States, she became a nurse. Juan, Sonia's father, never finished school, but was clearly talented and smart. Young Sonia grows up looking up to her Abuelita, (her father's mother), mesmerized by her vivacity, but most especially by her Sunday gatherings, filled with food, dominoes, music, and talks about the old country. Unfortunately she also grows up watching her parents fight; both parents united by love and culture, but also divided by their motivations and ambitions, and her father's alcoholism. At the age of eight, Sonia is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and recalls an argument between her parents regarding her insulin shots. If she is going to need this shot for the rest of her life, young Sonia reflects, then she best learn how to do it herself, and she does so, with the careful instruction of her mother. Abuelita aptly nicknames young Sonia aji (meaning hot sauce in Spanish), due to her restless and strong nature.

Along the way, Sonia learns about hardships, death, gender bias, and racism. Growing up in the projects of the Bronx, she learns about the "safe" parts of the projects, and where to walk and not walk. Her father dies when she is nine, and she watches her vivacious Abuelita succumb to the pain of losing a son -- the Sunday gatherings end -- and her family is never the same. When she graduates eighth grade, almost the entire female class is sent off with best wishes for marriage and children in the future. Sonia is sent off with best wishes for becoming a lawyer.

At Princeton and Yale, the young woman is confronted with the issue of affirmative action. Though Sonia's mother made enormous efforts to provide the best education for Sonia, once at Princeton she quickly has to "catch up" to her Ivy League peers. Affirmative action got her to Princeton, but it was Sonia's determination and intelligence that earned her a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduation.

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor delivers an unprecedented memoir that is equal parts earnest, humbling, and instantly inspiring. The book ends as she assumes the part of federal district judge in New York; what we take away is her contagious aji-like spirit, and a better understanding of one of the most powerful women in the world.

As a visitor to Orchard House as a younger woman, I was struck by the presence of a rectangular pillow in the Alcott family's sitting room. This pillow, the docent informed my tour, would be left horizontally if the family's breadwinner and author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, was in a good mood; in a bad mood, it would be placed vertically, to warn off visitors and family members. Any unhappy adolescent who experienced her share of rages and moods would instantly appreciate Louisa's forthrightness regarding her less-than-sunny disposition. In Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, Harriet Reisen brings to life more fully than any biographer previously the full range of Alcott's moods, and the often troubling, rarely easy life that spurned the author to fame (and infrequent cheerfulness).

Thoroughly researched and providing heretofore unearthed (or at least, unshared) information on Alcott's life, death, and descendants, Reisen has created an incredibly detailed biography of not only Louisa, but much of the Alcott family. Though readers may find the early portion of the book focuses too intimately, and for too long, on the early life of the Alcott family -- from Bronson and Abigail, Louisa's parents', courtship, to Bronson's failed experiments in breadwinning and Transcendentalism (and there are so many to read about) -- these early experiences in poverty, debt, and progressive educational and life experiences make clear how Louisa May Alcott turned into the intensely hard-working and loyal woman she would become.

"Curmudgeon" is a characteristic too often attributed to Alcott; while she may have sent young fans who made the pilgrimage to Orchard House away in tears of disappointment when they discovered the author was not, in fact, Jo March incarnate, the portrait Reisen paints is of a woman unbearably frustrated with the failings of others, her own lot in life, and the injustices against women during the nineteenth century. When Alcott discovers that she can reverse her family's poverty and discomfort through her own pen and consequent earning power, her story gains momentum; you can imagine Reisen's delight at researching this period in her life. When she notes that her editor "asked me to write a girls book," and she "said I'd try," we know the rest is history, but it's a fascinating one to follow. Reisen has done a beautiful job bringing the author -- and the real-life versions of the March sisters and Marmee -- the kind of research and attention they deserve from readers who may know little of Alcott and her family beyond the pages of their favorite children's books.

Editor's Note: In 2007, author Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." Wright doesn't only pen nonfiction books; he is a staff writer at The New Yorker as well as a screenwriter and playwright, and has also written a novel, "God's Favorite." A graduate of Tulane University, Wright also spent two years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and is currently a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Wright's latest work is "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief." Wright recently sat down with us here at Everyday eBook where we talked about Scientology -- the stunners, the motivations, its future, and more.

EVERYDAY EBOOK: In your research for Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, was there one thing that shocked you or stunned you the most?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: The exploitation of children. I was very disturbed, I am still very disturbed by the stories I was told about the way children are pressed into this clerical organization at Sea Org at alarmingly young ages. And they surrender their education, they’re impoverished by their service, and they work them, those kids, mercilessly – all day long. The church claims that it doesn’t violate the child labor laws, but when I read the child labor laws I just don’t understand how that can be the case.

EE: What do you think was the motivation for L. Ron Hubbard? And what is David Miscavige’s motivation? Power? Sadism? Something else?

LW: In the case of L. Ron Hubbard, in the book I compare him to a shaman because anthropologists talk about how schizophrenia is a shaman disease. And in aboriginal cultures, you see people that we would say are mentally unstable. They often have psychotic episodes and then they’re considered in some respects holy. Their mission is to heal themselves and then heal their community. It may seem like a lofty way to approach L. Ron Hubbard given the charlatan aspect of his character, but I really do think that he wrote Dianetics to heal himself. And the idea was he would heal the world. The fact that I think he invented so much of this stuff out of a whole cloth – that’s the part that makes people say he is a conman. But I do think that he believed he was trying to heal the world and I think the same impulse drove him to create Scientology. Despite that, he said, many times, that that’s where the money is – religion; that may have been a factor. David Miscavige is different from L. Ron Hubbard mainly in the fact that he grew up in Scientology. He’s a product of it in a way that Hubbard was not. He joined the Sea Org when he was sixteen, so, virtually, his entire life has been lived inside the strictures of this organization. The product of that is a glaring indictment of the church itself, because if that is what it produces – this totalistic universe, which is what the Sea Org has become, led by a person who dominates it entirely – then I think Scientology has a reckoning ahead of it.

EE: Do you think that will happen in the near future? Is that where you think the future is headed for Scientology?

LW: I think that it’s at a turning point in its history. It’s got a lot of money, and it has a lot of lawyers. And that will hold it together for quite a while. But I think it’s hemorrhaging members. And look at its reputation; they’ve earned the reputation of being the most vindictive, litigious, mean-spirited organization that calls itself a church in the country. And I don’t think that’s an appealing image. It’s not going to draw a lot of people to it, so it’s got to change.

EE: What’s next for you? Any idea where you’re going to turn your attention?

LW: I don’t know! I’m looking for something. I would love to swing through the trees and already have the next vine in my hand, but I finish a project and then I have to go hunting for a new one. And I haven’t found that new one yet. To me the big mystery about creation is not the process – and there are so many workshops devoted to process – it’s, “What do you want to do? What do you choose to spend your life on?” It’s a very central question and there are so many appealing things to write about, but why choose one thing over another? There is some internal bell that goes off and so I’m waiting to hear that sound.

Check out more of what Lawrence Wright has to say on Biographile.com

Editor's Note: China's Silent Army is the first book to examine the unprecedented growth of China's economic investment in the developing world, its impact at the local level, and a rare hands-on picture of the role of ordinary Chinese in the juggernaut that is China, Inc. Here, authors Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo share with Everyday eBook ten incredible facts from their eye-opening work.

1. China is the most populated country in the world (over 1.3 billion people), the second largest economy after the United States, and the biggest exporter on the planet.

2. China has one of the largest emigrant populations in history, with around thirty-five million citizens of Chinese ethnicity scattered across the planet.

3. China is the major foreign contributor to the reconstruction of Angola, a country ravaged by twenty-seven years of civil war. Over four hundred Chinese companies employing more than 200,000 Chinese migrants are currently building dozens of bridges, roads, and new cities in the country — a situation only possible because Beijing lent over $15 billion to the second largest oil producer in Africa.

4. China lent over $6 billion to the Democratic Republic of Congo in a unique infrastructure-for-minerals deal that Beijing has spread all over the continent. DRC is one of the most corrupted and dangerous countries in Africa.

5. More than 15,000 Chinese migrants worked in the retail sector in Egypt before the Arab revolution. They have managed to vertically control the sector, from production to retail.

6. China is a key player in the current Iranian geopolitical situation and is now Iran's biggest trade partner, generating an annual trade volume of more than $40 billion. The tightening of sanctions against Tehran has led to a lack of investment in the natural resources sector, which has left the door wide open for China. In mid-2012, when the exports of Iranian crude oil collapsed as a consequence of the new wave of sanctions passed by the United States and the EU, China became the world's largest buyer of Iranian oil.

