Bored With Xbox 360? Try `Freakonomics' and `Mao' as Gift Books

Bored With Xbox 360? Try `Freakonomics' and `Mao' as Gift Books

(Review. Edward Nawotka is a critic for Bloomberg News. The
opinions expressed are his own.)

By Edward Nawotka

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- You might think that a book reviewer
asks Santa for the Complete Penguin Classics Library -- 1,082 books
listed at $13,315.84.

Not so. What I really want for Christmas is an Xbox 360 game
console from Microsoft Corp. hooked up to a wall-sized plasma
television screen. And I don't feel guilty for asking, thanks to
Steven Johnson's ``Everything Bad Is Good for You'' (Riverhead, 256
pages, $23.95; Allen Lane, 10 pounds). Playing video games improves
our ability to decode complex puzzles, Johnson argues. Eureka! Pass
the controller so I can hone my critical faculties.

After all that mental exertion, I'll crave something less
taxing -- like a book explaining why the world is flat. Luckily,
publishers provided several top-shelf nonfiction titles to choose
from this year.

Start with Malcolm Gladwell's look at cognition, ``Blink''
(Little, Brown, 288 pages, $25.95; Allen Lane, 16.99 pounds). As in
``The Tipping Point,'' Gladwell marshals scientific research and
anecdotal evidence to challenge conventional thinking. This time,
he argues that gathering more data doesn't necessarily help you
make a better decision, be it choosing a mate or plotting a war
game. Sometimes following your instinct is best.

Freaky Economics


Counterintuitive thinking also informs Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner's ``Freakonomics'' (HarperCollins, 256 pages,
$25.95; Allen Lane, 20 pounds). This book gives serious
consideration to such questions as whether it's more dangerous for
kids to have a gun -- or a swimming pool -- in the house.

If you're among the multitudes who've read Thomas Friedman's
``The World Is Flat'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 488 pages,
$27.95; Allen Lane, 20 pounds), skip ahead. If not, you'll want to
know that the New York Times columnist says globalization has
become a greater threat to U.S. economic dominance than it was when
he published ``The Lexus and the Olive Tree'' six years ago.

Speaking of American hubris, don't forget the boys at Enron
Corp. Sure, you think you've heard enough about Ken Lay, Jeff
Skilling and Andy Fastow. Yet Kurt Eichenwald's ``Conspiracy of
Fools'' (Broadway, 784 pages, $26) invests the tale with enough
drama to trump most thrillers.

Another title that aspires to be a definitive account is ``102
Minutes'' by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (Henry Holt, 322 pages, $26;
Arrow, 7.99 pounds). The authors recovered e-mail traffic and phone
transcripts to create a harrowing narrative of what happened inside
the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Vikings Fade Away


With Hurricane Katrina and all the other weather-induced
misery of 2005, my nominee for book of the year is Jared Diamond's
``Collapse'' (Viking, 592 pages, $25.95; Allen Lane, 25 pounds).
Diamond explains why some civilizations thrive and others, like the
Viking empire, fade away. He focuses on the environment, arguing
that how well we nurture nature may determine our fate.

Joan Didion made a comeback with her book ``The Year of
Magical Thinking'' (Knopf, 228 pages, $23.95; Fourth Estate, 12.99
pounds). In this painfully honest chronicle, Didion describes her
life following her husband's sudden death from a heart attack a
month before their 40th wedding anniversary.

Two other memoirs -- ``Oh the Glory of It All'' by Sean Wilsey
(Penguin Press, 496 pages, $25.95; Viking, 14.99 pounds) and ``The
Tender Bar'' by J.R. Moehringer (Hyperion, 384 pages, $23.95;
Hodder and Stoughton, 16.99 pounds) -- show that a misspent youth
can be redeemed.

Wealth and Barflies


Wilsey, who was raised by rich, crazy parents in San
Francisco, has written a laugh-out-loud chronicle of his absurd
childhood. Moehringer, who spent much of his Long Island youth
listening to barflies discuss the wisdom of Sinatra, delivers a
moving tribute to male camaraderie.

Plenty of noteworthy biographies came out this year, from
Doris Kearns Goodwin's look at Lincoln and his circle, ``Team of
Rivals'' (Simon and Schuster, 934 pages, $35), to Ron Powers's
superb ``Mark Twain,'' (Free Press, 726 pages, $35; Scribner, 25
pounds). One broke more new ground than the others: ``Mao'' by Jung
Chang and Jon Halliday (Knopf, 815 pages, $35; Cape, 25 pounds). It
highlights Mao Zedong's murderous legacy. The book is banned in
China.

Lastly, I recommend Temple Grandin's ``Animals in
Translation'' (Scribner, 368 pages, $25; Bloomsbury, 16.99 pounds).
The author, an autistic professor, uses her illness to decode
animal behavior. Did you know that pigeons have been trained to
distinguish between a Picasso and a Monet? Or that prairie dogs
have a language with sounds resembling nouns, verbs and adjectives?
You'll never see your pets the same way again.