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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
By Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown, $25.95, 288p
About: How humans make snap decisions --- all the way from why we vote for the face instead of the brain to the police killing of unarmed man Amadou Diallo --- and how we can make those decisions better. Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story
By Kurt Eichenwald
Broadway, $26, 768p
About: Highly readable account of how Enron managed to hide billions of dollars in debt until the company finally collapsed under the weight of its own venality. Comes down hard on CFO Andy Fastow but goes light on Chairman Ken Lay. Fastow's in the slammer but will testify at Lay's trial next month. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Morrow, $25.95, 256p
About: Fascinating and unexpected, concludes that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to the decline in the crime rate in the 1990s; explains why real estate agents don't try to get the best price for your house; shows why street-level dope dealers have to live with their moms. Mark Twain: A Life
By Ron Powers
Free Press, $35, 722p
About: The man whom Powers calls the "nation's first rock star," a temporarily wealthy, globetrotting luminary who came to be "the representative figure of his nation and his century." Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion
By Bruce Feiler
William Morrow, $26.95, 416p
About: The third book of Feiler's Old Testament exploration. But he doesn't just write about the Bible. He goes to where the Bible was written. This trip is based on the second half of the Hebrew Old Testament. Mao: The Unknown Story
By Jung Chang, Jon Halliday
Knopf, $35, 832p
About: The first sentence sets the tone for the next 831 pages: "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader." Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
By Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster, $25, 224p
About: The prolific and pacific Carter turns to morality and politics and delivers a best seller. Booklist says the book will confirm the views of those who lionize Carter for his many good works, and of those who find him to be "a naive, presumptuous meddler." The FairTax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS
By Neal Boortz and John Linder
Regan, $24.95, 208p
About: The WSB ranter and the Georgia congressman deliver a seductive plan for ending income taxes (and the IRS) and creating a nationwide sales tax. My War: Killing Time in Iraq
By Colby Buzzell
Putnam, $25.95, 358p
About: Relentlessly profane and utterly believable. A young slacker in California joins the Army, having few other choices, and goes to war in Mosul, Iraq. He becomes a machine gunner who names his weapon "Rosebud," after the sled in "Citizen Kane" and begins writing a Weblog that the Army can't quite control. Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
By Joshua Wolf Shenk
Houghton Mifflin, $25, 350p
About: Clinical depression may be driving millions of Americans to the pharmacy, but Lincoln's case drove him to become one of our best presidents. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
By Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.50, 496p
About: The Times columnist, a three-time Pulitzer winner, believes technology has flattened the world and that economic globalization is the most potent force in the world today. 1776
By David McCullough
Simon & Schuster, $32, 400p
About: Two-time Pulitzer winner focuses on George Washington and King George III in his account of the year of American independence. "First-rate historical account, which should appeal to both scholars and general readers," says Booklist.
Copyright 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
