{"id":1005,"date":"2019-12-04T21:32:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T05:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2019-12-04T21:32:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T05:32:43","slug":"the-best-books-i-read-in-2019-and-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/04\/the-best-books-i-read-in-2019-and-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Books I Read in 2019 (and 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previous editions: 2016<\/a>, 2015<\/a>, 2014<\/a>, 2013<\/a>, 2012<\/a>, 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New job, new city, new kid…? I didn’t read much for a while there.? Thankfully I found Libby<\/a>!<\/p>\n

This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm<\/a>
\nTed Genoways
\nFollows a Nebraska family as they farm corn, beans, and cattle, fighting the constant worries of weather and markets while figuring out how to pass on the business to the next generation–even as uncertainty about the future crowds in.<\/p>\n

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis<\/a>
\nRobert Putnam
\nA sobering study of the ever-growing chasm between the environments of kids growing up in households with and without college-educated parents in America.<\/p>\n

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics<\/a>
\nDaniel James Brown
\nA gripping, engrossing account of the 1936 University of Washington crew which won Olympic gold in Hitler’s Germany.? Richly renders Depression-era Seattle.<\/p>\n

Working<\/a>
\nRobert Caro
\nOne of the world’s greatest historians explains his craft.<\/p>\n

Born a Crime<\/a>
\nTrevor Noah
\nThe South African comedian describes a childhood growing up mixed race in (post-) apartheid South Africa with humor and perception.<\/p>\n

Digital Minimalism<\/a>
\nCal Newport
\nDigital disconnection is a luxury<\/a>–but this book still offers lots of thoughtful, actionable advice about improving the quality of your life.? This blog post only exists because I deleted a bunch of apps from my phone!<\/p>\n

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right<\/a>
\nArlie Russell Hochschild
\nA Berkeley sociologist heads to Louisiana to try to understand and empathize with Tea Party conservatives.<\/p>\n

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life<\/a>
\nWilliam Finnegan
\nAn autobiography of a life well-surfed.<\/p>\n

Some Luck<\/a>
\nJane Smiley
\nA fictional saga follows an Iowa farm family year by year from the 1920s to the 1950s.<\/p>\n

A Terrible Country<\/a>
\nKeith Gessen
\nAn American with a Russian Literature PhD on the margins of academia confronts his ideals when he moves to Moscow to care for his aging grandmother.<\/p>\n

The Undoing Project<\/a>
\nMichael Lewis
\nAn intellectual biography of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kanehman, the partners who developed the broad field of heuristics and biases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous editions: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011. New job, new city, new kid…? I didn’t read much for a while there.? Thankfully I found Libby! This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm Ted Genoways Follows a Nebraska family as they farm corn, beans, and cattle, fighting the constant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bellm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}