7. Dubai shelters the Dragon Mart, the biggest Chinese market in the world, after the one located in Yiwu (South China), measuring 1.2 kilometers in length and covering an area measuring 150,000 square meters (or three times the size of London's Wembley Stadium). The building houses 4,000 Chinese shops run by 6,000 Chinese selling every imaginable kind of product.

8. Twelve trains, each sixty wagons, cross the Russian-Chinese border in Suifenhe daily to transport more than 3,000 cubic meters of valuable logs from Siberian forests. In annual terms, this represents an annual supply of ten million cubic meters of precious wood, covering a surface area roughly equivalent to the size of Iceland or Portugal, according to local activists.

9. According to local media, eight Chinese companies control over 250 mining concessions in Peru.

10. At a rate of 640,000 barrels per day, China has not yet overtaken the United States as the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude oil. However, this figure is expected to reach a million barrels per day by 2014.

Russ Feingold is worried, and he's not afraid who knows it. Feingold, an unabashedly liberal three-term U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, left Washington in 2010, a victim of the wave of Tea Party anger that swept America. Some readers may applaud or revile him based on that simple description, but this is both unfair and potentially risky. In While America Sleeps, Feingold argues that our tendency toward dumbed-down discourse is leaving us vulnerable to threats abroad and at home. When this critique comes from a key member of the influential Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, both Democrats and Republicans should pay attention.

Feingold's book draws its title from what he sees as a similar episode of shortsightedness, eighty years ago. In the late 1930s, as Germany rearmed, Winston Churchill warned against the risks of underestimating the danger brewing abroad. These speeches, published as While England Sleeps, proved to be prophetic when Hitler began marching across Europe. Here, Feingold suggests we face similar risks by taking an enemy-of-the-week (Iraq! Afghanistan! Iran!) response to foreign policy. He also warns that civil liberties shortcuts will not get at the root cause of our foreign policy problems -- and, in fact, will make them worse.

Feingold opens with a rarely seen view of life in official Washington on September 11, 2001. He describes what he, his colleagues, and their staffs saw and heard that day, and their hopes that we would focus on what unites us rather than what divides us. Of course, this didn't happen, and he is unflinching in his criticism of the Bush Administration for, as he sees it, turning its attention away from Al Qaeda. Feingold also remains bitter about the hasty passage of the "Patriot" act, a sweepingly broad law that gave extensive new power to law enforcement agencies at the expense of civil liberties. In October 2001, the law passed by a vote of ninety-eight to one: his.

But Feingold takes himself, and all of us, to task for knowing too little about the outside world. We cannot afford to disengage or remain uninformed. Most Americans know terribly little about how the Shiites see the Sunnis, or the connections between terrorism in Yemen and nearby Somalia, or the aims of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah organization in Indonesia. Meanwhile, while we sleep, there are a handful of extremists who could pose a real threat -- and we could do something to stop them if we would only pay attention.

As sound as his advice is, the real value of While America Sleeps comes from its unique perspective. Unlike a think-tank analyst, Feingold was there. He takes us inside the hearing rooms, and into the Wisconsin "town hall" meetings, and to dinner meetings with heads of state. It's not always a pretty picture. Fortunately, Feingold says, it's also not too late to do something about it. For the world's sake, let's hope that people are listening.

Dining one evening in one of the swank new restaurants in downtown Washington, D.C., I brought up the subject of colorism with the two African American women who had joined me -- both women successful in their fields -- and the memories poured forth. We looked back with laughter and regret, but it was with special sadness that they admitted they still see evidence of colorism's hold on the thinking of young people.

"When I was in high school a girl told me I acted like I didn't know I was dark-skinned, and wondered where I got my pride and dignity from," one said. The other told us about her daughter, who is sometimes mistaken for every nationality from Greek to Spanish, "My daughter hears all the time from Black boys that they would never marry a girl darker than she is." This friend's daughter also attends a respected, historically black university and has shared with her mother stories of female classmates physically assaulting one another in the wake of colorist verbal insults.

For generations, there was the infamous "paper bag test" in the African American community. Men and women darker than a paper bag were denied membership in churches, fraternities and sororities, and social clubs, and were not allowed to attend certain parties and social events. Blue-vein societies flourished, as did the orthodoxy that among the sororities, AKA's are light, Delta's are brown, Zeta's are black. Fast forward to today and you'll find a #teamlightskin on twitter and complexion competitions in urban nightclubs. The color complex -- or put simply, the belief in the superiority of light skin and European-like hair and facial features -- is, among African Americans, a legacy of slavery that was once practiced and adhered to with nearly unquestioned fidelity. Though increasingly questioned, colorism persists today.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., and I recall one time as I was playing with friends one summer day outside our house on Harvard Street N.W., my mother called me indoors with the admonition, "Come on inside out of that sun, you're already gonna have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children." I saw colorism everywhere: in my family, on TV, in magazines and books. By the time a male fifth-grade classmate at Harrison Elementary brushed my hand away when I reached for his when we were assigned to be square dance partners, I knew instinctively that he didn't want to touch me not just because I was a Negro (as we were called back then), but also because I was the wrong color Negro.

During the tumult and triumph of the activism of the 1960s while a student on the campus of American University, I got Black and loud and proud, and overcame my color complex. More recently, several years ago when I wrote Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex, a book about colorism and its global impact, I became a color-complex activist.

I have begun more and more to conclude that colorism is the most unacknowledged and unaddressed mental health crisis in communities of color around the world. We speak of the color complex as a problem, as an issue, but its negative emotional impact on people of all hues is so serious that it needs to be called what it is: a disease. I'm gratified by an increasing willingness among scholars and cultural activists to write and talk more about the impact of colorism. Colorism is being challenged in the classroom, in forums, on the internet, in books and conferences. Among the most effective "image activists" working to combat this issue are the writers Michaela Angela Davis and Esther Armah, and CNN's Soledad O'Brien, who recently devoted a "Black in America" series segment to the topic of colorism. We are currently at a watershed moment in the recognition of the real impact of this longstanding legacy of racism.

In my family, when our now-grown children were young, my husband and I wove discussions of colorism into conversations about media presentations of African Americans, African American history, race, and life in general, so that our children would develop the ability to comfortably talk about colorism, recognize it, and reject it. People of all races and hues and across the generational divide are now creating a space where the real costs of colorism can be addressed. It's time for more of us to step into that magic circle and begin the long overdue process of healing colorist thought and action in ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Eye-opening, even eye-popping at times, Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat is a blistering expose on the processed food industry. While I doubt it will surprise many readers that salt, sugar, and fat are detrimental to good health -- and the main contributors to the recent surge in obesity levels -- there will be shock at the actual amounts we consume. And even more startling is the level to which food conglomerates go to design foods that are not only appealing, but addictive.

Here are just a few of the jaw-dropping statistics from the book:

Salt: The vast majority of the salt in our diets comes from processed foods (bread, soups, frozen dinners, even cookies and ice cream), and not from the shakers on our tables. Consider this: Most of us are getting three times the recommended daily amount without ever touching a salt shaker.

Sugar: An average American consumes twenty-two teaspoons of sugar, per day. That's seventy pounds per year.

Fat: On average, Americans eat as much as thirty-three pounds of cheese each year, triple the amount we ate thirty years ago. This is a direct result of Congress helping the dairy industry re-purpose their surplus fat when Americans began switching from whole to skim milk.

Salt Sugar Fat: The potato chip is the perfect trifecta of all three ingredients. The potato chip began as a snack food, but is now served alongside almost every sandwich, and even used as a main ingredient in some recipes. Studies show the potato chip is the single biggest contributor to obesity in America.

Through visits to secretive food laboratories, Moss exposes the techniques scientists use to study "bliss point" and "mouth-feel" in order to create foods we crave. He lays bare their ability to actually manipulate these ingredients at the molecular level in order to make them irresistible.

So what are we to do? Moss believes we need to make healthier food less expensive and more readily available in all communities. Consumers need to learn to read labels for hidden ingredients and educate themselves on the marketing techniques used throughout grocery stores to influence their shopping. As bestselling author of In Defense of Food Michael Pollan so succinctly put it: "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

Americans are not going to magically give up their junk-food habit overnight, but read Salt Sugar Fat and I guarantee you'll think more carefully about what you buy and eat. After this thought-provoking read, the once ubiquitous potato chip slogan, "Betcha you can't eat just one," takes on a whole new -- and scary -- meaning.

