Here’s my top ten:

1) Heyday :: Kurt Anderson’s novel about the joy and wonder of the U.S. circa 1848 was great, filled with historical nuggets about the characters who inhabited the era of Manifest Destiny.

2) The Forever War :: The memoir of the NYT’s Dexter Filkins’s coverage of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was strikingly good and has been compared to many reviewers to Michael Herr’s Dispatches from the Vietnam War-era, although to Filkins’ credit (?) there are many fewer mind-altering drugs involved.

3) Team of Rivals :: I never tire of reading about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, at any time, I have a half-dozen such tomes in my reading pile by my bed. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s now-famous Cabinet-focused opus was a particular treat after the first third, which was as good a sleep aid as I’ve found.

4) America America :: Ethan Canin’s novel about a New York politician’s fictionalized 1972 presidential run is loosely based on Ted Kennedy’s career, though it’s worth reading more for the portrait of political hope found and lost.

5) The Best and the Brightest :: Too often when this phrase is used today it’s forgotten that David Halberstam’s classic is an indictment of the best and brightest rather than a celebration thereof. It’s amazing telling of the descent into Vietnam is all about the small decisions with outsized consequences and how we stumbled into something we didn’t really think about.

6) Nixonland :: I just finished this a few days ago here at home and am again impressed with Rick Perlstein’s ability to tell history. Following on the heels of his Goldwater history, he traces how we as a nation went from an overwhelming Lyndon Johnson victory in 1964 to an overwhelming Richard Nixon victory in 1972.

7) The Race Beat :: Looking at this third consecutive book about the ’60s and ’70s, I seem to, without realizing it, seemed to have spent a good chunk of this year reading about that period. This history of the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of the reporters who covered it is half-journalism story, half-social history and a great all-around education of the period.

8 ) The Looming Tower :: One of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books I read this year as part of my budding 9/11 research (the other was the also excellent “Ghost Wars” by Steve Coll), this was a fascinating history of al Qaeda’s rise and the missed opportunities we had to stop it.

9) God Is Not Great :: I spent a week in 2006 drinking my way through Scotland with Christopher Hitchens and he convinced me then, despite his famous propensity for drink, that he was a tremendous scholar. His treatise on the ways that God is corrupted on Earth was really influential in my still-evolving faith.

10) Here Comes Everybody :: Clay Shirky’s new(ish) book on social media helped refocus my teaching and thinking on the subject and has now become a central part of my class.

For 2008, I also need to give a nod to two friends who had books out this year. My college newspaper editor/mentor, Sugi, had her first novel published, Love Marriage, which draws on her Sri Lankan heritage to tell a great love story. Meanwhile, the debut novel, Blood Kin, of another college classmate, Ceridwen Dovey, reminded me of Anne Patchett’s Bel Canto, one of my favorite books of all time.

As I continue my way through all of Graham Greene’s canon, I had a number of strike-outs this year before I landed on “A Sense of Reality,” his collection of short stories, that renewed my faith in him as my favorite writer.

[Check here for my past lists: 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.]

Here are my top choices for the year:

1) Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez :: What a beautiful, heart-felt story. I loved the language and the story both.

2) The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman :: Perhaps the best history book I’ve read in years, this classic of the outbreak of World War I was a bit dry, but the writing was so good and Tuchman had such a wonderful style to her that I plowed through all these Prussian generals regardless.

3) The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham :: Maugham was a big influence on Graham Greene, my favorite author, and you can see it throughout this book. I’d never read Maugham before, but I thought the writing and pictures of a very different world were wonderful.

4) The Company by Robert Littell :: An epic tale of the CIA that, towards the end of the year, became a surprisingly good miniseries on TNT, this story spans almost fifty years of U.S., world, and CIA history as it charts a series of friendships from post-war Yale.

5) The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier :: This is a simple, beautiful book, translated from French, about love, parties, and life. I read it in a single train ride back from New York where my FSG editor’s assistant pressed it into my hand. She’d worked on it with the translator, her other boss Lorin Stein, an immensely talented editor who managed to edit three of the five NBA finalists for the year, including the above-mentioned “Tree of Smoke.” I’ve since bought a dozen copies to give as gifts to friends and they have all loved it too. And: It’s all true!

6) Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver :: I read this in France this summer and it made me want to move back to Vermont and grow my own food. There’s a romance to it that you have to love rural life fully to appreciate.

7) What It Takes by Robert Ben Cramer :: This is the book that destroyed the campaign book genre. No one will ever write one as good as this again simply because people are too self-conscious of this type of story now to let it happen.

Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White :: White invented the campaign book and the amazing thing about them is how well they hold up as historical artifacts, still seeming lively and fascinating some half-century later. I also read 1964, which was also very good.

9) Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney :: Another classic, this a tale of the New Yorker during the glory drug-fueled days of the 1980s. Hard not to main character, despite his faults and it has many classic characters like the ghost editor as well.

