Linda Castellitto
Monkeys
by Susan Minot
This is the paperback version of Minot's novel, a story about the Vincent family. Dad Augustus drinks too much and talks too little; mom Rosie works to manage everyone's time, expectations, and emotions; and their seven children, or "monkeys," relate to one another in a way that anyone who is, or has, a sibling will recognize: the monkeys are affectionate one minute, rabid the next, and tumbling about joyously after that. Minot does a spot-on job of depicting family fun and pain and fondness and hardship -- and she describes both the family's idiosyncrasies and the landscape through which they move with clarity and poetry.

Len Vlahos
All the Laws but One
by William Rehnquist
Generally, I am not a fan of the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. More often than not, I disagree with the opinions he's handed down from the bench. But Mr. Rehnquist has been on the court for nearly 30 years, and few people could be more qualified to write a history of civil liberties during wartime. The history itself is both fascinating and particularly relevant in this new and still unfolding world environment. From the suspension of habaeus corpus during the Civil War to martial law in Hawaii during WWII, Mr. Rehnquist presents a well-written and clear account of Presidential, Congressional, and military suspension of our most basic liberties, and the courts' efforts to deal with those measures in light of Constitutional guarantees. I don't entirely agree with the author's conclusions, but I feel MUCH better informed for having read it.

Meg Smith
Disobedience
by Jane Hamilton
Disobedience is sure proof that Jane Hamilton is a very smart writer. Smart because she understands both sides of things: the male and female side of marriage and affairs, the parent and the child side of adolescence and first love, and the upside and the downside of several different varieties of deception. Disobedience is a compelling story populated by intriguing and believable personalities. I recommend it to anyone who loves a good character-driven tale.

Gavin Grant
Voltaire's Bastards
by John Ralston Saul
This book was 'hand-sold' to me by a bookseller. It wasn't a hard sell, because I worked at the same bookshop, and I'd seen him read this book at every available opportunity. Memory doesn't serve, sadly, but I suspect he may even have missed a night out to read this book. Then the store manager read it. Then I did, and I've been recommending it ever since. Be warned, you, too, will get pulled in following Saul's argument. He posits that, rather than being the final stage in the evolution of thought, the Age of Reason should only have been one step along the way. Our treating rational thought as the peak level has led to problems at every level of society. Saul does not say that there is no place for reason (otherwise this book wouldn't be in the philosophy section, it would be in some other place, maybe the trash?). However, like any tool, it should be used carefully and only when applicable. It's a good long read, dive in!

Eric Wallenstein
The Phantom Empire
by Geoffrey O' Brien
Geoffrey O'Brien claims that we're all children of the movies, and who can argue with him? Just think about the immense impact that cinema has had on our society in the last century. We each have our own stockhouse of narrative arcs, scenes, lines, and images buried in our heads. The enormity of it all, our collective film library, is astounding, but O'Brien bravely ventures down into our cultural memory to explore it -- and recounts the history of the medium in the process. It's a book that's not as much about movies as it is about watching movies, and the cumulative effect of years spent doing so. I've never read anything like it, and I can't stop returning to it, either, mostly because of O'Brien's extended prose-poem style. Wondering where he's going to go next with each sentence is thrilling. Also, his insights are dead-on, and his lists of movies will have any film buff running to the video store. Highly recommended.

Scott Nafz
Why People Believe Weird Things
by Michael Shermer
Okay, I freely admit that there was a time when I was acutely interested in things paranormal, and would read all manner of books on subjects like alien visitations, lingering spirits, and Edgar Cayce. I loved reading them and feeling the hair stand up on the back of my neck. But then, like so many of us, I graduated from elementary school, and began dealing with the empirical world as it presented itself to me. It was this world that taught me that heat burns, water is wet, and the sun is generally too bright to look at. There are also things that this world has NEVER taught me ... namely that, aliens have ever been here, that ghosts live in houses, or that Uri Geller can bend spoons with his mind. In his book, Michael Shermer lights a path for those of us who have lost sight of the world as it is, and leads us from the world as we wish it was. He reminds us that science repeatedly proves things that at one time would have been easily taken for magic -- but that magic has never sent a man to the moon, or manipulated molecules into a tiny electrical switch. In fact, the only thing magic has ever proven is that people can easily be taken in by fraud or hoax. Mr. Shermer also touches on topics such as Holocaust denial, and Creationism (did God really put fossils here to fool us? Sounds like a trick I would have pulled in 5th grade). His reasoning is as difficult to refute as the burn blister on my finger ... I've learned which world to pay attention to. Some may call me a humbug, or a non-believer, but I like to think of myself as a skeptic, willing to believe just about anything, as long as it presents itself to me believably ... as Michael Shermer does.