Our Favorite Books for the Smart Set
Article by Jeremy
This brilliant Booker Prize winning novel follows a man who is uninterested in his own past - until it comes back to haunt him. Harrowing and suspenseful, this novel can be read in just one sitting or savored over and over again.
This hilarious sequel to Birnbauch’s iconic The Official Preppy Handbook examines how prep culture has adapted to our contemporary world. Sure to illicit a knowing giggle from a blue-blood you know and love.
From the author of the smash hit 1491 comes this fascinating, paradigm-shifting examination of the Columbian Exchange - an unprecedented movement of biological species, power, and wealth between the New World and the Old that Mann posits was the most important biological event since the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Likely the most beautiful and complete world atlas you will ever see. What the Oxford English Dictionary is for words, this unbelievable atlas is for places. A must-have for any serious scholar or lover of maps.
By far the most comprehensive study available of Wright’s unparalleled drawings, plans, designs and sketches,. Beautiful and engaging enough for the casual enthusiast and detailed enough for the most serious scholar of architecture and design.
A fascinating and eclectic collection of Schama’s essays, with topics ranging from personal history to cultural history, from pop culture to high culture.
Roth should be required reading for all Americans, especially for all American academics. Urbane, keenly observant, and beautifully written, these three novels present Roth at the height of his powers.
This long-awaited compilation of Kael’s most memorable film reviews is an idiosyncratic and fascinating peek into the cinema of the 1970s and 1980s - a must-have for any serious film enthusiast.
Jack Parson’s landscape photography presents New Mexico as you’ve never seen it before: epic in scope and dazzling in execution. Here are scenes that seem lifted from the imaginations of Cormac McCarthy, which is apt when you consider that Parson’s son Alex is a McCarthy scholar and member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston.
This fascinating travelogue with a twist examines the famed discovery of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham III in 1911. Adams retraces Bingham’s journey step-for-step across Peru in hopes of discovering whether Bingham smuggled artifacts from the ancient site or lied about the particulars of his discovery of it.
From the author of A Beautiful Mind comes the story of modern economics, told with an eye toward its most celebrated and brilliant minds. Examining characters as diverse as Dickens and Sen, Marx and Keynes, Nasar transforms a subject sometimes considered dry into a vivid, vital romp through history.
