Quantum - Manjit Kumar

'Kumar is an accomplished writer who knows how to separate the excitement of the chase from the sometimes impenetrable mathematics. In Quantum he tells the story of the conflict between two of the most powerful intellects of their day: the hugely famous Einstein and the less well-known but just as brilliant Dane, Niels Bohr.'

Ambush at Fort Bragg - Tom Wolfe

He's been called "the inventor of the New Journalism--and possessor of the age's most distinctive prose style." Now in this original novella, serialized to critical acclaim in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1996, Tom Wolfe, author of the bestseller The Bonfire of the Vanities, turns his penetrating eye and devastating wit to the world of TV news...

As the producer of a prime-time TV newsmagazine, Irv Durtscher fancies himself the Federico Fellini of television journalism. For who else can draw 50 million viewers, satisfy the network's gluttony for profits, and advance the cause of social justice? The only problem is that no one else recognizes Irv's genius. Instead, all the accolades go to the blonde bombshell anchor who won't give balding, near-sighted Irv the time of day. But suddenly Irv has a chance to break the most sensational story of his career--one that will surely catapult him into the national spotlight and into Madame Bombshell's heart. For months the wheels of justice have ground to a halt as three soldiers from Fort Bragg have categorically denied that they savagely beat and murdered a member of their company because he was gay. Now, Irv Durtscher, self-proclaimed soul of a soulless industry, is poised to expose the truth. With a fortune in surveillance equipment, he has infiltrated a bar near Fort Bragg, in the hopes that the unwitting soldiers will hang themselves on videotape. What he gets is pure dynamite. But Irv's story won't be complete until he arranges to ambush the three young toughs and show them the footage. What happens when one of New York's media elite confronts the Lords of Testosterone?...not what you think.

Ambush at Fort Bragg is classic Wolfe--a blistering send-up of one man's drive for fame and glory and the lengths to which the media will go to showcase their version of the truth. This is Wolfe at his very best--timely, relevant, and right on the money about many aspects of 90s America: the media, the military, the South, discrimination, and homophobia.

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

The acclaimed new novel from the author of The Corrections.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outré rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbour," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better and worse, called the tune that the world has danced to. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains the reasons why things worked out that way. It is an elemental question, and Diamond is certainly not the first to ask it. However, he performs a singular service by relying on scientific fact rather than specious theories of European genetic superiority. Diamond, a professor of physiology at UCLA, suggests that the geography of Eurasia was best suited to farming, the domestication of animals and the free flow of information. The more populous cultures that developed as a result had more complex forms of government and communication--and increased resistance to disease. Finally, fragmented Europe harnessed the power of competitive innovation in ways that China did not. (For example, the Europeans used the Chinese invention of gunpowder to create guns and subjugate the New World.) Diamond's book is complex and a bit overwhelming. But the thesis he methodically puts forth--examining the "positive feedback loop" of farming, then domestication, then population density, then innovation, and on and on--makes sense. Written without bias, Guns, Germs, and Steel is good global history.