BEST OF 2010
9 EZ
Nonfiction
America. The best book on this subject in 70 years.—H.W. Brands
TRAVELS IN SIBERIA, by Ian Frazier (Farrar Straus Giroux, $30). Frazier uses his oversized powers of observa- tion and description to produce a trav- elogue that is charmingly off the deep end in its infatuation with everything about Russia, good and bad.—Alan Cooperman
THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS: Re- cent Challenges, NewDangers, and the Prospects for aWorldWithout NuclearWeapons, by Richard Rhodes (Knopf, $27.95).No one writes better about nuclear history than Rhodes does, ably combining a scholar’s atten- tion to detail with a novelist’s devotion to character and pacing.—George Perkovich
UNBROKEN: AWorldWar II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemp- tion, by LauraHillenbrand (Random House, $27). Rarely has a single man had to endure such an extraordinary array of woes, from long weeks of bat- tling sharks and hunger on a flimsy life raft to the mind-boggling brutali- ties of incarceration in a Japanese POWcamp.—Gary Krist
©ETHAN RUSSELL "Life"
MAKING HASTE FROMBABYLON: The Mayflower Pilgrims and TheirWorld: A NewHistory, by Nick Bunker (Knopf, $30). A picture so full and viv- id as to constitute a virtual ground-lev- el tour of an otherwise lost world. —John Demos
MENTOR: A Memoir, by Tom Grimes (TinHouse; paperback, $16.95). From now on, anyone who dreams of becom- ing a novelist will need to read Tom Grimes’s brutally honest and wonder- ful memoir.—M.D.
MYNINE LIVES: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music, by Leon Fleisher and AnneMidgette (Doubleday, $26). Fleisher, a classical pianist who lost the use of his right hand, describes his nonmusical pursuits and his dream— ultimately fulfilled—of playing two- handed again in this insightful, psy- chologically sensitive narrative. —Mindy Aloff
NOTHING TO ENVY: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick (Spiegel & Grau, $26). Conveys the emotional riptides and overall disinte- gration of stopped factories, unpaid salaries and piled-up corpses.—Ste- phen Kotkin
OBAMA’SWARS, by BobWoodward (Simon & Schuster, $30). A superbly reported account of how a newpresi- dent may well have embroiled himself in a war that could poison his presi- dency.—Neil Sheehan
OPERATION MINCEMEAT: Howa Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Vic- tory, by BenMacintyre (Harmony, $25.99). CouldWorldWar II really have been like this? Full of self-effac- ing heroism and romantic conquests? —Joseph Kanon
THE PARTY: The SecretWorld of Chi- na’s Communist Rulers, by Richard McGregor (Harper, $27.99).McGregor has written a lively and penetrating ac- count of a party that, since its found- ing in Shanghai as a clandestine orga- nization in 1921, has clung to secrecy as an inviolable principle.—Andrew Higgins
PEARL BUCK IN CHINA: Journey to “The Good Earth,” byHilary Spurling (Simon & Schuster, $27). This elegant, richly researched work is a portrait of a remarkable woman ahead of her time, an evocation of China between the wars, and a meditation on how the secrets and griefs of childhood can shape a writer.—Leslie T. Chang
POISONING THE PRESS: Richard Nix- on, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture, by Mark Feldstein (Farrar Straus Giroux, $30). An entertaining and well-re- searched account of Nixon’s obsession with investigative reporter Anderson and Anderson’s sometimes dubious tactics in digging up dirt on the presi- dent. —Evan Thomas
A ROPE AND A PRAYER: A Kidnapping
From Two Sides, by David Rohde and KristenMulvihill (Viking, $26.95). Rohde and his wife,Mulvihill, alter- nate chapters in this harrowing ac- count of his kidnapping by the Tali- ban, delivering an important and valu- able story of love, faith and courage.— Philip Caputo
SCORPIONS: The Battles and Tri- umphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices, byNoah Feldman (Twelve, $30). Four justices, all ap- pointed by FDR, vie for control of the Supreme Court in a work of history brimming over with intellectual dra- ma.—D.D.
SHOWTIME: A History of the Broad- way Musical Theater, by Larry Stem- pel (Norton, $39.95). Stempel inge- niously separates the threads that were woven into the modern musical theater.—Lloyd Rose
STORYTELLER: The Authorized Biog- raphy of Roald Dahl, by Donald Stur- rock (Simon & Schuster, $30). Enrich- es the now familiar outline of an eventful life with much newinforma- tion, peels away the layers ofmyth that Dahl promulgated about himself, and makes clear the man’s immense charm as well as his cold self-possession and emotional callousness.—M.D.
TOCQUEVILLE’S DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, by Leo Damrosch (Farrar Straus Giroux, $27). Damrosch deftly depicts that fateful encounter between young Tocqueville and adolescent
VOYAGER: Seeking NewerWorlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery, by Stephen J. Pyne (Viking, $29.95). This unique combination of history and philosophy reflects on the role of ex- ploration in society.—Marcia Bartu- siak
WAR, by Sebastian Junger (Twelve, $26.99). What elevates “War” out of its particular time and place is the au- thor’s meditations on the minds and emotions of the soldiers with whom he has shared hardships in Afghanistan. —Philip Caputo
THEWARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migra- tion, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, $30). As becomes clear in this extraordinary and evocative work, the refusal of African American migrants to remain in the South may have saved their lives.—Paula J. Giddings
WHEN THEY COME FOR US, WE’LL BE GONE: The Epic Struggle to Save So- viet Jewry, by Gal Beckerman (Hough- tonMifflinHarcourt, $30). This fresh, surprising and exceedingly well-re- searched book tells the stories of the Soviet Jews who made their religion and their desire to immigrate to Israel into a protest movement, and of the American Jews who championed their cause.—Anne Applebaum
WILLIAM GOLDING, by John Carey (Free Press, $32.50). This intelligent, elegantly written and deeply empa- thetic biography of the author of “Lord of the Flies” reminds us that the factu- al basis of a writer’s neuroses is less important than the imaginative use he makes of them.—Wendy Smith
the washington post book world sunday, december 12, 2010 l l
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