Best Books
Here are a list of reviewed by Danny Yee, divided into fiction and nonfiction lists. They can also be found in the other indices, marked with a “**”.
Fiction
* Ivo Andric: The Bridge on the Drina
- a novel of three centuries in eastern Bosnia
* Roberto Calasso: Ka
- a superb synthesis of Hindu mythology
* Bruce Chatwin: The Viceroy of Ouidah
- a short but powerful novel of West Africa
* Hugo Claus: The Sorrow of Belgium
- an adolescence in Flanders during World War II
* Frederick Crews: Postmodern Pooh
- biting parody of modern literary criticism
* John Gardner: Grendel
- an original and provoking philosophical novel
* Alan Garner: Strandloper
- an Australian convict escapes and joins the Aborigines
* Juan Goytisolo: The Marx Family Saga
- Karl Marx faces the failure of communism
* Stefan Heym: The King David Report
- a very funny novel about the politics of history in the 10th century BC
* Viðar Hreinsson: The Complete Sagas of Icelanders
- Icelandic tales of Viking Age feuds, legal conflicts, love affairs
* Imre Kertesz: Kaddish for a Child Not Born
- the introspective monologue of an Auschwitz survivor
* Ahmadou Kourouma: Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote
- the life story of an African dictator
* Laszlo Krasznahorkai: The Melancholy of Resistance
- a small town falls apart with the showing of a whale
* Halldór Laxness: Independent People
- the epic story of an Icelandic sheep farmer
* Ursula K. Le Guin: The Earthsea Trilogy
A Wizard of Earthsea; The Tombs of Atuan; The Farthest Shore
* Primo Levi: The Periodic Table
- stories of a chemist working with elements
* Irmtraud Morgner: The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura
- socialist magical realism from East Germany
* Borislav Pekic: How to Quiet a Vampire
- a psychological and philosophical novel of totalitarianism
* Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time
- parallel conflicts in a far-future utopia and a present mental hospital
* Mesa Selimovic: Death and the Dervish
- a spiritual crisis amidst Ottoman Bosnian politics
* James Tiptree Jr: Her Smoke Rose up Forever
- dark, powerful science fiction stories about sex and death
* Pramoedya Ananta Toer: This Earth of Mankind
- the Buru Quartet: novels of colonial Indonesia
* Mario Vargas Llosa: Conversation in the Cathedral
- a novel about power and politics in Peru in the early 1950s
* Peter Weiss: The Aesthetics of Resistance
- art and politics in pre-WWII Germany and Spain
* Austin Tappan Wright: Islandia
- gentle romance and captivating fantasy
* Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
- epic science fiction using Hindu and Buddhist themes
Non-Fiction
* Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler: Proofs from THE BOOK
- mathematical results that are beautiful, accessible, and profound
* Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, et al.: Essential Cell Biology
An Introduction to the Molecular Biology of the Cell
* Kevin Bales: Disposable People
- a passionate but scholarly study of modern slavery
* Joel Beinin, Joe Stork: Political Islam
Essays from Middle East Report
* David Bellos: Georges Perec
A Life in Words
* Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century
- a social and economic history of the shaping of the modern world
* Marc Zvi Brettler: The Creation of History in Ancient Israel
- the biblical authors and their presentations of the past
* Timothy Brook: The Confusions of Pleasure
Commerce and Culture in Ming China
* Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth: How Monkeys See the World
Inside the Mind of Another Species
* Robert Cribb: Historical Atlas of Indonesia
- learned and lavish
* Alan Davidson: The Oxford Companion to Food
- a gloriously erudite encyclopedia of biology, culture, history
* Thomas Eisner: For Love of Insects
- the grand synthesis of a veteran scientist
* Gary William Flake: The Computational Beauty of Nature
Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
* Ronald Fraser: Blood of Spain
An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War
* Stephen Jay Gould: Ontogeny and Phylogeny
- the history of recapitulation; developmental timing and evolution
* Stewart Guthrie: Faces in the Clouds
A New Theory of Religion
* Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson: The Ants
- ant ecology, ethology and evolutionary biology
* Cemal Kafadar: Between Two Worlds
The Construction of the Ottoman State
* Audrey Kahin: Regional Dynamics of the Indonesian Revolution
- an unusually appealing essay collection on 1945-50
* Patrick Vinton Kirch: On the Road of the Winds
An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Conquest
* Donald E. Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming
Fundamental Algorithms; Seminumerical Algorithms; Sorting and Searching
* Richard Lewontin: Human Diversity
- the realities of human biological variation
* Cecilia Lindqvist: China, Empire of the Written Symbol
- Chinese history and culture through written characters
* Jessica Litman: Digital Copyright
- intellectual property and the Internet
* Nancy A. Lynch: Distributed Algorithms
- for a deep understanding of formal methods
* Harry Mathews, Alastair Brotchie: Oulipo Compendium
- people, works, and forms, with extensive examples
* John McPhee: Annals of the Former World
- travels across the United States with geologists
* Arthur Morris: The Art of Bird Photography
The Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques
* Brian Morris: Anthropological Studies of Religion
An Introductory Text
* Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability
The Practice of Simplicity
* Karl J. Niklas: The Evolutionary Biology of Plants
- evolution makes sense of otherwise unconnected areas of botany
* S. Robert Ramsey: The Languages of China
- social, cultural, and historical background as well as linguistics
* Orrin W. Robinson: Old English and its Closest Relatives
A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages
* James C. Scott: Weapons of the Weak
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
* Elliott Sober: Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology
- a mix of classic papers and more recent material
* Edward R. Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- the classic work on statistical graphics
* Mary E. White: After the Greening
- a geological and botanical history of Australia