Everyone does it, but not everyone talks about it. Some do it alone, some with another person. Some do it only at night, and some do it any time the mood strikes them. Some do it with the television on, or their senses muffled by earplugs and eye masks. Some, it’s said, even do it with one eye open. People do it all different ways, sticking with whatever feels best for them. But how often does one peek into the science behind the action? Or, rather, the science under the sheets? And even then, how often do the findings make it to the curious ears of the layperson? Thanks to David K. Randall, chalk one up for pop science with Dreamland: Strange Adventures in the Science of Sleep.

It’s not often people think much about sleep – at least, not until a problem arises. It’s the impetus of sleep abnormalities that introduce many of Randall’s chapters in Dreamland. Anecdotes about dreams, health, habits, and even crimes kick off many of the lessons throughout this all-encompassing study of our nocturnal goings-on. Inspired by his own sleepwalking – and injuries sustained during the act – Randall traces the history of sleep habits in culture back to the 1700s, before the invention of artificial light, back to a time when people generally had both a “first sleep” and “second sleep” each night. (It was Edison’s invention that began to change everything, in case you’re looking for someone to blame for the move away from a practice that sounds like a lovely way to spend the night.)

From there Randall makes a case for separate spousal sleeping quarters, touches on the mostly unscientific study of dreams, the connection between sleep and excellence, the effects of sleep deprivation (it’s not pretty), how one might use their own circadian rhythm to their advantage and to the advantage of their gambling habits, the rise of sleep-aiding drugs, and more. Ultimately, Dreamland won’t tell you the meaning of your dreams, nor will it cure your insomnia. It doesn’t provide exhaustive explanations for everything that happens while one snoozes (because, well, there is no known explanation for all of it yet). But if you’ve ever been curious about some of what goes on while you’re slumbering away, or the evolution of how we came to all aim for the same eight or so hours during the same hours, more or less, David K. Randall’s Dreamland is an interesting walk down that road. Just be sure to take that walk with your eyes open.

If you're at all familiar with Kurt Vonnegut, you'll likely appreciate the way he reveals his true self in his fiction writing. Even in his science-fictional worlds far removed from the reality of our humdrum human lives, he reminds us that the narrator and ol' Kurt are never separated by more than an ink stain. To a Vonnegut diehard like myself, who seeks to unmask the man who gave us an anthem of playful nihilism ("So it goes!"), I'm left wanting to go even deeper into his narrative, beneath the tongue-in-cheek invective upon which he's built his career. In order to find the beating heart behind the humor, look no further than his trove of personal letters. All the humanism, jokes, warmth, and avuncular morality that radiates from his fiction is found tenfold in Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.

We have only to look to find instances that show how Vonnegut is one of the most autobiographical fiction writers of the twentieth century. His experience as a POW in World War II informs his reflections on war in Slaughterhouse-Five. The Saab dealership he once owned is reflected in his protagonist's profession in Breakfast of Champions. And of course his recurring character Kilgore Trout still proves to be the ultimate alter ego, there in many of his novels to amplify Vonnegut's musings on the absurdity of living.

This collection of correspondence has brought me as close as possible to the greatest voice of morality the "Greatest Generation" has ever produced, and I'm beaming by the light of its words. This is a man that did not live far from the pen. He pursued money, of course, but only insofar as it kept his family comfortable. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming his way through odd jobs -- teaching classes to disturbed teenagers, failing to pitch a strategic board game he invented, running a book club on Classics -- he was enriched by the one thing that kept him chugging along after the War: his writing. He was humble and modest to the very end.

Be sure to use this book as a compendium of truths, something to refer back to when you need a good laugh or a helping handful of guidance. Vonnegut would often regale his friends with a story about his uncle. His uncle would sit outside on the grass, rocking in his chair, the sun warming the pleasant company he kept, and he'd state matter-of-factly: "If this isn't nice, what is?" You'll find yourself uttering the same words every time you open, close, and reopen this delightful collection of letters.

February 11, 2013, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of poet Sylvia Plath. Plath’s death was premature and tragic – and as most everyone knows, it was self-inflicted. As the story goes, Plath committed suicide after struggling with depression for years. After feeding her children and putting them to bed, she sealed off the kitchen door with wet cloths, turned on the oven’s gas, placed her head inside the oven, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. What, one may wonder, could lead such a talented writer as Plath to such a demise? One may ponder what went on in her head, not just in the time leading up to her death, but over the course of her entire life. And of course one should wonder more about her experience as an artist, a writer. The answers to all of these are at your fingertips, within the pages of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.

Though Plath’s husband, poet Ted Hughes, published her partial journals in the early eighties, he had abridged them heavily. Further, he had sealed other of her journals. Finally, before his death in 1998, Hughes passed all of the material on to the children he had with Plath, and ultimately, the journals found their way to the publisher Anchor Books. In 2000, the publishing house released the unabridged journals to the public. The journals are as thorough a journey into the mind of an American master of poetry as we’ll ever get (though Hughes reportedly did destroy her final journal).

The journals begin when Plath is a mere eighteen years old. She is at Smith College, finding her way socially and scholastically. Her life was seemingly picture perfect; she was editor of the college’s literary magazine and went on to win a prestigious position with Mademoiselle magazine, which brought her to New York City for a full month. Still, it was during her college years that Plath began toying with suicide, inflicting damage upon her own body, finding her way into and out of various forms of therapy, and recounting her thoughts during this time in an unselfconsciously raw voice. The journals follow Plath from here to her relationship with Hughes, their honeymoon, and, of course, the start of their family, taking the reader through professional successes and personal grief the entire way.

The story of Sylvia Plath is an American tragedy. There is much that we can glean both biographically and thoughtfully from the very personal words of Plath. Some of history’s greatest poets were plagued with the darkest of demons, and Plath is no exception. To understand her depression is to understand her work, and in order to do so, dive into The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and let them stun you.

Editor’s Note: David Shields is the author of books including The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, a New York Times bestseller; Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Remote, winner of the PEN/Revson Award. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. The Seattle-based author’s latest book is How Literature Saved My Life. In it, Shields explores the power of literature. In her review of the book in O, The Oprah Magazine, Kristy Davis said, “Here is a mind on fire, a writer at war with the page.” Shields was kind enough to share with us here at Everyday eBook five books that did, in fact, change his life.

I’m not sure I can even make a distinction between my life and the books I’ve read – I love a line by Leonard Michaels in which he says there is “influence” and then there is getting pushed out a window – but here are the books that have most directly influenced my life. 

1. Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: A book I read over and over in childhood; I stuttered badly and I lived/I live through Lenny Bruce’s profane joy; he taught me how to convert agony and rage into a voice on the page.

2. Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint: See above.

3. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Everyone pretends to have read this book, but I actually read all seven volumes one year in graduate school; I’m still recovering from it. The book showed me how to think about everything, including thinking.

4. David Markson, his last four books, which form a single book, in a way: Vanishing Point, Reader’s Block, This Is Not a Novel, The Last Novel: These works/this work resurrected writing for me when I was weary of it.

5. Simon Gray, His four-volume The Smoking Diaries: See above.

While inspiration often comes from within, Eddie Huang's new memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, reminds us that it also comes in the form of a chubby Taiwanese high schooler from Florida, hell-bent on proving his mettle. Before the famed restaurateur and vocal vlogger for VICE magazine made it big, he was a "midget Chinaman" standing five-foot-four on a football field, facing down a hulking defensive end named Kwame.

Whenever "hike!" was called, young Eddie got pummeled. But Huang explains how each day during practice he would dig his heels in deeper, working so hard he'd vomit by whistle's end. Only a few months later, Eddie's name was being chanted by his teammates like a Taiwanese remake of "Rudy," the scene climaxing when Coach Rock put him into a game, one in which he helped lead his team to victory.

Today, Eddie Huang's name is still being chanted, this time by restaurant critics dying to get their hands on his gua bao at New York City's Baohaus. He's also still digging his heels into the ground, transferring his grit on the grass to his professional demeanor. But while his style defies a simple explanation, what is gleaned from his memoir is the fire of resilience that simmers within. Fresh Off the Boat is riddled with real-life roadblocks built to hamper the strongest of men -- a manic mother, an abusive ex-gangster father, and minority status taped like a "kick me" sign to his back. Yet at each turn Eddie emerges hardened and resolved. Huang's memoir reveals both heart and hood as he refashions every conventional setback in his life into a step forward.

