Dwight Garner's Top 10 Books of 2009

There’s a good reason why the three daily book critics for The New York Times don’t make 10-best lists at the end of the year: we can’t. None of us has read everything. Our reviewing assignments don’t overlap. None of us has an objective overview of the year’s best and most important books, but this is what we do have: favorites. They are books we have not only admired in the abstract but also enjoyed, recommended and given to friends. Read more...
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'A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster'
By REBECCA SOLNIT
From the gifted social critic, an offbeat investigation of an offbeat emotion: the fleeting, purposeful joy that fills human beings in the face of disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and even terrorist attacks. (Viking, $27.95 )

* Review

'Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath'
By MICHAEL NORMAN and ELIZABETH NORMAN
This is stirring and humane military history, often readable only through the spaces between your fingers. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30 )

* Review

'Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer '
By NOVELLA CARPENTER
Fresh, funny and jagged around the edges, this memoir is about the author's attempts to start a busy farm on a deserted lot in an Oakland ghetto. (The Penguin Press, $25.95 )

* Review

'When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood'
By SAÏD SAYRAFIEZADEH
This delicate, discerning memoir is about growing up with parents who were committed members of the Socialist Workers Party; it reads like a peculiar bedtime story. (The Dial Press, $22 )

* Review

'The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt '
By T.J. STILES
A mighty -- and mighty confident -- biography, one that moves with force and conviction and imperious wit through Vanderbilt's noisy life and times. (Alfred A. Knopf, $37.50 )

* Review

'Family Properties: Race, Real Estate and the Exploitation of Black Urban America'
By BERYL SATTER
A panoramic and often personal retelling of Chicago's race-driven real-estate wars during the middle of the 20th century. (Metropolitan Books, $30 )

* Review

'Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human'
By RICHARD WRANGHAM
A new theory of human evolution -- “the cooking hypothesis” -- is related in plain-spoken, gripping language. (Basic Books, $26.95)

* Review

'Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee'
By CHLOE HOOPER
A haunting, morally complicated examination of the death of an aboriginal man in a small-town Australian prison. (Scribner, $24)

* Review

'Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places'
By BILL STREEVER
A flinty and tough-minded look at a vanishing world, with just enough humor glowing around the edges to keep you toasty and dry. (Little, Brown & Company, $24.99)

* Review

'Lords of the Sea'
By JOHN R. HALE
This sea-level view of Athens during its Golden Age is a novel, and very compelling, way to approach a story that's been told many, many times before. (Viking, $29.95)

* Review

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