Books I read in 2012:
    The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy by Alan I. Abramowitz. Carefully uses statistical data to trace the causes of contemporary political polarization, which he attributes to polarization of views among an increasingly engaged and well-educated public. Core differences are between white married Christians and everybody else; like John Kenneth White, he notes that the former group is decreasing its proportion of the American population.
    The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, edited by Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy. Invaluable reference work. The book is organized thematically, with each author surveying a wide range of authors on their assigned theme. Doesn't stand alone as a research tool, but a good place to start as well as to get context for whatever writer one is researching.
    A World History of Ancient Political Thought by Antony Black. Valuable introductory survey of the  political thought of various traditions, though only Egypt represents Africa and there's nothing from the Americas. The concluding chapters are brief but impressive by way of summary and comparison.
    Last Chance in Manchuria: The Diary of Chang Kia-Ngau. The author, an economist, describes a diplomatic mission he undertook in 1945-46 for the Chiang Kai-shek regime negotiating over Manchuria with the Soviet Union, who had occupied it after driving out Japan. Surprisingly dry writing, but shot through with frustration and impending doom.  
    In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age by Patricia Cohen. Interesting quest for the origins of the concept "middle age," which emerged in the early 20th century amidst bad social science and energetically predatory marketing. She has much to say against the Midlife Industrial Complex, but concludes with hope for a more reasonable future.
    The Making of the American Landscape, edited by Michael P. Conzen. Impressive collection of essays explaining why places look the way they do. Draws on historical patterns of settlement, physical geography, and political and commercial power, and concludes with a saucy essay on the quest for contemporary utopias.
    Place: A Short Introduction by Tim Cresswell. Good overview of geographic thinking about "place," a frustratingly elusive concept if ever there were one. Cresswell's eight-fold taxonomy in chapter 2 is invaluable, as is the extensive bibliography.
    Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. Essays written on retreat in Washington state reflecting on solitude, nature and suffering. Articulate and layered.
    The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. An incredible book. Baseball meets Zen Buddhism meets 19th century American literature.I'd like to read the fictional book "The Art of Fielding" for which the book is named!
    People and Place: The Extraordinary Geographies of Everyday Life by Lewis Holloway and Phil Hubbard. Brilliant British geography text on place, covering a variety of perspectives touching on environmental studies, history, philosophy, political science and psychology. Suffers from being out of print, not to mention old enough for its cultural and bibliographic references to be out of date, but good raw materials and outline for the course on place.
    A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time by John Brinckerhoff Jackson. J.B. Jackson (1909-1996) was a geographer, a historian of landscape, who wrote beautiful essays. He was a practical man, who was ambivalent about idealists of all stripes. The title essay is a valuable history of the concept of "place;" other place-related essays explore trees, parks, gardens, homes, roads and the impact of the automobile.
     Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol. Thorough legislative history of the 2010 health care law, with attention to problem definition, political strategy and legislative maneuvering. Clearly sympathetic to the goals of the law, but information is well-documented and overall approach is scholarly. The last chapter on implementation challenges is a useful guide for watching developments in the years to come.
    Death Comes to Pemberley: A Novel by P.D. James. Sequel to Pride and Prejudice penned by gifted mystery writer. Capt. Denny, a minor character in Austen's novel, is whacked in the woods on Darcy's estate. Sometimes contrived, sometimes very clever, sympathetic to the original, and an entertaining read.
    Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich. 14th-century mystic, using visions of Jesus as the basis for discussion of a wide variety of religious topics. She takes pains to say nothing in her revelations contradicts Church doctrine, but her work is distinctive for its use of female images of God, of Mary as role model for humanity, and constant references to God's joy and cheer.
    In Search of Authority: Twentieth-Century Political Thought by Henry S. Kariel. Published in 1964, it is nonetheless a valuable survey of early- to mid-twentieth century political philosophers. Many--like Dewey, Maritain and Niebuhr--have much to contribute to our discussion, or what passes for discussion in 2012.
    A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi. Chronicle of the war years by a writer-historian had opposed the war to begin with. Memorably acidic commentary on the government's attempts at information control and intimidating opposition.
    Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies by David T. Koyzis. Koyzis's survey of the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary ideologies is a tour de force; his discussion of the many variants of liberalism may be the clearest I've read. His critique is simplistic, relying on straw-man arguments and terms like "idolatry" that are unlikely to resonate beyond conservative Christians.
    Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow. Chatty and frequently sarcastic, cable TV host nevertheless raises an important question about American military policy: In spite of the Framers' vision of checks and balances, what checks can feasibly exist on presidential use of military power? Her last chapter, on sloppiness in American nuclear weapons maintenance, is harrowing.
    Being and Having by Gabriel Marcel. Marcel (1889-1973) was an existential philosopher and Christian apologist. This book contains a "metaphysical diary" for the years 1928-1933, which is not a diary so much as a record of ideas. These are not easy for the novice existentialist to grasp, but intriguing to watch develop, and he raises some intriguing questions. The rest of the book consists of essays and speeches defending Christianity against secular philosophy, which gets dull.
     An Outsider's Campaign Diary by George B. Martin. Collection of blog posts during and after the 2008 presidential campaign by "the Bard of Wilmette" who is also a Coe grad. Well-written, analytical and insightful, they give a real-time feel to what it was like to live through it.
    An Object of Beauty: A Novel by Steve Martin. Young, egocentric woman comes of age in the New York art collection world, observed by her friend the narrator. Narrative is less than compelling, but the novel succeeds on several levels: part morality tale, part tutorial on art collection (accompanied by illustrations), part social history of our times.
      Makiko's Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto by Nakano Makiko. Interesting chronicle of everyday life in Japan by a 20-year-old newlywed. Good detail, good and informative editing, although her life was probably more difficult than comes across here.
     Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels. Tells the story of the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible about as well as it can be told given very few of the circumstances surrounding its writing are known. Best guess is that it's an anti-Roman allegory, but it made it into the Bible because a 4th century bishop named Athanasius saw it as a useful rhetorical tool against diversity within the Christian church.
    Prodigious Youth, 1907-1914; Behind the Mask, 1915-1923 by Sergei Prokofiev.  Two volumes of the diary of the young Prokofiev, who was as gifted a writer as he was a composer. These years take him from youthful conservatory student to expatriate composer living in France away from the Bolshevik regime. His writing voice is utterly delightful, and his portraits of his friends and teachers are vivid. He could be a bit of a jerk at times, but was pretty frank acknowledging this, at least to himself. I also read a short diary from his first return to the USSR in 1927 in Soviet Diary and Other Writings.
    The Autonomous Animal: Self-Governance and the Modern Subject by Claire E. Rasmussen. Contemporary case studies explore the boundaries and limitations of the concept of individual freedom. Thought-provoking with a lot of data, argumentation is subtle.
    The Last Holiday: A Memoir by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron wanted to be a novelist; this book describes how he became an extremely hip musician instead. Well-told stories with just enough ambiguity to make you wonder what he's actually talking about.
     Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Shelby Spong. Provocative and tough reading. Spong argues that Jesus was a human being, not God, who was interpreted using allegories available to Jewish people of his era. This isn't particularly original, but Spong goes on to argue that this viewpoint helps one to follow Jesus more than the literal approach of traditional Christianity. Unnecessarily contentious?
    Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-1945. Interesting daily chronicle of World War II from the perspective of a high-ranking Japanese Naval officer. He's strong on detail and clearly perceived the progress of the war, but his rigid worldview prevented him from thinking about what the world would be like afterwards. It's weird to have my country consistently referred to as "the enemy" in the book.
    Stan Musial by George Vecsey. Interesting biography of a midwestern baseball icon focusing less on baseball and more on what it was like to be Stan Musial.   
    Barack Obama's America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family and Religion Ended the Reagan Era by John Kenneth White. Analysis, based on 2008 election results, of how cultural and demographic shifts in America have affected politics. Elections and other events since then certainly raise questions about his conclusion.
    The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise of the Third Reich by Steve Wick. Biography of Shirer, focusing on his years covering the early Nazi regime. (He left Germany in 1940.) Shirer had, as Wick says, only a narrow window onto what the Nazis were up to, but Wick uses Shirer's papers to show clearly what it was like to try to work or live normally under such a regime, even as a relatively protected American. Nice shouts out to helpful Coe staff and to the amazing diarist Victor Klemperer.
    Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 1876-1956 by Wayne A. Wiegand. Four case studies of midwestern public libraries, including Osage PL in Iowa. Libraries were seen as public goods, mainly for socialization of the working class, which led to some interesting choices in building collections. (There was a longstanding anti-fiction bias, for example.) Yet imaginations were sparked and horizons broadened, too, which was and is all to the good.
    Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young. Non-linear reflections on his life and career by one of the all-time great rock singers. It has the feel of riding shotgun in his car while he talks about this and that, mostly interesting. He admits to writer's block and to some youthful self-righteousness he now regrets, such as the song "Southern Man." The last chapter may be a four-page description of heaven.

Books I read in 2011:

    The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000-1300 by John W. Baldwin. Brief but thorough introduction to intellectual life in the middle middle ages. Politics relates to the secular study of law but least as importantly to the study of theology.
    Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970 by David Browne. Magnificently detailed, season by season chronicle of the year in rock, focusing on the four acts in the subtitle. Two were breaking up, two emerging. It falls short of some broader statement on music and/or social significance, but the story itself is well-rendered.
    My Northcliffe Diary by Tom Clarke. Clarke's 1931 reminiscences of his years (1911-1922) working at the Daily Mail newspaper in London under its founder, Lord Northcliffe. It's harmless reading, interesting to the contemporary reader for its depiction of a male-dominated work world, and of an extravagant, competitive, energetic style of journalism mostly gone in this financially troubled era. Northcliffe wanted his staff informed about the world, so he funded their vacations (to places he selected); news media today are living large if they have any foreign news to speak of, much less reporters on the beat.
    The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. Graphic novel version of the wacky, provocative first book of the Bible. Imaginatively and sympathetically rendered. Hit home to me how much sex there is in Genesis.
    The Unity of William James's Thought by Wesley Cooper. This is not an introduction to James's philosophy, but an engagement with others who have written about it. Cooper argues, contra R. Gale and Stephen Nathanson, that James's universe of "experience" included both a single empirical reality and multiple experiences of reality. The "inside baseball" tone of the book is reinforced by multiple references to in-jokes in "The Philosophical Lexicon."
    And Furthermore by Judi Dench. Judi Dench is one of the most accomplished stage and screen actresses of our time. Her warmth and spunky personality comes across clearly in this book of reminiscences. It's not great literature: the anecdotes are undeveloped, and anyone wishing more information is referred to two other books. But for those who love her, it's fun.
    High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. What an amazing, charming, insightful book. He captures romance, and life itself, at the awkward point where it turns from sport to serious business. He pinpoints the ambivalence of being with even the right person. Better than the movie, for sure, and that's saying a lot. If I'd read more books like this I'd probably be easier on my fellow humans, and easier on myself.
    That Used to Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. Truly provocative social commentary, setting out four challenges the U.S. is not facing in the 21st century: permanent changes to the world economy wrought by (1) globalization and (2) information technology; (3) long-term governmental budget deficits; and (4) climate change. Our politics and business life is driven by short-term-advantage. I need no convincing on any of these points, as I read the book amidst the intellectual wreckage that is the Republican presidential campaign. Their way out includes educational reforms that focus on the needs of employers; more candid political discourse, perhaps spurred by a well-funded third party movement; and a willingness to compete harder than anybody else. I ask: can we conceive of this relentless competition in a way that includes everyone, not just those with exceptional skills or a knack for marketing themselves?
    High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Saw the movie, loved the movie, read the book which is even better. Hornby absolutely nails the stage of life when choices get serious and you can no longer live day to day.
    Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward by Paul Johnson. Profiles of 14 writers, actors and artists who used humor in their work. He articulates not only what they did but also the sources of their humor. I enjoyed chapters on those I knew well (James Thurber) as well as on those about whom I didn't know much (Toulouse-Lautrec).
    The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce--complete, that is, except for the part he burned. Covers the period 1903-1905 when he was in his late teens. It's a random bunch of thoughts, randomly ordered, but occasionally interesting as the workings of a bright, sensitive teenage mind.
    Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth and Memory by Edward Lengel. Lengel, editor in chief of the Papers of George Washington project at Charlottesville, has undertaken to dispel many of the popular but false legends about Washington that have been propounded over the years for various reasons. He never was offered a kingship. He never prayed in the snow at Valley Forge. He was never slapped on the back by Gouverneur Morris on a dare from Alexander Hamilton. He didn't make statements attributed to him advocating gun rights, veterans' benefits, or America as a Christian nation. Lengel also shows how Washington is re-mythologized by each generation to suit its ethos. In that way it makes for an interesting history of the American psyche. Washington quotes, like Lincoln quotes, are everywhere in abundance, and probably mostly fabricated; it's testimony to how much they matter to America and Americans.
