The Books I Read in 2006

Stealing a page from Auren Hoffman, here’s a list of the books I read in 2006. I’m calling myself out. It’s a skimpy list — 18 books. (Flipping through dead tree matter is the first casualty of the RSS reader.) I think I will take Auren’s advice and listen to more books this year — being away from a computer actually forces me to do it. The really good ones are in bold-ital.

The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright (currently reading)
Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Reagan in His Own Voice, edited by Kiron Skinner, Martin Anderson, and Annelise Anderson
Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Maubourgne
The Way to Win, by Mark Halperin and John Harris
Applebee’s America, by Matthew Dowd, Douglas Sosnik, and Ron Fournier
The Elephant in the Room, by Ryan Sager
Voting to Kill, by Jim Geraghty
In Defense of the Religious Right, by Patrick Hynes
Strategery, by Bill Sammon
The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
Good to Great, by Jim Collins
An Army of Davids, by Glenn Reynolds
Crashing the Gate, by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
Politics Lost, by Joe Klein
The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowieki
The Google Story, by David Vise and Mark Malseed
Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
Moneyball, by Michael Lewis

Has political writing gone downhill? All my favorites this year were business/trends books (though admittedly, I’m skimming the cream of the crop here). The Way to Win was solid, though I suspect 2008 will change things in ways the authors don’t anticipate. Read together, the Sager/Geraghty/Hynes trio is a good primer on the tripartite Republican coalition (economic/national security/social). And though thoroughly afflicted with MSMness, Joe Klein’s book is a good look at authenticity in politics, which I think is making a comeback.

What were your favorite books in the last year?

Tagged: books

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