5 books I'm looking forward to this summer

The Summer holidays are nearly upon us and I think we should all start exchanging reading lists. Rebecca Blood has been collecting lists. Now Comment Central is joining in.

Tomorrow I will give you a list of five must-read books for you to enjoy. Today, I list five books I am looking forward to reading.

I hope you will reciprocate, listing in the comments here the books you have stacked up and waiting to be read and then, tomorrow, five recommendations.

Two things. The books I intend to list are going to be non-fiction (my particular vice) and I have a bias towards those advancing an interesting central idea. But your non-fiction selection may be different.

Here goes:

1. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is in my bag already to take home. Caplan argues that the Wisdom of Crowds theory is wrong. The holders of irrational ideas do not cancel each other out. There are systematic biases.

2. Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment concerns the early days of FDR. I've read the first few pages and he seems to be suggesting that it was FDR's style, not his policies that rescued America. It puts the case for spin over substance in other words.

3. Drew Westen's The Political Brain was the subject of Jonathan Freedland's Guardian column this week. It suggests that politics is about emotion and Freedland saw it as a warning to Gordon Brown. Jonathan is a very good spotter of intellectual trends so I obtained the book on his say so.

4. William Hague's William Wilberforce is bound to be worth reading. I am particularly interested in the Tory social reformers and a book on this topic from my former boss is irresistible.

5. David Owen's The Hubris Syndrome is the product of a number of years of thinking about the impact of ill health on political leadership. The book concerns the mindset of George Bush and Tony Blair. Owen is always fascinating.

Comments

[Anthony C]

I've got a big stack of books to get through. Unfortunately, whereas your list represents a festival of the brightest new titles, mine tends to illustrate the fact that I have no life:

Ami Pedazhur (ed.) - "The Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism"

Zaki Chehab - "Inside Hamas"

Joshua Ho & Catherine Zara Raymond (eds.) - "The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Maritime Security in the Asia-Pacific"

John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai - "Imagined Enemies: China Prepares for Uncertain War"

Daniel H. Wilson - "Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived"

John Darwin - "After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire"