20 Books of Summer 2024

Summer is around the corner and that means Cathy of 746 Books will once again be hosting 20 Books of Summer. After a lot of thought and second guessing I slapped together a collection of 20 books and five alternates I’d like to read this summer. All 20 I own, of which six are Kindle editions. Just like last year the five alternates are library books. Of course every year I do this I never end up reading all 20 books while deviating considerably from my original list by substituting whatever library books that happened to strike my fancy. Fortunately for me Cathy is a forgiving host and lets all of us pretty much do whatever we want. Here’s this year’s intended 20 books. 

1. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (2010)
2. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright (2009)
3. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006)
4. Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (2002)
5. The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century by William Rosen (2014)
6. Church and State by Luigi Sturzo (1962)
7. Rats, Lice and History: A Biography of a Bacillus by Hans Zinsser (1934) 
8. The Control of Nature by John McPhee (1989) 
9. The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 by Moses Rischin (1977) 
10. The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East by Olivier Roy (2008)
11. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (2009
12. A Place in the Sun: Liberation Theology in the Third World by Theo Witvliet (1985)
13. The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre (1947)
14. Class Matters by the correspondents of the New York Times (2005)
15. The Soviet Century by Moshe Lewin (2005) – On Kindle 
16. A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture by Shachar Pinsker (2018) -On Kindle
17. The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama by Will Bunch (2010) – On Kindle
18. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World by Bart D. Ehrman (2018) – On Kindle
19. The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora Dragostinova (2021) – On Kindle
20. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (2012) – On Kindle

And five alternates.

1. Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican by Gianluigi Nuzzi (2015)
2. What Never Happens by Anne Holt (2008)
3. Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell (2019)
4. Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner (2022)
5. The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story: A Memoir by Victoria Belim (2023)

This is the perfect opportunity to dive into my personal library while also participating in a number of reading challenges like the TBR 24 in ’24 , Mt. TBR Reading, European Reading, and Books in Translation Reading challenges. With several of these books published prior to 1980 it’s also a great chance to promote my Old Books Reading Project.