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Books Reviewed: Sorted by title (B)

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Babbitt (1922) - Sinclair Lewis (2/07/1885 -1/10/1951)  (Grade:A)

The Babes in the Wood: A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery (2002) - Ruth Rendell (02/17/1930 -)  (Grade:B+)

Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards (2001) - Tyler Bridges (-)  (Grade:B-)

Bad Traffic : An Inspector Jian Novel (2008) - Simon Lewis (-)  (Grade:B-)

Baghdad Sketches (1933) - Freya Stark (05/09/1893-1993)  (Grade:A-)

Baghdad Without a Map : And Other Misadventures in Arabia (1991) - Tony Horwitz (1958-)  (Grade:A)

Balsamic Dreams : A Short But Self-important History of the Baby Boomer Generation (2001) - Joe Queenan (1950-)  (Grade:B-)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2000) - Dai Sijie (03/02/1954-)  (Grade:B+)

Bambi: A Life in the Woods (1923) - Felix Salten (09/06/1869 -10/08/1945)  (Grade:A)

Bang the Drum Slowly (1956) - Mark Harris (11/19/1922 -05/30/2007)  (Grade:A+)

Bangkok 8 (2003) - John Burdett (1951-)  (Grade:A-)

Bannerman's Ghosts (2003) - John R. Maxim (1937-)  (Grade:B)

Baptism for the Dead (1988) - Robert R. Irvine (-)  (Grade:A)

Barabbas (1951) - Par Lagerkvist (1891-1974) (Grade:A+)

Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle: 366 Ways He Really Cares (2008) - Matthew Honan (-) (Grade:A+)

The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (1997) - Richard Fletcher (03/28/1944-02/28/2005)  (Grade:A+)

The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785) - George Cruikshank (09/27/1792-02/01/1878) - Rudolph Erich Raspe (March 1736-November 1794)  (Grade:B+)

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853) - Herman Melville (8/01/1819 -9/28/1891)  (Grade:A-)

The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000) - Karen Armstrong (-)  (Grade:D+)

The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality (2000) - Richard J. Overy (-)  (Grade:A)

The Battle of Marathon (2010) - Peter Krentz (-)  (Grade:B)

The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory (1999) - Robert V. Remini (1921-)  (Grade:B+)

The Battle of Salamis : The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization (2004) - Barry Strauss (11/27/1957 -)  (Grade:A+)

The Beach (1997) - Alex Garland (5/26/1970 -)  (Grade:C+)

The Beak of the Finch : A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994) - Jonathan Weiner (-)  (Grade:B-)

The Bear (1942) - William Faulkner (09/25/1897 -07/06/1962)  (Grade:B+)

Beau Geste (1924) - Percival Christopher Wren (1885-1941)  (Grade:A-)

A Beautiful Mind : A biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, 1994 (1998) - Sylvia Nasar (-)  (Grade:C)

Only a Promise of Beauty: The Place of Beauty in the World of Art (2007) - Alexander Nehamas (03/22/1946-)  (Grade:C)

Becket or The Honor of God (1960) - Jean Anouilh (1910-1987)  (Grade:A)

Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800 (2006) - Jeff Sypeck (-)  (Grade:A)

Becoming Madame Mao (2000) - Anchee Min (01/14/1957-)  (Grade:C+)

The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994) - Laurie R. King (-)  (Grade:C)

Before and After (1992) - Rosellen Brown (05/12/1939-)  (Grade:C)

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) - Rick Perlstein (1969 -)  (Grade:A)

Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life (2009) - Michael Greenberg (1952-)  (Grade:B)

The Beggar's Opera (1728) - John Gay (1685-1732)  (Grade:A)

Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide (2016) - Charles Foster (1962 -)  (Grade:B+)

Being There (1970) - Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991)  (Grade:B-)

A Bell for Adano (1944) - John Hersey (6/17/1914 -3/24/1993)  (Grade:B+)

Beloved (1987) - Toni Morrison (2/18/1931 -8/05/2019)  (Grade:F)

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) - Lew Wallace (1827-1905)  (Grade:A+)

A Bend in the River (1979) - V.S. Naipaul (8/17/1932 -8/11/2018)  (Grade:C)

Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts (2005) - Robert Zubrin (4/09/1952 -)  (Grade:A)

Benedict XVI: The Man Who Was Ratzinger (2005) - Michael S. Rose (1969-)  (Grade:A)

Benjamin Franklin (2002) - Edmund S. Morgan (01/17/1916-)  (Grade:A)