10) World Without Us by Alan Weisman :: A fascinating thought experiment of imagining how nature would overtake and remake the human landscape if humans disappeared. It’s amazing how transient even our most permanent contributions are when put in a geologic, natural timeframe.

Also for 2007, here’s a new category: The most disappointing book I read was “Mergers and Acquisitions,” by Dana Vachon, for which I had very high hopes to be the “Devil Wears Prada” for men. It wasn’t. I did read “Devil Wears Prada” earlier this year and loved it, but M&A didn’t even come close. And the author got a huge advance for it. Sigh.

[Check here for my past lists: 2006, 2005, and 2004.]

Here’s my top ten picks of 2006:

1) A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson — This book should have made it the list in 2004 when I first read it, but evidently I left it off the list. I relistened to it on audiobook when I was driving back from Vermont and it was just as much fun. A very engaging history of science, it offers some great meditiations on the specialness of life.

2) From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman — Nearly twenty years after this was first published, it’s still a great summary of the Middle East conflict that helped me understand an area I’m continually flummoxed by.

3) An Empire of Wealth by John Steele Gordon — I put this book on my list to read in 2004 when Esquire named it one of the books that any president must read. I finally got to it this year and it was as promised a great one-volume economic history of the United States filled with great tidbits and historical trivia.

4) The Survivor by John F. Harris — An excellent biography of Bill Clinton, foibles and all.

5) Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell — This classic of stories by one of the great New Yorker writers from the 1930s and 1940s captures great portraits of Old New York.

6) Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell — A book that I wish I’d written; a historical tour of sites and tidbits related to the assassinations of American presidents.

7) The Perfectionist by Rudolph Chelminski — The story of a French chef’s rise and fall (ending in his suicide), this focuses on the much vaunted Michelin star system. When I finished it, I wanted to hop right on a plane and dine away.

A Student of Living Things by Susan Shreve — Set in a near-future Washington beset by terrorism, this book offers a scary picture of just how tenuous our sense of safety and security is today.

9) Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama — He won a Grammy for his audio recording of his memoir, written a decade ago. He deserved it.

10) Dateline: Vermont by Chris Graff — Since I’m biased here, I’ll let the Valley News’ John Gregg review what the Addison Independent called the best book on Vermont published this year: “Graff also has gone out in style, with an entertaining book detailing critical years in Vermont’s evolution. Unlike so many other memoirs, Graff doesn’t pat himself on the back or put himself on the couch. But, like the many stories he filed over the years, it’s easy to read the book and come to a conclusion — in this case, that Chris Graff is a man who loves Vermont, and has done his part to make it better. ”

An honorable mention this year goes to Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden. My first reaction to this book was that it was much too long, some 600 plus pages, but after reading it I thought back to a conversation I had this fall with my editor at FSG who was explaining that sometimes books need to be overly long to convey the passage of time. Some reflection later, I decided that “Ghosts,” seemingly interminable at times, helped captured the absurdity and length of this trying moment, how it dragged on for the hostages, the hostage-takers, and the U.S. government. Any shorter and the reader may not get the sense of the futilty of the whole thing.

A few others I’d recommend this year: A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester, which I read the day this fall I spent on jury duty, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which I explained in Washingtonian’s roundup of the best books of the year was “similar in key ways to Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American,’ it is a powerful and well-written lesson in the damage that even the best intentioned people can inflict.”

I would also be remiss to not mention The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman’s insta-classic, which has had a tremendous impact on my life this year.

[Check here for my past lists: 2005 and 2004.]

1) The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

2) Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

3) East of Eden by John Steinbeck

4) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

5) Garlics and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

6) Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid

7) Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams

9) Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

10) Ghost Light by Frank Rich

[Check here for my previous list from 2004.]

Anyway, here’s my list:

1) “Blue Blood” – by Edward Conlon (which I successfully nominated as a Daily Dose pick at Powells.com over the summer)

2) “Benjamin Franklin” – by Walter Isaacson

3) “Bel Canto” – by Ann Patchett

4) “The Quiet American” – by Graham Greene

5) “Dispatches” – by Michael Herr

6) “The Plot Against America” – by Philip Roth

7) “Things Worth Fighting For” – by Michael Kelly

“Off to the Side” – by Jim Harrison

9) “Against All Enemies” – by Richard Clarke

10) “The 9/11 Commission Report”

Honorable mentions go to “Colossus,” by Niall Ferguson, “The Working Poor,” by David K. Shipler, and “The Republican Noise Machine,” by David Brock, which all influenced my thinking this year in a lot of different ways. An honorable mention in fiction goes to “The Power and the Glory,” by Graham Greene, and its unforgettable whisky priest.

As I enter 2005, I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new “Blink,” Joseph Ellis’ “His Excellency,” and Stephen Greenblatt’s “Will in the World.” I’ll have to pick up some fiction after all that.

Happy New Year’s Eve and stay tuned for a report from Times Square….