Author(s)	Title	Summary	Thoughts	Recommended By
Doris Kearns Goodwin	No Ordinary Time	History of the Roosevelts during World War II.	Fantastic compelling story merging a study of modern American history, painted with huge red brushes, against the backdrop of intense personalities.	Jim
Julian Cope	Head-On/Repossessed	Memiors of an unorthodox thinker - Julian Cope, a punk-cum-80s-synth-pop rock star. Much LSD, some seriously unwashed trousers.	Fun reading, some insight into the modern shamanic mind. Meeting someone quite off their rocker can be reassuring, especially when they can articulate their odd positions as well as Cope can.	Damanda
Dan Simmons	Hyperion/End of Hyperion	Pair of classically inflected SciFi books.	Absorbing, fun, uplifting. It's always good to read science fiction books that leave you feeling like you might have eaten something more substantial than future candy. These books ask interesting questions about life, time, poetry and heaven.	Slashdot
Jeff Noon	Vurt	Science Fiction	Good writing, but almost too much drug consciousness. He does question the nature of longing in provocative ways, but I can remember how good ecstacy feels, and then I'm ready to move on, because those states can not be sustained. They're not terribly deep it seems. Sort of like this book. Pretty though - nice imagery with the feathers and the fornicating dog people.	Wanda Webb
	Mormon America	Extensive recounting of the history and culture of the Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints.	Good survey of the first American religion. Useful to read to understand some of the particularities of this growing chuch.	Jim, George
John Nathan	Sony: The Private Life	Corporate History of Sony pieced together meticulously by a foreigner.	Fantastic articulate biograpy of Sony. The author had incredible access to very high level people at Sony, accordingly, the stories behind new product launches and design decisions are peppered with the dense stuff of relationships and commentary from Sony people on the differences between American and Japanese ways of doing business. Sony is a major company in the games field (the launch of the PlayStation is in here), but besides that there are fascinating stories of how they created the market for personal listening devices - Walkmen were to be called "Sound Around" in the US and other such fascinating trivia of our times. It's deep too.	Howard
Albert Camus	The Plague	Translated from the French; story of a modern town during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Philosophical questions abounding.	Great New Years book - I was surprised that the story was not only smart it was readable. Excellent craftmanship. Provocative - I could identify with nearly everyone in the book, and that's what is frightening.	Amy?