With the goal of promoting literacy (and with proceeds going to the Read to Grow Foundation), here are 65 spirited testaments to the transformative power of reading from 65 distinguished contributors, as compiled by bookseller Roxanne Coady and editor Joy Johannessen. Books change lives, and if you have any doubts on that score, you need only dip into this joyous celebration of reading by 65 people who have distinguished themselves in various fields, from sports, to cooking, to journalism and the arts. In brief and lively essays, the contributors wrestlers, actors, singers, monks, Nobel Prize winners, chefs, politicians, writers tell about the single book that changed the way they see themselves and the world around them. A sampling of contributors includes: Elizabeth Berg on The Catcher in the Rye ; Harold Bloom on Little, Big ; Steven Brill on The Making of the President, 1960 ; Da Chen on The Count of Monte Cristo ; Maureen Corrigan on David Copperfield ; Nelson DeMille on Atlas Shrugged ; Tomie dePaola on Kristin Lavransdatter ; Anita Diamant on A Room of One s Own ; Linda Fairstein on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ; Sebastian Junger on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ; Wally Lamb on To Kill a Mockingbird ; John McCain on For Whom the Bell Tolls ; Lisa Scottoline on Angela s Ashes ; Susan Vreeland on To Kill a Mockingbird ; and many more. . . . Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

As a teenager in a Parisian expatriate's bookstore, James Atlas found Gwendolyn Brooks's Selected Poems and realized that "poetry could emerge out of the geography of your own experience." Jacquelyn Mitchard named a baby after the struggling heroine of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged "jarred" Nelson Demille into "thinking outside the box"; Michael Stern was transported to unknown worlds by the Sears catalogue; while Sen. Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, was molded by the Bible. In this uneven collection of often predictable musings about their favorite books by a catchall of writers (including PW's editor, Sara Nelson), one of the few standouts is by Frank McCourt, who tastes a line from Shakespeare's Henry VIII when he's a 10-year-old typhoid patient and remembers "it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words." Unfortunately, by stuffing 71 writers into a slim volume, bookseller Coady and editor Johannessen all but ensure prosaic snippets of random thoughts rather than developed essays. The format also allows for repetition (J.D. Salinger; Harper Lee) and self-promotion (Carol Higgins Clark's inspiration was her famous mother; Anita Diamant showboats about her own novel The Red Tent in a piece about Virginia Woolf). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