All of this is put forth without pretense. The memoir demands at the outset that you either accept his flaws or clear out of the kitchen. The slang and irreverent style of writing Eddie employs is at first disarming. But chewing through his chummy vernacular, the "yo!'s," "bro!'s," and "shit son!'s" begin to take on a charm of their own. So comfortably conversational are the opening pages you might as well be kicking it with Huang in the flesh, jamming to Tupac tapes and claiming some urban turf of your own.

To the foodies out there, pay heed. Eddie's references to food are spontaneous, not forced. Don't expect a recipe on every page. Instead, the savory morsels of this memoir are masterfully interlaced with his stories of immigration and upbringing. And let's be frank: Does the genre "food memoir" even exist?

This is a tale of immigration. It's a blueprint of American entrepreneurialism. It's a coming-of-age saga and a family narrative drenched in dysfunction. By writing about all that, Huang proves that food, instead of being showmanship, is a social expression; it's something that assists -- rather than consumes -- our everyday lives. He understands the implicit nature of food better than almost any chef today. "Food at its best uplifts the whole community," he writes. It "makes everyone rise to its standard." Inspiration doesn't get any iller than that.

Years ago, this writer stumbled on a book called The Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife by Daniel Quinn and Tom Whelan. The book, referred to by the authors as “the guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday,” is partially tongue-in-cheek, partially disturbing, and mostly thought provoking. For instance, the authors suggest that your predeceased loved ones are not, in fact, waiting for you with open arms. If you choose to, however, you can hire someone to seek them out for you. Also, in the afterlife you have to find a place to live – and will likely end up squatting in an abandoned hovel for a time, while you work out those details. Quinn and Whelan aren’t the only authors offering various ideas about and sharing supposed journeys to the great beyond. In this information age, this society of striving to know everything there is to know about everything, many have offered their own ideas – and experiences – on the topic of heaven.

To Heaven and Back: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again: A True Story by Mary C. Neal
In the late nineties, Mary Neal was kayaking in Chile. Her kayak went over a waterfall, and in the turbulent waters below, Neal’s kayak capsized and she became trapped beneath it. From there, she says, she started the journey to heaven. Her experience was a bit different than what Quinn and Whelan propose, as upon her death, Neal “was joyously greeted by a group of old friends.” Ultimately, though, Neal’s experience gave her more than a glimpse at what happens to us after we die; it gave her a renewed sense of faith in and understanding of God.

Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo
Heaven Is for Real is the story of Colton Burpo, a young boy who, at the age of four, underwent an emergency appendectomy and died during the operation, then came back to life. Over the course of the next few months, Colton shared his story with his parents, including details that stunned them. His story, told by his father in this book that has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than one hundred weeks, will touch your heart – and leave you thinking quite fondly of a place where “Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.”

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander
Eben Alexander’s number-one New York Times bestselling book tells the story of a neurosurgeon, Alexander, who is quite skeptical about heaven and faith. After an illness attacks the doctor’s brain, though, and leaves him in a coma, he has the kind of experience that turns his skepticism completely around, and wakes up recounting his meeting with the “Divine source of the universe itself.”

Heaven: Homeward Bound by Grant R. Jeffrey
Bible expert Grant R. Jeffrey set out in his book, Heaven: Homeward Bound, to answer any and every question you may have about this oft-referred to but less understood idea of the afterlife. Grant was recognized as one of the world's leading teachers of prophecy, and his extensive knowledge as well as his clear articulation come through on every page of this book.

You slam down your can of Pabst and you look at your fellow bandmates. "Let’s DO this! Rock and ROLL!" Through an opening in the curtain, you can see the house lights go down. You strap on the bass guitar, crank the volume, heart pounding, and you step onto the stage, and … and now you can see that there are only two people in the room, and one of them is polishing glasses behind the bar. Welcome to Hitless Wonder, the hilarious and poignant rock-and-roll memoir by Joe Oestreich about a band that never quite made the big time.

Oestreich is the bass player for Watershed, a power-pop band from Ohio, styled loosely after KISS and Cheap Trick. They've been together for two decades. In that time, they have released half a dozen albums; toured up and down the east coast and the Midwest with bands like Insane Clown Posse, The Smithereens, and Ben Folds; and had a record deal with Epic. Also, unless you're from Columbus or maybe Green Bay, you've never heard of them.

Hitless Wonder works on a number of different levels. As straightforward rock journalism, the book gives us a slightly jaundiced look at what it takes to make it in the music business, and just how glamorous it is to live life on the road. (Hint: playing the 3:30AM show at the legendary CBGB's in New York City is not glamorous. As Oestreich writes, "Crappy high school bands are supposed to break up, like the Bryan Adams song: Jimmy quit. Jody got married.") It's also about what it feels like to chase a dream, regardless of the outcome. It's about growing up in a place like Columbus, feeling like life is happening somewhere else, and yearning to be there -- wherever there is. Ultimately, though, it's a love story: about a group of guys who just really like each other, despite the humiliation and poverty that comes from grinding it out in rock music's minor leagues.

In fact, perhaps that's the point. What matters in life really isn't the gold records and the limousines; it's the connections we make with the people we love, and the passions that we nurture, just because they make us happy. Oestreich seems to be comfortable in his own skin; he can laugh at himself, even as he and the rest of Watershed hold out hope that they might still make it. As he says, "I don't know if that makes us optimistic or delusional." Ain't that America, Joe.

In the introduction to Al Gore’s The Future, Gore credits a mysterious person for the inspiration behind his new book. This unnamed muse asks the former vice president a standard loaded question, the kind so impossible to answer succinctly that it becomes treated like a 1950s prom date, where the responder awkwardly dances with the answer a ruler’s length apart. “What are the drivers of global change?” the person asks. After rattling off some conventional wisdom – technology, communications, democracy – Gore went home and reflected.

As the days passed, the seed of the question began to germinate in his mind. Being a man who can’t bear to see a metaphorical – or literal – field lie fallow, Al Gore attended to the question with care. He explored it. He let it grow. It consumed his thoughts, and branched out into new questions demanding new concepts. Now, eight reflective years later, Gore pruned his answers to publish The Future, a book of such global importance you’d be neglecting your own future if you chose to ignore it.

Thankfully, Al Gore’s book is as remarkable for what it isn’t as for what it is. It isn’t a fear-mongering tool. It wasn’t forged in Mt. Doom with wicked political purposes. It isn’t filled with naïve optimism or tail-wagged opinions. His rational approach to a better tomorrow is refreshing. The levelheaded foresight of The Future deserves all the attention those pesky Mayans commanded with all the attendant credibility they lacked. One is left wondering if the loss Gore took in the 2000 election was a blessing in disguise, whisking him away to a land of purpose over pandering.

To be fair, books and movies, such as “After Earth” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” popularize the notion of the unknown for a thrill’s sake. While it’s exciting stuff, it sadly cheapens the exploration of a worthy subject. But lest we forget, despite being denied the American Presidency in 2000, Al Gore won the Popular Vote by over 500,000 heads. Point being: The majority of us trusted this man to lead America into what was then our future. His book makes it abundantly clear that his singular vision hasn’t changed. In fact, since he flew the political coop and embraced environmental activism, he’s only had time to hone it.

Even if you absorb just a fraction of Gore’s philosophy, you can appreciate it for something else. The Future, at the end of the day, pays homage to the power of human curiosity lighted by a simple question: “What are the drivers of global change?” This simple premise is reminiscent of Robert Browning’s eloquent ode to human curiosity: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for?” And one only needs to replace the words “a Heaven” with “Hope” to see the glorious potential in Al Gore’s The Future.

An exquisite cache exists of 264 Japanese netsuke -- tiny extraordinarily detailed figures, hand-carved in ivory, boxwood, or bone: a tiger on a bamboo pole, a monk asleep over his alms bowl, a hare with amber eyes. It is their mystery, their hiddenness, what they reveal about the people who collect them, who touch them and treasure them, that seduces. For nearly a century, the fabulously wealthy Ephrussi family of secular Jews rivaled the Rothschilds as bankers, shippers of grain, builders of chateaux, collectors of art. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal, the distinguished English potter and great-grandson of Viktor Ephrussi, takes us on a picaresque journey, back in time and across continents, to uncover the history of his family and the secrets of their fabled netsuke collection.

