Bruce Feiler is an award-winning author and NPR commentator. His most recent book, Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses (Harper Perennial, $15), is now available in paperback.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Modern Library, $10). The book that made me proud to be alive. I read it while commuting an hour and a half from a Japanese homestay to my first job after college. It both took me out of the world where I was and placed me deeper inside it. The story manages to have epic sweep and impossibly observed domestic moments, and to make you feel as if your life does as well.

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