    Minnesota Diary 1942-1946 by Sinclair Lewis.Particularly early on, it's a richly detailed record of observations of life in Minnesota, including one-to-two week driving vacations every once in a while. Lewis is not the only old guy ever to be fascinated by tracking the weather.    
    33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey. Ranges in territory far beyond the promise of the title to include a broad swath of music history and American and British social history (with occasional side trips to protest music centers like Jamaica and Nigeria). Each essay centers on a particular song, but uses its story only as the basis for an essay on the musical and social context in which it occurred. It is at once informative, analytical, and politically committed (which occasionally gets in the way of the other two). It's obvious politics and art are hard to mix, and even more difficult to sustain. Lynskey leaves us asking: is it good for music to address political issues? Does it achieve any political good to do so? What will be the impact of technological change?
    The Sherlockian: A Novel by Graham Moore. Plausible, in a geeky sort of way. A Sherlock Holmes fanatic tries to solve a murder when the only detecting experience he's had is reading Sherlock Holmes stories. The chapters alternate with a fictional account of Arthur Conan Doyle himself, along with best bud Bram Stoker, investigating the murders of three women in 1900.
    Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick. Set in 1952, this novel ranges between Paris and New York and Los Angeles. Middle-aged, long-since-divorced Bea Nachtigall goes to Paris to search for her nephew, the son of her estranged brother. The relationships in the book are exploitative and strangling; no wonder young Iris Nachtigall decides at the end of the book she will never have sex again. Still, how they think and act their ways to liberation is interesting.
    Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. Interesting and hopeful ideas about motivation. His argument that people are motivated to do their best work by senses of autonomy, mastery and purpose gives me hope that we're more than rational benefit calculators. Still, there's the putting it into practice...
    America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense by Scott Philip Segrest. Interesting survey of three American thinkers from different points of our history: John Witherspoon, James McCosh and William James. Good at drawing connections and suggesting that common sense approaches require balancing principle and new evidence; marred by side comments that suggests he has a broader agenda but won't quite say what it is.
    Stone Arabia: A Novel by Dana Spiotta. A novel about two middle-aged siblings whose charming "carefree" youth has turned into off-putting "careless." Nik was and is a talented rock musician who never quite made it, but who has created an elaborate alternative life history for himself through boxes and boxes of fictitious documents. Denise had some theatrical ambitions but now is trying to come to grips with her family and/or reality. A thoughtful, only slightly-troubling story.    
    Confidence Men by Ron Suskind. A history of the first two years of the Obama administration, focusing on his handling of the economic crisis. It is based on numerous interviews with people in and out of the administration. He portrays the time as one of missed opportunities, as caution, deference to Wall Street, and dreams of bipartisanship squelched the soaring rhetorical vision of the campaign. Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers take a lot of the blame, as does Obama for trusting them with so much power. It's detailed and sympathetic criticism, but I caution that just because something didn't work out well doesn't mean a different approach would have worked out better. Details of a hostile environment for female advisers is disturbing.
    My Travel Diary: 1936 by Paul Tillich. Details Tillich's five months of travel around Europe, to which he returned from America after having been exiled from Germany three years earlier. Surprisingly little theology, given that he was lecturing and attending conferences throughout the trip. Editing is very low-key, so that people he encounters and even where he is at a particular time is not always clear.
    Alone Together by Sherry Turkle. Granted the plural of anecdotes is not data, but Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at MIT, very effectively marshals anecdotes, observations and personal conclusions to raise a very important question: What is technology doing to us as individuals, as a society, and as a species? She resists the temptation to be either a Luddite or sanguine, and leaves it to us to answer, with the hope that we will be cautious and reflective in our embrace of Life 2.0.
    The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946. Wallace's unabashed liberalism is a counterpoint to the more pragmatic approaches of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. His warnings that an aggressive stance towards the Soviet Union would provoke an equally aggressive reaction were prophetic, or at least suggest the Cold War may not have been inevitable. He's not as muddleheaded as his reputation anyhow.
    The Diary of Virginia Woolf. It took me about five months to get through these five volumes, and a good read they were. It's a remarkable record, particularly since the heart and soul of her writing went into her books and periodical articles. She uses it variously to record observations and conversations; make notes about particular events; or to articulate her hopes and fears. She writes irregularly, when she has the time, or needs a break from some arduous labor of writing. Her writing comes out in notes, with references that may have been clear to her but not to me. Fortunately, her relative-by-marriage Anne Olivier Bell is a skilled editor, not too heavy-handed but filling out what needs it. The last volume was published in 1984.