From the pogroms of Odessa to fin-de-siècle Paris, from occupied Vienna to postwar Tokyo, Edmund follows the trail of his extraordinary family. Charles Ephrussi, connoisseur and patron of Manet, Degas, and Renoir, acquires the netsuke in the late nineteenth-century, when Japan's borders open and vast amounts of Japoniserie flood Paris. Later, the netsuke pass to Viktor Ephrussi, Charles' cousin, friend of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Arthur Schnitzler, in Vienna. In 1937, when the Nazis invade, they are quick to decimate the Ephrussi empire; De Waal's account of this historical nightmare, about which we may think we already know everything, is powerful and deeply affecting. It is, ultimately, Anna, the Ephrussi's devoted maid, who squirrels away the netsuke in her mattress, carrying them off one by one, in her apron pocket, under the eyes of the Nazis for whom she is forced to catalogue and pack every stick of furniture and article of clothing, every carpet and book and work of art, in the Ephrussi palace.

At the heart of de Waal's memoir sits his eighty-four-year-old great-uncle, Ignace "Iggie" Ephrussi, Viktor's son, dapper, sophisticated, and rootless, who flees Vienna for New York, and finally Tokyo. It is Iggie, with his beautiful herringbone jackets, pale shirts, and stylish cravats, who welcomes seventeen-year-old Edmund when he arrives to study pottery with the Japanese masters. It is Iggie who serves him his first whiskey sour, introduces him to opera, reveals to him the magical perfection of the netsuke, and in the end leaves him the entire collection about which he has been so curious and which represents perhaps the essence of his family's tumultuous history.

"Netsuke are small and hard," de Waal writes. "They hold themselves inward: a deer tucking his legs beneath his body; the barrel-maker crouching inside his half-finished barrel … a monk asleep over his alms bowl, one continuous line of back." As well as the drama of an illustrious family devastated by the convulsions of history, de Waal gives us a story of hiddenness. Who discovered and bought these "tiny tough explosions of exactitude" that sit in the palm of your hand, he asks? Who held and touched them? What does it mean, that they were saved, treasured, passed along? Why is it that these most humble of objects are so important to our sense of ourselves?

The answers lie in both this sensitive and unsentimental portrait of an amazing family, and in de Waal's own small porcelain vessels, as precise and elegant as the netsuke, glazed in white, cream, and celadon, now in museums and galleries the world over.

Kristen Iversen had what many would consider an idyllic childhood, in a suburban house with avocado appliances, a horse, and parents who liked each other. Each afternoon after school, she would ride out to the edge of town. There, at the barbed wire, kicking the metal "No Trespassing" signs with the toes of her cowboy boots, she would look to the west. There: where the chinook winds came racing, swirling dust, past the eerie lights of the plant that made … something secret. In Full Body Burden, her gripping memoir, Iversen unravels the secrets of what it meant to grow up in the shadow of Rocky Flats. Unfortunately, it's our story, too.

The Rocky Flats plant made the triggers at the heart of every atom bomb made in America from the 1950s to the 1980s. These coffee-cup sized lumps of plutonium, one of the most deadly materials ever discovered, could be made to set off a mushroom cloud of destructive energy. But nobody talked about this, because it was the Cold War, and it meant jobs for the community. "I don't know what he does, exactly," one wife says. "He's an engineer. It's too complicated to explain."

Similarly, nobody talked about the self-destruction of Iversen's father, an attorney who sank deeper and deeper into alcoholic despair. The family closed ranks in denial, as so many troubled families do. The stories are integrally linked, as they go to the heart of a kind of collective amnesia. There are things that we just don't want to know.

Sooner or later, though, we have to face them -- or do we? As one child after another in Iversen's school developed testicular cancer, and as one plant worker after another died of lymphoma or a brain tumor or lung cancer, it became clear that something was very wrong at Rocky Flats. Like the deadly fire and explosion in 1957, and again in 1969, that sent a plume of radioactive dust toward Denver. Like the hundreds of rusting steel drums, filled with toxic, radioactive slurry, leaking into the groundwater, because nobody knew where else to put it. In some areas downwind of the plant, the soil was found to be more radioactive than "Ground Zero" at the Nevada nuclear test site. But this went on for decades, and nobody stopped it.

Full Body Burden is so powerful because it is personal. Iversen, who directs a Creative Writing MFA program, knows how to tell a story. But she also speaks with honesty about her childhood friends and neighbors, and the tension between knowing and willfully not knowing. We accept the nuclear weapons that protect us without asking about the thousands who died as a result of their manufacture, or about land near Denver that will remain deadly and radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. This is an important story about an American tragedy, but it's also about growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when our country's innocence began its slow meltdown.

There are few cultures more extrinsically opposite in nature than those belonging to Americans and Arabs. Sophia Al-Maria knows this firsthand, as her formative years were spent making the leap back and forth between the two. In her brilliant coming-of-age memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Al-Maria recounts these near-surreal experiences.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth begins as a love story: A Middle Eastern man, Matar, makes a pilgrimage to America from his home in Qatar. Alone and clueless as to how to go about finding his way in the foreign landscape of the Pacific-Northwest United States, he is taken under the wing of Gale Valo, a quirky, Washington-born, farm-bred young woman. The two fall in an unlikely sort of love, start a family (enter the author), and get married. Matar finds work driving a big rig and enjoys his life. Yet, three years after arriving in Seattle, he hears the call of home and heads back to the Arabian Gulf. And when our narrator is five, she and her mother and younger sister finally hear from him, when he calls for them to join him overseas.

In spite of the size of Matar’s family, Gale is lonely in Qatar and it isn’t too long before she returns to the states, daughters in tow. All goes well until Sophia is well into the fifth grade. The preadolescent's preoccupation with sex – and her creative way of displaying this preoccupation – cause her mother to lose patience, call her husband, and arrange to have Sophia sent to live with him. Sophia arrives in her new home – a home packed with cousins, the multiple wives of uncles, and more, and moves into her room with her Aunt Falak. And so begins her new life, surrounded by gender divides, abayas, and the unfamiliar dynamics of her new family. For every piece of Sophia’s new world that is different, however, there is another that is the same. There are still adolescent crushes, an inherent desire to compete with the boys, a longing to be accepted, and a bending of the rules.

Coming of age is a universal fact of life, and in Al-Maria’s memoir, she demonstrates this with the keen observations of an anthropologist, the beautiful language of a writer, and the truth and passion of a storyteller. From her first period to her first love, and later to her rebellions and her own pilgrimage of self-discovery, there is one theme that will doubtless ring familiar with all readers: the quest for independence, the independence that comes from knowing who you are and where you are going, no matter where you come from.

Editor's Note: The history of sugar in America is among the bloodiest on record, comprising instances of greed and social disruption that made many rich and ripped many more from their native homes. In Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire, Andrea Stuart uses her own family history -- from the seventeenth century through the present -- as the pivot for an epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery, and the making of the Americas. Andrea's research process for the book took her far beyond the expected destination, and led to five discoveries she never counted on uncovering.

1) The plantation system was born in Barbados. Barbados in the seventeenth century was described as a "nursery for planting other places" -- not just because so many immigrants began their New World career there, but because it was the place where the plantation system was first pioneered and shaped. It was the planters of this small island who created the legal model that would later be adapted by many of the planters in mainland America, providing the blueprint on how to structure, manage, and police a slave society.

2) The horrors of slavery began before anyone set foot on a slave ship. The infamous "Middle Passage," which documents the horrors of the sea journey to the New World, was just one part of the ordeal for captured slaves. Most would have spent many months trekking across the African continent after their capture, only to arrive at slave forts, where they were imprisoned for a further few months before they were even put aboard a slave ship.

3) The historic cruelty of Caribbean plantation owners was nonstop. The average plantation had at least sixty punishments a day, ranging from ad hoc beatings to torture and forced amputations; the sound of screams and groans was the soundtrack of the plantation. New World planters reached their barbaric peak with the resurrection of burning "by slow fire," an ancient punishment previously confined to those accused of witchcraft.

4) The abolitionist movement began with the slaves themselves. Conventional history credits the white abolitionist movement with the end of slavery in the Atlantic world. In truth, the slaves of the region worked constantly for their own emancipation, consistently resisting their own enslavement. By the latter part of the eighteenth century, slave rebellions were so frequent that authorities considered cutting their losses. The most impressive instance of resistance was the twelve-year-long rebellion in Haiti, in which the poorly armed slaves of the island eventually defeated both British and French forces, creating the first free society in plantation-era America.

