John P. Avlon

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (Modern Library, $18). A masterful portrait of the first half of Roosevelt’s life, when TR was rising like a rocket through personal tragedy, with determination and an invigorating idealism that still stands out in the American landscape. This is bracing history; it reminds us that politics is history in the present tense.

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Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Ballantine, $17). The definitive biography of the political enforcer transformed into an existential hero after the assassination of his brother. Written by his friend and New Frontier colleague, it captures what was and what might have been: a reminder that we should always challenge ourselves to grow in terms of courage, compassion, and action.

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Lenin’s Tomb by David Remnick (Vintage, $16). Remnick was a Moscow reporter for The Washington Post when he produced this series of vignettes capturing the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet regime. With its Pulitzer Prize–winning profiles of heroic dissidents, dissolute generals, and Stalinist apologists, this is a real War & Peace.

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Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison (Delta, $14). Forget the movie; this collection of three novellas covers far broader ground, and with sharper focus. A cross between John Updike and All the Pretty Horses–era Cormac McCarthy, it is funny and unsentimental, epic without pretension. Check out the often overlooked second story, “The Man Who Gave Up His Name.”

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The Moronic Inferno by Martin Amis (Penguin, $14). Amis’ humor and humanity co-exist intact in this collection of journalistic essays written in the 1980s during a series of visits the British novelist made to an America that was straining under its own excesses. The book reads particularly well alongside its more Eurocentric companion volume, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov.

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Nine Stories

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