Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

I borrowed Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA at the urging of friends, but I decided to return it without reading.

It is a National Book Award Winner and many friends have recommended this book so maybe I will borrow it again later.

It didn't feel like a book I wanted to read right now, if that makes sense. Just wasn't in the mood for it.

But if you're interested, click here to read an excerpt, here to read the CIA's statement on this book, or here to read a New York Times review by Michael Beschloss titled "The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present" published July 12, 2007.

National Book Awards

National Book Awards were announced yesterday.

The winners are:

• Fiction: Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen (Click here to read an excerpt)
• Non-fiction: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
• Poetry: Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty
• Young People's Literature: What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

I'd like to read some of these. But I feel like I'm having trouble getting through my current list of books to read.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

I don't know much about the High Plains Dust Bowl of the 1930s, so I'm interested in reading Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, a National Book Award winner in 2006 (also in 2006 it won the Washington State Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award) - click here to read Elizabeth Royte's December 2005 review titled "The Anti-Joads."

Timothy Egan is a reporter for the New York Times and I seem to gravitate towards books written by the Times staff.

The Table of Contents looks promising...

Introduction: Live Through This 1

I • PROMISE: The Great Plowup, 1901–1930
1. The Wanderer 13
2. No Man’s Land 32
3. Creating Dalhart 52
4. High Plains Deutsch 59
5. Last of the Great Plowup 73

II • BETRAYAL, 1931–1933
6. First Wave 91
7. A Darkening 103
8. In a Dry Land 115
9. New Leader, New Deal 128
10. Big Blows 136

III • BLOWUP, 1934–1939
11. Triage 145
12. The Long Darkness 155
13. The Struggle for Air 171
14. Showdown in Dalhart 176
15. Duster’s Eve 193
16. Black Sunday 198
17. A Call to Arms 222
18. Goings 236
19. Witnesses 242
20. The Saddest Land 254
21. Verdict 265
22. Cornhusker II 273
23. The Last Men 279
24. Cornhusker III 293
25. Rain 303

Epilogue 309
Notes and Sources 315
Acknowledgments 328
Index 331

Click here to read an excerpt of the first chapter.

NYTimes.com Book Review - The Uncertain Art by Sherwin B. Nuland

I've just read about Sherwin B. Nuland's The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine in Barry Gewen's "A Doctor Finds Miracles in Medicine" published June 6, 2008 in the New York Times Book Review.

I've always been fascinated by medicine and I love to read books about medicine (Awakenings and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, and most recently Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath by Michael Paul Mason).

Nuland is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University and the author of How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (which won the National Book Award).

The publisher, Random House, describes The Uncertain Art as "a superb collection of essays about the vital mix of expertise, intuition, sound judgment, and pure chance that plays a part in a doctor’s practice and life."

Already it sounds more light-hearted than Mason's Head Cases (good book, but quite intense and sad) and more interesting than Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids by Julie Salamon (reviewed June 3 in the New York Times by Abigal Zuger here).

I would especially like to read Nuland's writing about acupuncture, electroshock therapy, and other non-mainstream practices; I'll have to check my local library and see if I can put a copy of The Uncertain Art (and maybe also Hospital) on hold!

Click here to read an excerpt of The Uncertain Art.