5) I was a descendant of this system. My first slave ancestor, John Stephen Ashby, was listed on a slave return as '14 years old,' 'colored,' and 'a laborer.' I was so thrilled by this discovery that I burst into spontaneous tears. By identifying him and bringing his story to life, I felt that I had managed to defy the slave system, which made it almost impossible to track and name slave ancestors. My later discovery that John Stephen was one of seventeen slave offspring born to his planter father also took me aback, as did the discovery of my own grandfather's extramarital affairs, which produced a raft of new relatives.

At a time when aging pop and rock stars continue to record and perform well past their best-by dates, who would have thought a somewhat cantankerous, outspoken, old hippie like Neil Young would be the one to produce a refreshingly genuine and candid memoir? Waging Heavy Peace is a book full of surprises and good humor, honesty, modesty, and personal revelation.

Most know Neil as a legendary musical artist, having recorded thirty-four albums over four decades. This memoir includes the juicy details of his early days as a Canadian troubadour, his serendipitous success with the revered folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield, the soaring, vocally harmonic CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young), the gritty, rock edge of Crazy Horse, and dozens of additional solo projects. For those less familiar, you may unknowingly recognize his high, nasally vocals on such songs as "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Southern Man," "(Four Dead in) Ohio," "Rockin' in the Free World," and "Long May You Run." His music has run the gamut from folk and country to rock and grunge. Neil has played or recorded with a virtual who's-who of the rock world.

As for the writing in Waging Heavy Peace, it quickly becomes apparent that Neil is not a professional author; his book reads more like a personal journal. Overall, this is a good thing; however, it's a bit untidy and, at times, could have used some judicious editing. But unlike celebrities who use ghostwriters or co-authors to pen their memoirs, Neil's affecting and naive way of expressing himself grows increasingly endearing as you settle in and travel the journey. What is revealed is the man behind the ego and rock persona: the way he thinks and feels and lives, his strengths and passions, regrets and weaknesses, with an abiding love and dedication to his children, one of whom is quadriplegic. His philanthropic involvements include the co-founding of Farm Aid, an annual benefit concert begun in 1985 to help raise funds for struggling family farmers. He and his wife, Pegi, were also founding members of The Bridge School, an internationally recognized leader in the field of augmentative and alternative communication for children with severe physical and speech impairments. For these and other efforts, Neil was named The MusicCare Foundation's Person of the Year in 2010, an annual award to commend musicians for their artistic achievement in the music industry and dedication to philanthropy.

I was happy to discover Neil Young is doing fine, alive and well, clean and sober, with many active projects and plans. His current passions include his involvements in LincVolt, an environmentally savvy solution for large automobiles, and PONO, a high-resolution technology for vastly improving digital music. These and other projects keep Neil active and fully engaged until the muse comes calling again. In a recent interview, Neil was asked about his book writing. Having broken his toe at the pool, he explained, "I just wrote this because basically I didn't have anything else to do and I couldn't walk." That's Neil just being Neil, honest and straightforward. And by the sounds of it, nowhere near his expiration date.

In April 2012, Dara-Lynn Weiss was featured with her young daughter, Bea, in Vogue's "Shape" issue. The article focused on their struggle to bring Bea's weight down to a healthy, normal range. Naïvely, Weiss believed if she shared their challenge she would help other mothers with overweight children. Instead, she became the center of a vicious media maelstrom. While I followed the coverage and was riveted by it, a part of me suspected there was much more to the story. In her controversial memoir, The Heavy, we get the real story.

At seven years old, Bea was four feet four inches tall and ninety-three pounds. Her blood pressure was 124/80. Her BMI was in the ninety-eighth percentile. Her mother was told she was clinically obese. As Weiss explains, "My reaction was the same as if I had been told Bea had a potentially fatal allergy, or diabetes. Her weight pattern was no longer a simple parenting hurdle; it was a medical crisis." The decision to intervene forced Weiss to confront her own painful issues surrounding food and weight.

But Weiss is no mommy dearest, trying to slim down Bea to reach some unrealistic goal. After reading The Heavy, I believe Weiss is a mother who loves her daughter so much that she went to extremes that most of us cannot fathom in order to protect her child. Early on, Weiss enlisted the help of a doctor, but there was very little concrete information available to guide her; she had to make much of it up as she went along. And like any parent, she made mistakes. She writes openly and honestly about these mistakes, including letting her daughter be photographed for the Vogue feature. She admits to making controversial choices, but she is unapologetic about them. Weiss's role in her family is "the heavy" -- the one ultimately responsible for the toughest decisions. She writes: "As for Bea, I wasn't trying to make her slender. That wasn't my job. I just needed her to be healthy."

Agree or disagree with Dara-Lynn Weiss's choices, but read her entire story before passing judgment. She made what she believed were the best decisions for her daughter, given the information available to her at the time. Will these choices end up being in Bea's long-term best interest? The jury is still out, and will be for many years.

In this group biography, Daisy Hay brings to life a truly tangled circle of friends and their complicated, sometimes devastating relationships. The creative coterie that included Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats generated some of the Romantics' best-loved works, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Young Romantics takes a vivid look at these writers' lives; addictive tales of scandal, heartbreak, sacrifice and friendship are complimented by Hay's intelligent exploration of their poems, novels, journalism, and radical credos.

Leigh Hunt stands at the center of this group of friends. Not as well known today as some of his contemporaries, Hunt was a highly acclaimed liberal journalist, who spent two years in jail for libel from 1813 to 1815. Hay uses Hunt's jail time as a jumping-off point, since Hunt was behind bars when he first met Byron. Hunt was twenty-eight at the time, Byron was twenty-five and already a celebrated poet. Shelley and Mary come into the picture soon after, along with Mary's half-sister, Claire Clairmont who (spoiler alert) will eventually have a brief affair with Byron. Like most things involving Byron, the fling will have disastrous results.

The affairs in the book are numerous and torrid indeed, and relationships of all kinds are messy. When twenty-one-year-old Shelley meets sixteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1814, he is already married with a child. When he "elopes" with Mary to Europe, sixteen-year-old Claire comes with them. If this sounds like a terrible idea, it's because it was. The strange threesome spent a tortuous month attempting to cross post-war France on foot before heading back to England. Yet despite these inauspicious beginnings, their story was long from over: The infamous retreat to Lake Geneva, where Byron would propose the ghost story competition that spawned Frankenstein, would not happen for another two years.

The focus of Young Romantics is not a single meeting or incident but the very fact that these coteries existed, thrived, and were so influential. Previous works on the Romantics have focused on their notion of the solitary poet-genius. Hay destroys this conception in demonstrating just how crucial these personal relationships were to producing great works. She does a remarkable job of balancing her own insightful literary criticism with the devilishly enticing literary gossip. She thoughtfully explicates the texts that the respective poets/writers were working on, demonstrating how the narrative of their lives affected or even conflicted with what they were writing. What evolves is a deeper understanding of their works, and of their personages.

You don't have to be a fan of the Romantics to fall under the spell of this stranger-than-fiction recounting of literary history. Don't worry if you haven't read their poetry or picked up Frankenstein. But be forewarned: Young Romantics will leave you hungry to do so. The Shelleys! Byron! Keats! Oh my.

In 1295, Marco Polo came home to Italy after his epic trip across Asia, and was promptly imprisoned. While incarcerated, the merchant dictated stories about what he'd seen. The result, which came to be known as The Travels of Marco Polo, is considered by some to be the first true example of travel writing. So when William Dalrymple got the bright idea in 1986 to recreate Marco Polo's journey from Jerusalem to Beijing, he knew he would be traveling on the shoulders of giants. Dalrymple's highly acclaimed narrative about his own trip, In Xanadu, shows just how little the world has really changed over seven centuries -- and why a Mongolian Communist Party official might look at the trekker and say, "English people, very, very bonkers."

Dalrymple does not come from the let's-go-to-Tuscany-and-drink-wine school of travel writing. First, the road to Xanadu goes through Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and China, none of which are now known for their sunny tourist infrastructure -- and certainly weren't known for it in the 1980s. And then, there's Dalrymple himself, who is a somewhat out-of-shape curmudgeon. In eastern Turkey, he describes burqa-clad women at a bustling bazaar: "A respectful six paces behind their menfolk, trailing children and shopping bags, walked a series of shapeless conical sacks." He is funny, nasty, and keenly observant.

Similarly, here he is on a minibus filled with angry old women in Iran: "There was virtually nothing to break the monotony: the odd, sad peasant working away in a tragic attempt to wring vegetable life out of the land, two marooned mullahs inexplicably throwing great stones at each other, a burned-out bus ... Through the middle ran the road, and from it the dust rose in clouds and swept into the bus, blinding the eyes and gritting the mouth."

