Books of the times

I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately, as my partially-melted credit card can attest. Some of the more interesting tomes I've picked up the past few months include...

Stephanie Coontz		Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage This book is a basic history of the institution of marriage, and a useful corrective to those who wish to "defend" said institution by bashing, say, gays. The author's argument is that "traditional" marriage was over the day that love, as opposed to property or political ties, became the primary reason folks got married. Informative and well-written.
Greg Bear		Blood Music A classic science fiction story. Although written 15 years ago, it is a fresh and technologically up-to-date story of a worldwide apocalypse brought on by microscopic artificial intelligence-- i.e. the original "grey goo" novel.
S. M. Stirling		The Protector's War An intriguing idea: What if, though some unknown means, electricity and "pressurized combustion" (i.e. engines and explosives) stopped working. What would happen to society, and how would people live their lives? That unlikely premise turns out to create a fascinating and thoughtful exploration of the human condition.
Elizabeth Royte		Garbage Land : On the Secret Trail of Trash A biography of garbage...how we make it, where it goes when we dump it, and how it can be recycled (or not). What could be a dry subject turns out to be a lot of fun, mostly due to the writer's genius at finding interesting people to interview and exploring some pretty wild technology used to smash, grind up, and otherwise process trash.
Bruce Feiler		Where God Was Born : A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion This books works best as a religiously-inspired travel book, as the author explores some of the most interesting historic and archeological sites in the Middle East, including in otherwise inaccessible areas of Iraq. His meditations on the meaning of the Bible adds a thoughtful dimension to the narrative, but his pollyannaish attitude that everyone would just get along if they understood the shared roots of the monotheistic faiths can get annoying.
Richard Dawkins		The Ancestor's Tale : A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution This book is a workout for the mind, and a stunning history of life on this planet. You will learn more about how science is done in these 600 pages then you ever did in college or high school. Be warned that you might get burned as a witch if you are caught reading this in Kansas
Alan Dean Foster		Lost and Found : A Novel A comic science fiction novel of alien abductions and talking dogs. Yeah, it is candy, but sometime candy tastes good!
Gwynne Dyer		War: The Lethal Custom An anthropological history of aggression in the human species combined with a solid military history of how human beings have organized and armed themselves for war. Very solid, well-written history, and a thoughtful meditation on the human condition combined into one volume.
Charles R. Pellegrino		Ghosts of Vesuvius : A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections This book is all over the map. It is part hard science, part Roman history, part religious history, and part philosophy, as it roams all over time, from the geological crucible of Earth to the early Roman Empire to the collapse of the World Trade Center. The author has a touch of the poet in him, which can either be sublime or intolerable depending on your mood. Well worth reading, though.
Barbara Ehrenreich		Bait and Switch : The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream This book works best as a comic exploration of the trials of white-collar job searching. However, the author's humor too often descends into contempt for her subjects, and the righteous outrage of her earlier book, "Nickel and Dimed" seems out of place here.