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My annual Top Books Read lists, selected book reviews, and notes
From the Archives: My Review of Heribert von Feilitzsch’s
In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908-1914
February 7, 2022
TOP BOOKS READ 2021
#1: Willa Cather’s One of Ours
> See also Texas Books, every first Monday of the month in 2021
From the Archives: Sam Quinones’ Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
June 21, 2021
Recommended Literary Travel Memoirs
March 8, 2021
Recommended Books on the Creative Process
February 8, 2021
Recommended Books on the Craft of Creative Writing
January 11, 2021
TOP BOOKS READ 2020
#1: Tie: The Dawning Moon of the Mind by Susan Brind Morrow and Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America by Craig Childs
Doug Hill’s Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology
July 20, 2020
Donald M. Rattner’s My Creative Space
January 13, 2020
Patti Smith’s Just Kids and David M. Wrobel’s Global West, American Frontier
January 6, 2020
TOP BOOKS READ 2019
#1: The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams.
By Jove and by Jupiter, whyever did I not read this sooner?! Every chapter a chocolate truffle, The Education of Henry Adams is a fundamental text for comprehending the culture and overall development of the United States… [read more]
Überly Fab Fashion Blogger Melanie Kobayashi’s “Bag and a Beret” (Further Notes on Reading as a Writer)
October 14, 2019
Frederick Turner’s In the Land of the Temple Caves: From St. Emilio to Paris’ St. Sulpice, Notes on Art and the Human Spirit
September 16, 2019
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
July 8, 2019
TOP BOOKS READ 2018
#1 Tie between The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen and In the Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness by Jeremy Naydler… [read more]
Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
July 8, 2018
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980): Some Notes
July 1, 2018
Notes on Tom Lea and His Epic Masterpiece of a Western, The Wonderful Country
June 25, 2018
Claudio Saunt’s West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776
June 18, 2018
Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
June 11, 2018
Jerry Mander’s Ten Arguments for the Elimination of Television
March 19, 2018
Notes on Stephen L. Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute
March 5, 2018
TOP BOOKS READ 2017
#1: The Professor’s House by Willa Cather. A deeply weird and profoundly American novel. I had been meaning to read The Professor’s House for years, and I finally did– and by uncannily felicitous happenstance, just after visiting Acoma, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde… [read more]
Further Notes on John Bigelow, Jr. (1854-1936): On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo, the Rare Westernlore Press Edition
November 6, 2017
Notes on Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey
April 30, 2018
Patrick Dearen’s Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River
April 17, 2017
Notes on John Bigelow Jr. and Garrison Tangles in the Friendless Tenth
October 30, 2017
Notes on Poultney Bigelow, Author, World Traveler, and Pioneer Editor of “Outing: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation”
October 9, 2017
Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico
February 13, 2017
TOP BOOKS READ 2016
#1. The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Streiber and Jeffrey J. Kripal…
Reading Mexico: Recommendations for a Book Club of Extra-Curious and Adventurous English-Language Readers
November 21, 2016
Cal Newport’s Deep Work; Study Hacks Blog, and on Quitting Social Media
September 26, 2016
Peyote and the Perfect You
May 23, 2016
TOP BOOKS READ 2015
#1. Dreamland by Sam Quinones…
James McWilliams’ The Pecan: A History of America’s Native Nut
July 6, 2015
Richard Parker’s Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America
February 23, 2015
Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You
June 1, 2015
TOP BOOKS READ 2014
#1 Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin…
The Harrowingly Romantic Adventure of US Trade with Mexico in the Pre-Pre-Pre NAFTA Era: Notes on Susan Shelby Magoffin and Her Diary of 1846-1847, Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico
July 11, 2014
Una Ventana al Mundo Invisible (A Window to the Invisible World): Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures
May 11, 2014
Bruce Berger’s The End of the Sherry
April 16, 2014
TOP BOOKS READ 2013
# 1: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung…
TOP BOOKS READ 2012
#1: Born Under an Assumed Name by Sara Mansfield Taber…
Ruth Levy Guyer’s A Life Interrupted: The Long Night of Marjorie Day
September 26, 2012
TOP BOOKS READ 2011
#1 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy…
Thomas A. Settles’ John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal
February 15, 2011
Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe
July 4, 2009
TOP BOOKS READ 2010
#1 Finding Iris Chang by Paula Kamen…
TOP BOOKS READ 2009
#1 Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille by Rosemary Sullivan…
TOP BOOKS READ 2008
#1 The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown…
TOP BOOKS READ 2007
#1 The Earth Knows My Name by Patricia Klindienst…
TOP BOOKS READ 2006
#1 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James…
On increasingly rare occasion I also review books for other publications. You can find an archive of my book reviews here.