The 50 Books I'd Take to a Desert Island

Well, aren't we allowed 50? Mastering the Art of French Cooking has been on my list for decades . . . didn't Julia Child teach many of us how to navigate real cooking? My favorites run the gamut, and do change every year, but here's the current list:

“The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."

(Opening lines of Master and Commander)

“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war . . .

I will have nothing more to do with you . . . "

(Opening lines of War and Peace)

The Ten Books I'd take to a desert island: 1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

2. The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. The Last Lion (3 volumes) by William Manchester (the last volume completed by Paul Reid)

4. Master and Commander and the entire Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brien

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

6. Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng

7. Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) by J.R.R. Tolkein

8. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

9. The Odyssey by Homer - definitely the Fagles translation, a true miracle

10. The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope

My indispensable works of nonfiction (in no particular order, although the books in my

library are very organized) 1. 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann (along with Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange)

2. Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

3. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (one reviewer called this book "magisterial." I agree.

4 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

5. The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

6. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

7. In the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson

8. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

9. Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould

10. Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey

11. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (I also love his Krakatoa)

12. T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez

13. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

14. Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

15. Among the Believers by V.S. Naipaul

16. Becoming Human by Ian Tattersall

17. Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

18. Eleanor of Acquitaine: A Life by Alison Weir

19. The New Humanists Edited by John Brockman

20. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

And a batch of just flat-out fabulous books that have contributed much to my understanding

of the world and to the art of writing:

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - a modern masterpiece

2. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner

3. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtrey

4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

6. West with the Night by Beryl Markham

7. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

8. The Leaphorn and Chee novels by Tony Hillerman

9. 1776 by David MCullough

10. The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara

11. In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington

and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick

12. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

13. The Moon and Sixpense by Somerset Maugham

14. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

15. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

16. Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

17. John Adams by David McCullough

18. A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson

19. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride

20. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Well, I could go on and on . . .