Beowulf (8th Century?) - Anonymous (-)  (Grade:A+)

The Best American Sports Writing : 2000 (2000) - Rick Geary (-)  (Grade:C+)

Betrayal of Trust : The Collapse of Global Public Health (2000) - Laurie Garrett (-)  (Grade:F)

Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (1999) - Bill Gertz (-)  (Grade:C)

A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (1999) - Lewis Sorley (1934-)  (Grade:A)

Between Hope and History: Meeting America's Challenges for the 21st Century (1996) - William J. Clinton (1946-)  (Grade:D)

Big Chief Elizabeth : The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (2000) - Giles Milton (1/15/1966 -)  (Grade:A)

The Big Clock (1946) - Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961)  (Grade:B-)

The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movie (2010) - Kevin Coupe (-)  (Grade:B+)

Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex (2015) - Michael Hitzlik (11/09/52 -)  (Grade:A)

The Big Sleep (1939) - Raymond Chandler (7/23/1888 -3/26/1959)  (Grade:A+)

Billy Bathgate (1989) - E.L. Doctorow (1931-)  (Grade:C)

Billy Budd, Foretopman (1891) - Herman Melville (8/01/1819 -9/28/1891)  (Grade:A-)

Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams--The Early Years 1903-1940 (2001) - Gary Giddins (03/21/1948-)  (Grade:A+)

Life with Bingo (2021) - Jim Black (1953 -)  (Grade:A)

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994) - Anne Lamott (4/10/1954 -)  (Grade:D)

The Birds' Christmas Carol (1886) - Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923)  (Grade:B+)

The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (2009) - Ted Gioia (10/21/1957 -)  (Grade:A-)

The Birth of Tragedy (1872) - Friedrich Nietzsche (10/15/1844 -8/25/1900)  (Grade:C)

The Birthmark (1844) - Nathaniel Hawthorne (7/04/1804 -5/19/1864)  (Grade:A)

Black and Blue (1997) - Ian Rankin (1960 -)  (Grade:A+)

Black and Blue (1998) - Anna Quindlen (1952-)  (Grade:D+)

Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse (1877) - Anna Sewell (1820-1878)  (Grade:B-)

Black Boy (1945) - Richard Wright (9/04/1908 -11/28/1960)  (Grade:C)

Black Dahlia (1987) - James Ellroy (3/04/1948 -)  (Grade:A-)

The Black Dudley Murder (1929) - Margery Allingham (05/20/1904-06/30/1966)  (Grade:C+)

Black Empire (1936-38) - George S. Schuyler (2/25/1895 -8/31/1977)  (Grade:A-)

Black Hawk Down : A Story of Modern War (1999) - Mark Bowden (1951-)  (Grade:A+)

Black Narcissus (1939) - Rumer Godden (1907-1998)  (Grade:B)

Black Robe (1985) - Brian Moore (8/25/1921 -1/11/1999)  (Grade:B+)

The Black Spider [Die schwarze Spinne] (1842) - Jeremias Gotthelf (10/04/1797-10/22/1854)  (Grade:A)

Black Sunday (1975) - Thomas Harris (04/11/1940 -)  (Grade:B+)

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007) - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 -)  (Grade:C)

Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) (1968) - Phillip K. Dick (12/26/1928 -3/02/1982)  (Grade:B+)

Blind But Now I See: The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson (2010) - Kent Gustavson (-)  (Grade:A-)

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (1998) - Sherry Sontag (-) - Christopher Drew (-) - Annette Lawrence Drew (-)  (Grade:B+)

Blood and Chocolate (1997) - Annette Curtis Klause (1953-)  (Grade:B+)

Blood and Thunder: A Nathan Heller Novel (1995) - Max Allan Collins (1948-)  (Grade:A)

The Blood of the Covenant : A Novel of the Vampiric (1995) - Brent Monahan (-)  (Grade:C+)

The Blood of the Lamb (1992) - Thomas Monteleone (1946-)  (Grade:C)

The Blooding of the Guns : A novel of the Battle of Jutland [The Everard Naval Series, No. 1] (1976) - Alexander Fullerton (1924-)  (Grade:C)

Bloody Confused!: A Clueless American Sportswriter Seeks Solace in English Soccer (2008) - Chuck Culpepper (-)  (Grade:C-)

Blue Chipper : A Morgan Hunt Novel (1992) - Geoffrey Norman (-)  (Grade:A)

Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America (2011) - Daniel J. Flynn (-)  (Grade:B)

The Blue Hammer (1976) - Ross MacDonald (12/13/1915 -07/11/1983)  (Grade:A)

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (2002) - Tony Horwitz (1958-)  (Grade:B+)

Blue River (1991) - Ethan Canin (-)  (Grade:D)

Bobos in Paradise : The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000) - David Brooks (-)  (Grade:C)

Body Count: Moral Poverty...and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drug (1996) - William J. Bennett (1943-) - John DiIulio Jr. (-) - John P. Walters (-)  (Grade:B-)

Bomber's Moon (2019) - Archer Mayor (07/30/1950 -)  (Grade:B+)

Bone (1993) - Fae Myenne Ng (1957-)  (Grade:B+)

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy (2009) - Bill Simmons (09/25/1969-)  (Grade:C+)

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page () - G.B. Edwards (-) (Grade:A+)

A Book of Five Rings (1645) - Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) (Grade:C+)

The Book of the Dun Cow (1978) - Walter M. Wangerin, Jr. (02/13/1944-) (Grade:A+)

The Book of Trouble : A Romance (2006) - Ann Marlowe (1958-) (Grade:B+)

The Book of Virtues : A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (1993) - Rick Geary (-)  (Grade:A+)

The Book That Jack Wrote (1994) - Jon Scieszka (1954-)  (Grade:B)

Booked to Die (1992) - John Dunning (-)  (Grade:A)

Boswell's Presumptous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson (2001) - Adam Sisman (-)  (Grade:A+)

The Bower of Nil: A Narrative Poem (2002) - Frederick Glaysher (1954-)  (Grade:B+)

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) - Robert D. Putnam (1940-)  (Grade:B)

Brain Storm (1998) - Richard Dooling (-)  (Grade:A)

The Brain that Changes Itself (2007) - Norman Doidge (-)  (Grade:A-)

The Brave Cowboy: an Old Tale in a New Time (1956) - Edward Abbey (1/29/1927 -3/14/1989)  (Grade:B+)

Brave New World (1932) - Aldous Huxley (7/26/1894 -11/22/1963)  (Grade:A)

Brazzaville Beach (1990) - William Boyd (3/07/1952 -)  (Grade:A)

The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics (1987) - Richard A. Watson (02/23/1931-)  (Grade:A)

Breakthrough International Negotiation: How Great Negotiators Transformed the World's Toughest Post-Cold War Conflicts (2001) - Michael Watkins (-)  (Grade:B+)

Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) - Edwidge Danticat (1969-)  (Grade:C-)

Breathing Lessons (1988) - Anne Tyler (10/25/1941 -)  (Grade:C)

The Brendan Voyage (1978) - Tim Severin (1940-) (Grade:A+)

The Brethren (The Fortunes of France, Volume 1) (1977) - Robert Merle (8/28/1908-3/27/2004)  (Grade:A+)

Brideshead Revisited (1945) - Evelyn Waugh (10/28/1903 -04/10/1966)  (Grade:C)

The Bridge at No Gun Ri : A Hidden Chapter from the Korean War (2001) - Charles J. Hanley (-)  (Grade:D)

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) - Thornton Wilder (4/17/1897 -12/07/1975)  (Grade:C)

The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) - Pierre Boulle (1912-1994)  (Grade:A+)

Bridge to Terabithia (1977) - Katherine Paterson (1932-)  (Grade:A)

A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988) - Stephen W. Hawking (1/08/1942 -03/14/2018)  (Grade:B-)

Bright Lights, Big City (1984) - Jay McInerney (1955-)  (Grade:A)

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988) - Neil Sheehan (-)  (Grade:C)

Brilliant Orange (2000) - David Winner (1956-)  (Grade:A)

The Broken Shore (2005) - Peter Temple (1946-)  (Grade:A)

Brotherly Love (1991) - Pete Dexter (-)  (Grade:B-)

Brownsville (2006) - Neil Kleid (-)  (Grade:B)

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Mystery of the French Countryside (2007) - Martin Walker ( 1/23/1947-)  (Grade:A)

Buffalo Soldiers (1996) - Tom Willard (-)  (Grade:C)

Bulow Hammock : Mind in a Forest (1988) - David Rains Wallace (-)  (Grade:C+)

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (1999) - Wole Soyinka (07/13/1934 -)  (Grade:D)

The Burnt Orange Heresy (1971) - Charles Willeford (1919-1988)  (Grade:A)

BUtterfield 8 (1935) - John O'Hara (1/31/1905 -4/11/1970)  (Grade:B+)

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (2008) - Martin Lindstrom (1970-)  (Grade:B+)