This reviewer is downright nosy when it comes to learning what people are reading. If you also share the trait of asking virtual strangers, "What have you been reading lately?" and then listening intently, following up with questions, and possibly pulling out an old pay stub to jot down their response, is this ever the book for you. Bookseller Coady and editor Johannessen have a mission: to elicit the personal recollections of famous people in various walks of life-writers, actors, chefs, politicians-and find out what qualifies as "the book that changed [their] life." Together, the two have compiled a wonderful cross section of contributors and a wildly diverse group of books. From the Bible (Sen. Joseph Lieberman) to To Kill a Mockingbird (author Wally Lamb), the contents of this book will encourage quick perusal, a checking of titles, or the generation of a must-read list. Most moving are the recollections of books that "saved" someone and made him or her feel less alone or less strange (e.g., book critic Maureen Corrigan on David Copperfield). With a handy reading list that includes title, author, and contributor and all proceeds going to the Read to Grow Foundation (www.readtogrow.org), this book is recommended for most collections.-Jan Brue Enright, Augustana Coll. Lib., Sioux Falls, SD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Introduction	p. xv
Toni Morrison's: The Bluest Eye	p. 1
Robert Coover's: Pricksongs & Descants	p. 4
Gwendolyn Brooks's: Selected Poems	p. 7
Joseph Campbell's: The Power of Myth	p. 10
Jean Kerr's: The Snake Has All the Lines	p. 12
The Works of Shakespeare	p. 15
J. R. R. Tolkien's: The Lord of the Rings	p. 18
The Little Engine That Could	p. 20
J. D. Salinger's: The Catcher in the Rye	p. 23
The Most of P. G. Wodehouse	p. 26
John Crowley's: Little, Big	p. 29
John Hersey's: Hiroshima	p. 31
Joyce Carol Oates's: Expensive People and More	p. 33
Theodore H. White's: The Making of the President, 1960	p. 35
Ernest Becker's: The Denial of Death	p. 37
Alexandre Dumas': The Count of Monte Cristo	p. 39
Gertrude Stein's: Ida	p. 44
Thomas Merton's: The Seven Storey Mountain	p. 47
Mary Higgins Clark's: A Stranger Is Watching	p. 49
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's: The Yearling and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita	p. 51
Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew Mysteries	p. 53
Caesar's Gallic Wars	p. 55
Harriet Beecher Stowe's: Uncle Tom's Cabin	p. 57
Charles Dickens's: David Copperfield	p. 59
Ayn Rand's: Atlas Shrugged and More	p. 62
Sigrid Undset's: Kristin Lavransdatter	p. 64
Virginia Woolf's: A Room of One's Own	p. 66
Anthony Trollope's: The Way We Live Now	p. 69
Thomas a Kempis's: The Imitation of Christ	p. 72
Arthur Conan Doyle's: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	p. 75
Barbara W. Tuchman's: The Guns of August	p. 78
Sebastian Junger's: The Perfect Storm	p. 80
Cecil Woodham-Smith's: The Reason Why	p. 82
J. D. Salinger's: The Catcher in the Rye	p. 84
Dee Brown's: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee	p. 86
Geoffrey Barraclough's: An Introduction to Contemporary History	p. 88
Ernest Hemingway's: Collected Stories	p. 91
Ernest Becker's: The Denial of Death	p. 93
Harper Lee's: To Kill a Mockingbird	p. 95
Ram Dass's: The Only Dance There Is and More	p. 99
Sigmund Freud's: The Interpretation of Dreams	p. 102
The Bible	p. 104
Charlotte Bronte's: Jane Eyre	p. 107
Ernest Hemingway's: For Whom the Bell Tolls	p. 109
William Shakespeare's: Henry VIII	p. 112
F. Scott Fitzgerald's: The Great Gatsby	p. 117
Betty Smith's: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	p. 119
Ed McBain's 87th Precinct Series	p. 122
Herman Wouk's: Marjorie Morningstar and Susan Isaacs's Compromising Positions	p. 124
William Lewis Nida's: Ab the Cave Man	p. 126
Kay Thompson's: Eloise	p. 128
William Maxwell's: So Long, See You Tomorrow	p. 130
Albert Camus': The Myth of Sisyphus	p. 132
G. K. Chesterton's: The Man Who Was Thursday	p. 137
Robert Louis Stevenson's: A Child's Garden of Verses and More	p. 140
Anthony Burgess's: A Clockwork Orange	p. 142
Albert Schweitzer's: Out of My Life and Thought and Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle Series	p. 144
Moss Hart's: Act One	p. 147
Maya Angelou's: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	p. 149
Frank McCourt's: Angela's Ashes	p. 151
William Saroyan's: The Human Comedy	p. 154
Christopher Morley's: Kitty Foyle and Guy Endore's Voltaire! Voltaire!	p. 157
Stendhal's: The Red and the Black	p. 159
John Barth's: The End of the Road	p. 161
The Sears Catalogue	p. 163
Rainer Maria Rilke's: Letters to a Young Poet	p. 165
C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower Series	p. 168
Harper Lee's: To Kill a Mockingbird	p. 171
E. B. White's: Charlotte's Web	p. 173
Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse	p. 175
F. Scott Fitzgerald's: The Great Gatsby	p. 177
The Books That Changed Their Lives: A Reading List of the Books Selected by the Contributors	p. 179
Editor's Note	p. 185
Roxanne's Very Opinionated Reading List	p. 187
Joy's Very Opinionated Reading List	p. 191
About Read to Grow	p. 193
Acknowledgments	p. 195
About the Editors	p. 199

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