Joel Brinkley, Defining Vision
435 pp., 4-Jan-99
Fascinating account of the race to develop high-definition television.

William Gibson, Virtual Light
352 pp., 6-Jan-99
A favorite from the inventor of the cyber-thriller.

Norman Mailer, Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man
370 pp., 13-Jan-99
Sometimes flattering, sometimes not, an engaging bio of the often profligate young artist.

Franz Kafka, The Trial
286 pp., 15-Jan-99
The dizzying origin of the adjective 'kafkaesque.' Not as poignant as the short stories, though the parable ('Before The Law') toward the end is quite potent.

Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
243 pp., 18-Jan-99
The absolutely unforgettable horror story of a disfigured veteran.

Franz Kafka, The Castle
417 pp., 29-Jan-99
A sprawling, disorienting, and unfinished opus. Camus has an enlightening essay on Kafka's work in the collection The Myth of Sisyphus.

John Fowles, The Collector
288 pp., 8-Feb-99
An unsettling narrative by the author of the more interesting The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Alan Paton, Cry The Beloved Country
10 hour recording, 15-Feb-99
The touching story of a priest who travels to South Africa in search of his prodigal son.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
851 pp., 6-Mar-99
If you're one of the few people for whom the ending hasn't been spoiled, read it soon.

Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America
320 pp., 14-Mar-99
New York to New Orleans on foot. Pretty impressive.

Isaac Asimov, Nightfall and Other Stories
312 pp., 19-Mar-99
Despite the author's insistence, 'Nightfall' is still the best, later expanded into a novel co-authored by Robert Silverberg.

Peter and Barbara Jenkins, The Walk West
431 pp., 5-Apr-99
Peter and his new bride honeymoon with a hike to the Pacific. More great encounters with everyday Americans.

Alfred Lansing, Endurance
282 pp., 11-Apr-99
Inspiring, absolutely incredible account of a disasterous attempt to cross the south pole on foot.

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience
24 hour recording, 16-Apr-99
It took two months to get through, but this second part of the trilogy offered several fascinating side stories from the first century of United States history.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther
160 pp., 26-Apr-99
A moving and expertly written epistolary novel that created a sensation in its day.

Henry Petroski, To Engineer Is Human
232 pp., 9-May-99
Case-by-case analysis demonstrating that engineers often learn more from failure than from success.

Sherwin B. Nuland, The Wisdom of the Body
369 pp., 16-May-99
Not quite as interesting as his How We Die (this book was retitled How We Live, appropriately), the general surgeon takes the reader on a tour of the amazing systems of the body.

Martin Gardner, The Night Is Large
565 pp., 5-Aug-99
This collection of essays written from 1938 to 1995 demonstrates the versatility of this author, perhaps best known as a purveyor of puzzles. The 47 essays are grouped into categories: Physical Science, Social Science, Pseudoscience, Mathematics, The Arts, Philosophy, and Religion.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
132 pp., 29-Aug-99
Written by a man who, following a stroke, could only communicate by blinking one eye.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
208 pp., 30-Aug-99
Papa reminisces about being "very poor and very happy" in Paris.

Stanley Karnow, Paris in the Fifties
337 pp., 7-Sep-99
An enjoyable collection of essays by a Time journalist.

Pico Iyer, Tropical Classical
314 pp., 20-Sep-99
Travel essays, profiles, book reviews.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground and other stories
239 pp., 10-Oct-99
A classic short work by the classic author. 'White Nights' another favorite.

Jeremy Seal, A Fez of the Heart
334 pp., 22-Nov-99
Inspired by an old fez found in an attic, the author travels through modern Turkey looking for the story behind the outlawed hat.

Jeff Greenwald, The Size of the World
420 pp., 27-Nov-99
Having seen more of the world than Magellan or Marco Polo but feeling less accomplished than they, this travel writer decided to attempt to circle the world without ever boarding a plane. He drags a laptop from California to California via horseback, cargo ship, taxi, train, and bus.

Thomas À Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
217 pp., 6-Dec-99
A classic meditation on devotion and the ascetic life -- How To Be a Monk.

Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories
460 pp., 14-Dec-99
As good as existential dystopian literature gets.

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year
8 hour recording, 16-Dec-99
A firsthand account of the devistating Black Plague in London in 1665.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
736 pp., 30-Dec-99
Meet Howard Roark: architect, protagonist, and ideal man of the author's Objectivist philosophy. A readable fable with the ambitious goal of attacking altruism as a virtue.