There is no denying that Dalrymple's writing is evocative. An armchair traveler will easily picture herself scrambling over a ruined castle by his side, or ducking down with him in the back of a coal truck to avoid the attention of a local policeman. But it is also much more respectful and informed than these excerpts might suggest. The author knows a lot about the history of central Asia, his insights into local architecture help explain how Europe's own cities came to be, and he is always willing to engage with locals on their own terms.

In Xanadu takes on particular poignancy because it brings us to places that are now tragically off limits to most Western observers. We follow as the writer makes his way through northern Syria, today embroiled in a violent civil war, or into Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was ultimately discovered. Along the way, he lets us peer into the complex history and mores of these ancient cultures that are all too often misunderstood by outsiders. Like all good travel writers, Dalrymple leaves us educated, entertained, and appreciative; Marco Polo would be proud.

Happy 2013! This year it's all about making realistic resolutions. We know that despite best intentions it's hard to stick to goals, so now Everyday eBook is here to help. Here's how -- Resolution number one: Read more ebooks! For every goal, there's an ebook that can teach, entertain, or motivate while you tackle your personal promises. We have eleven excellent recommendations that we hope you'll find useful. So, set reasonable expectations for yourself, read to get inspired, and do your best. With this plan, we think come next year you won't be making these same resolutions again. Everyday eBook wishes health and happiness for you and your loved ones!

May Cause Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein
Transform your life in forty days. Gabi Bernstein explains how simple, consistent shifts in thinking and actions can lead to the miraculous in our daily lives. Here is her plan for releasing fear and experiencing gratitude, forgiveness, love, and joy.

The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank
Proud fat girl and personal trainer Hanne Blank understands the physical and emotional roadblocks that overweight women face in the world of exercise. In this unique guide, she shows how to choose workout options, avoid sports injuries, and get proper nutrition, all without fat-bashing.

Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin
The author of The Happiness Project returns with a passionate study of domestic bliss. Breaking down everyday life into manageable monthly goals, Gretchen Rubin focuses on home-related themes such as marriage, parenthood, time and possessions, testing strategies to boost joy on the home front.

Super Brain by Rudolph E. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra
Use your brain in a revolutionary new way to achieve health, happiness, and spiritual growth. By increasing self-awareness and conscious intention we become open to the brain's limitless potential, improving the mind-body connection, promoting well-being, and reducing the risks of aging.

Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn
Whether running is your hobby or your religion, Adharanand Finn's journey to the elite training camps of Kenya will amaze you. Part travelogue, part memoir, this incredible quest to uncover the secrets of the world's greatest runners combines practical advice, a new look at barefoot running, and fresh spiritual insights.

Drop Dead Healthy by A. J. Jacobs
The true and hilarious story of a man with an epic goal: to achieve maximal health from head to toe. From diets of raw foods and extreme chewing to gadgets and sex clinicians and sleep experts, A. J. Jacobs did it all and lived to tell about it in this extremely entertaining story of transformation.

The Science of Yoga by William J. Broad
William J. Broad examines an ancient practice and gives a fascinating objective evaluation. He illuminates how yoga can lift moods and inspire creativity, exposes moves that can be dangerous, and presents evidence about our capability for entering states of sexual bliss, while offering a vision of how the practice of yoga can be improved.

Lessons from Madame Chic by Jennifer L. Scott
As a foreign exchange student, California girl Jennifer L. Scott met a Parisian mentor who taught her about the art of French living and that chic sense of style and charm. Each chapter reveals a secret about grooming, dressing, entertaining, and more. Ideal for one who wants a bit of je ne sais quoi in her life.

Mindfulness by Mark Williams, PhD, and Danny Penman, PhD
Find peace in our frantic world with this eight-week plan. You can live a happier and less anxious and exhausting life with the techniques in this book. Practice these simple and straightforward forms of mindfulness meditation -- and it can take just ten to twenty minutes a day for the full benefits to be revealed.

Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
In this profound book about family, Andrew Solomon writes about parents who have children living with dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, with children who are criminals, who are conceived in rape, and other exceptional situations. While it might initially seem tragic, Solomon documents the triumphs of love these families experience.

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky
Read this before spending your next night in a hotel bed. Jacob Tomsky's enthralling, indiscreet memoir tells of his life spent working in the hotel industry. He shares the unwritten code of bellhops, the antics in the valet parking garage, housekeeping's dirty little secrets, and tips to get free stuff and upgrades. Happy travels mean a happy new year!

What better time than New Year's Eve to reminisce about a few of our favorite books about partying people and decadence of the most vice-like kind? Authors over the years have certainly nailed down the literary brilliance of laughing and schmoozing, canoodling and boozing. So herewith, before your day-after hangover, some of our favorite eBooks about big parties and the people who frequent them.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney knows how to write about parties. And with Bright Lights, Big City he demonstrated exactly how to take the tale of one young man, wandering through his life in Manhattan, and turn it into what became known as the voice of a generation. If you fly through Bright Lights wanting more, check out Story of My Life.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
East of Manhattan lies East Egg, holiday home to NYC's elite. It is here that the relatively unworldly Nick Carraway meets a cast of characters including Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the one and only Jay Gatsby. In Fitzgerald's classic tale, though, a lifestyle consisting of party after party can only lead to disaster, which Gatsby and the rest eventually meet. Bonus: Watch for Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation this spring starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan.

A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer
The late Norris Church Mailer turned grief into a timeless tale when she penned her memoir of her marriage to literary legend Norman Mailer. The parties were never-ending for the pair, and the stories that Norris recounts will make you wish that 1) you were there with them, or 2) that she'd lived long enough to tell a thousand more.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Partying never appeared so grotesque as it did in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Trainspotting, a collection of stories chronicling the lives of heroin-affected Scottish youth, is a little bit cautionary tale, a little bit voyeuristic disgust, and a whole lot of punk. If the book just wasn't vivid enough for you, check out Danny Boyle's 1996 adaptation starring the one and only Ewan McGregor.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald does it again with the beautiful and heartbreaking tale of newlyweds Anthony and Gloria Patch, babes of the golden age, in The Beautiful and Damned. Life is fabulous for the two, who seemingly have everything two young lovers could want in life. But all that is gold is not glittering, as we soon come to learn in Fitzgerald's novel, which some say is based on his life with his beautiful and troubled wife, Zelda.

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
What list of party tales would be complete without Bret Easton Ellis? Another '80s literary great, Ellis is the twisted mastermind behind American Psycho – but it's his mid-1980s-penned Less Than Zero that first launched him onto the literary scene. Set in Los Angeles, Less Than Zero is the story of a disillusioned college student who returns from his East-U.S. campus to his home on the West Coast. Partying ensues, as do the resulting lessons involving corpses, prostitution, and addiction. Party on, literati.

"Camelot,” the 1960 Broadway musical, is a medieval tale based on the folklore of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, including Guinevere and Lancelot. It is the glamorous, romantic yet tragic story of courage and gallantry, passion-fed betrayal, chivalry, love and loyalty. In Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, we come to understand the magical aura of the Kennedy years’ affinity with Camelot, through the authors’ superb accounting, explanation, and meaning of this national tragedy.

On November 8, 1960, Americans went to the polls and replaced one of their oldest presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower (70), with the youngest (43) president ever elected. A handsome and charismatic Massachusetts senator with a beautiful, eloquent wife and two adorable children, John (and Jacqueline) Kennedy offered a youthful idealism, not only in the direction of our country but our identity as a nation. JFK inspired and challenged Americans to serve their country, setting a prime example through his leadership and hard work. JFK and Jackie’s marriage portrayed a romantic love story: he a confident, former war hero and dedicated father; she of elegance and style, poise and grace. When she wasn’t enchanting Parisian and American audiences, Jackie restored and elevated an undistinguished White House with historical antiques, fine art, impeccable decorating, and fashionably sophisticated yet lively social events. Through black-and-white television broadcasts, all became available to U.S. audiences. America fell in love with their First Family.

At the opposite end of Killing Kennedy, we meet the lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine with communist leanings who defected to Russia for a period before returning to American soil. We learn much about Oswald’s earlier years, whereabouts, associations, and violent personal activities. The book’s pulse-raising track traces the steps of the President and Oswald in the months and days leading up to the killing of the President like two trains hurtling toward each other on a deadly collision course.

