Books Read in 2008

Once again, here's my annual list of books I've read in the last year. I did somewhat worse than last year in finishing books I started, and I found last year disappointing. The piles of started but unfinished books are growing--but perhaps I can match last year's total by the end of the year (I'm only threetwo short at the moment). I've not done a good job of writing Amazon.com reviews of any of these, though I've put a few short comments on Facebook's Visual Bookshelf for a few of these. I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book, which I recommend as a nice (and less threatening) companion piece to Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction as an introduction to atheism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

Matthew Chapman, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania

Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Joseph Finder, Paranoia

Guy P. Harrison, 50 reasons people give for believing in a god

Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Presidential Power

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War

Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Robert A. Levy and William Mellor, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom

Maureen McCormick, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice

Mary Roach, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

William C. Speidel, Sons of the Profits

Jim Steinmeyer, Art & Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion

Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--And How It Changed the World

Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It

(Previously: 2007, 2006, 2005.)