Michiko Kakutani's 10 Favorite Books of 2008

The New York Times
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November 27, 2008 Michiko Kakutani's 10 Favorite Books of 2008

Each book on these following lists is something that the critic, after praising, went out and Johnny Appleseeded, so to speak. These are our 10-Favorites lists of books that we enjoyed enough to buy for friends. In that spirit we recommend them to you. -- Janet Maslin
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APPLES & ORANGES
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By Marie Brenner. In this deeply affecting memoir, a journalist uses the prism of her love and grief for her dead brother — and her bewilderment over the twists and turns of his eccentric life — to create a haunting portrait of him and their uncommon family.
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AMERICA AND THE WORLD: CONVERSATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft; moderated by David Ignatius. Two former national security advisers, a Democrat and a Republican, offer astute assessments of the daunting challenges — terrorism, nuclear proliferation and a globalized economy, for starters — that will face Barack Obama when he becomes president.
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THE BIN LADENS: AN ARABIAN FAMILY IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY
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By Steve Coll. This riveting book not only provides a psychologically detailed portrait of Osama bin Laden, but in recounting the story of his extended family it also underscores the crucial role that his relatives and their relationship with the royal House of Saud played in shaping his thinking, his ambitions and his technical expertise.
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THE PLAGUE OF DOVES

By Louise Erdrich. Arguably the author’s most ambitious book, this novel examines the fallout that the vigilante hanging of several innocents will have on three generations of people, who live on the margins of a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation.
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LINCOLN: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A WRITER

By Fred Kaplan. This resonant biography looks at the role that Lincoln’s avid reading of the Bible, Shakespeare and other works played in shaping his gifts as a writer, and how his literary skills in turn helped him articulate — and promote — his vision of a new America rising from the ashes of the Civil War.
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A MERCY
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By Toni Morrison. Set in 17th-century America, this small jewel of a story is at once a kind of prelude to the author’s masterwork, “Beloved,” and a variation on that earlier book’s exploration of the personal costs of slavery.
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NETHERLAND

By Joseph O’Neill. Filled with echoes of Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby,” this stunning novel about a charismatic Trinidadian entrepreneur and a Dutch-born banker explores the American Dream as its promises and disappointments are experienced by a new generation of immigrants in a multicultural New York.
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ALEX & ME: HOW A SCIENTIST AND A PARROT UNCOVERED A HIDDEN WORLD OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE — AND FORMED A DEEP BOND IN THE PROCESS

By Irene M. Pepperberg. A charming portrait of Alex the gray parrot — whose linguistic and cognitive skills impressed the world, before his death in 2007 — by the scientist who worked with him for three decades.
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LUSH LIFE
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By Richard Price. Offering the reader a wide-screen, 3-D Imax portrait of a corner of New York, this police procedural brilliantly transcends its genre thanks to its author’s pitch-perfect dialogue, his journalistic eye for detail and his understanding of how people navigate the social and cultural mazes of a big city.
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MILLENNIAL MAKEOVER: MYSPACE, YOUTUBE, AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS

By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais. In what turns out to have been a highly prescient book, the two authors predicted that 2008 would be a “change” election, informed by new technology and by the outlook of a new generation of millennial voters, who tend to be more inclusive, optimistic and tech-savvy than their elders.