O’Reilly and Dugard are masterful in recounting and revealing exquisite details of these events. But as they did in Killing Lincoln, the authors omit the irrelevant clutter, allowing the narrative to move at a driving pace. Their scintillating reporting actually places the reader inside the president’s car with Jackie, when terror arrives and bullets strike. It is simply heart wrenching. Meanwhile, Americans watched the horror on national TV, Camelot crumpling and dying before their very eyes.

Killing Kennedy also includes the aftermath: Jackie’s grace-filled handling of an unthinkable situation and her efforts to insure JFK’s lasting legacy, including his extraordinary list of accomplishments as President. It later became known that JFK’s preferred bedtime listening was the musical cast recording of Camelot. His favorite lines were spoken in the final number: “Don’t let it be forgot. That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment … That was known as Camelot.”

From 1962 to 1981 -- during the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK; the Vietnam War; the Civil Rights Movement; NASA's Apollo missions; the Watergate Scandal and more -- Walter Cronkite was there. Each night, Americans invited him into their homes, and each night, in his objective yet caring voice, he told them the news. Further, he not only told Americans the news; Cronkite became the paternal figure, the healer of the nation, “the most trusted man in America.” Now, a few years after his death, Douglas Brinkley brings us the life of the legend in the fascinating biography, Cronkite.

No doubt, Walter Cronkite is best known for the CBS Evening News and his famous sign off, "And that's the way it is." But, as you'd expect, and as Brinkley displays, there is much more to Cronkite than those years and that line. Brinkley is able to navigate Cronkite's personal life and professional development -- from his childhood as a Kansas City paperboy to his big stories in WWII (e.g. "Assignment to Hell"), from his marriage to Betsy Maxwell to his early TV jobs ("You Are There"), from his feud with Murrow to his feud with Rather -- all the while sprinkling in small touches, such as his love of dirty jokes and sailing. True, Cronkite never needed any humanizing; he was as human as your next-door neighbor or coworker, as wise and warm as your grandfather; that's how he made you feel. But for the first time, now, Brinkley reinforces that human feeling Cronkite always projected through the television screen. For the first time, Brinkley fleshes out your image of Uncle Walter.

Still, Cronkite isn't just the story of an anchorman. The man lived a history-book life, and within his life are a million other stories -- twentieth-century American politics; the rise and fall of communism; the emergence of radio and then television news, and much more -- so that as you read, not only is Brinkley telling Cronkite's story, but also the story (the history) of the world and beyond.

In reading Cronkite, it's evident that Brinkley loves his subject, and, as a biographer, he should. But as you find out, it's not without reason, as Cronkite isn't like so many childhood heroes who fall from grace as they grow up. Brinkley's book doesn't leave you feeling disillusioned or tricked. Rather it impresses and validates your trust in Mr. Walter Cronkite.

Editor's Note: In his book Assholes: A Theory, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary. Here, he focuses his expertise on three specific subcategories of asshole.

The task of selecting a single person who is supremely deserving of the name "asshole" poses an extraordinary challenge. Among the vast sea of exemplars, we can hardly compare candidate assholes by any simple metric. We risk comparing apples to oranges. To carry out our unsavory task in good faith, we therefore compare assholes under three subheadings: Sports Assholes (the NBA, in particular); Hollywood Assholes; and Assholes of Worldly Consequence, in society or politics.

In this we assume the following general definition: The asshole is the guy who systematically allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people. Different "senses of entitlement" correspond to assholes of different styles (the Smug Asshole, for instance, acts from a sense that he is plainly superior). The resultant assholery may manifest itself in multifarious ways, in sports, entertainment, or politics and society, as the situation provides.

Turning then to our first subcategory award, we have: the NBA Highest Scorer Award, on the asshole scale.

The top players are: the egomaniacal, "ball don't lie" Rasheed Wallace; Meta World Peace, for his grandiose chosen name and his gratuitous elbow throw; and, finally, fellow Laker Kobe Bryant, for lack of effort in showing sportsmanly humility. (Note that L.A. does alarmingly well in the rankings.)

And the top scorer is .... Mr. World Peace! Because inordinate pettiness speaks volumes. By comparison, Wallace and especially Bryant are unusually fine players. Which is no excuse, and yet is, alas, a mitigating factor: We give better players more leeway, at least up to a point (which Mr. World Peace brazenly crosses).

Turning to our second subcategory, we have: the Academy Award, for best Hollywood asshole (or impersonations thereof).

The candidates are: angry-man Mel Gibson; self-absorbed and delusional Charlie Sheen; and hard-charging “Entourage” character Ari Gold.

And the winner is ... (envelope please) Mr. Gold! He surely reflects the larger Hollywood asshole culture, even where he fails in portraying the real-life Hollywood agent that he is said to depict. Gibson, by contrast, is angry-crazy and so harder to understand. Sheen, in the end, wins (a modicum) of our sympathy. He just may be a delusional man going through a very rough patch.

Turning to our final subcategory, we have the Consequence Award, for the most consequential asshole in politics or society (at least lately).

The candidates are: Steve Jobs, whose controlling executive presence gave the world elegant phones; Dr. House, of “House,” who shows that you can be an asshole doctor as long as lives are saved; and Newt Gingrich, who says of himself, “I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.”

On the basis of grave, existentialist reflections about the resultant course of human history, this committee determines that the winner is ... Newt Gingrich! Gingrich did more than anyone to usher in the age of anti-cooperation and political paralysis in the United States – an age in which legislation is now nearly impossible, even where Republicans and Democrats can fully agree on policy. Since the accomplishment may bring America to budgetary (and other forms of) ruin, Newt can proudly claim the Consequence Award over Jobs' merely having given gadget orgasms to millions, and House's having marginally worsened a medical profession in which assholes were already in abundance.

The task remains to rank our subcategories. That ranking, in turn, shall determine our ultimate winner. I, the committee, submit that we have no better criterion for asshole supremacy than the material consequences of the asshole's assholery on the course of world history. The Consequence Award is thus our gold standard, and the winner of the Consequence Award – Newt Gingrich – is thereby the Supremely Meritorious Asshole Award winner! He is to be congratulated for his years of distinguished public service.

In the final, somewhat autobiographical story in Alice Munro’s new collection, Dear Life, the author writes about the novels she read growing up. One was The Magic Mountain, which she describes as “containing a great argument between what on one side seemed to be a genial and progressive notion of life and, on the other, a dark and somehow thrilling despair.”

The same could be said for almost any Munro story. Her stories somehow exist on two sides of a road: on one side, there’s light and beauty in simple things; and on the other, darkness is waiting for you just around the bend. They are deceptively simple, yet contain so much in each line. I’ve never read a story of Munro’s that didn’t audibly catch my breath – whether it was at something I didn’t see coming (always, in her stories) or a particularly beautiful turn of phrase.

Munro’s stories often unfold in the small towns of her native Ontario and are full of subtle, yet stunning revelations. Readers are often being told of something that happened long ago, from the vantage point of the present. But memories are often faulty, or unreliable. They don’t even have the benefit of hindsight as characters struggle still with some knowledge or unwanted discovery. We discover things as the narrator does, and it’s often a shock – whether a decades-long deception by a lover, a betrayal of the mind, or a grown woman trying to come to terms with the childhood death of a sibling (and her possible culpability in it). One woman still feels the heartache after a chance encounter with a former lover who had abandoned her decades earlier: “For me, it was the same as when I left Amundsen, the train dragging me still dazed and full of disbelief.

“Nothing changes really about love.”

Things have a way of coming into sharp focus when you least expect it and Munro delivers most twists with an unexpected, quiet force. The big reveals are usually halfway down a paragraph, or the final word in a sentence, so you barely see it coming. Things will seemingly be going one way and then suddenly veer in another, more dangerous direction. Small abandonments build to catastrophe. While the characters are built solidly, they don’t feel safe.

The final four stories, which are autobiographical, are quite bleak – a house servant’s death, a child’s mad fantasy of killing her little sister – but it’s all familiar terrain. Children aren’t safe, and neither is anyone else, for that matter, from the cold harshness of life and other people. Some are capable of thoughtlessly inflicting hurt, as with the character who retracts a proposal of marriage without warning. The stories often sit on a fence somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, as people (and readers, too) realize things they’d rather not know. Though it’s never easy in a Munro story, it’s not all darkness. For every difficulty or misstep, there is almost always a strong shard of humanity or light, or some unexpected mercy.

Munro’s talent leaps off the pages and will leave any reader satisfied (or, as satisfied as you can be while longing for more from this beautiful writer).