Today is a non-Trump day on the blog. Here goes…

Late last year, the members of my Thursday morning breakfast group were asked to recommend one book to the group that they thought everyone should read. Most, but not all, responded, and I am sharing the list with you. We had two sessions where each recommender had a few minutes to explain his choice. Sorry, no way to share that. The numbers following each book, by the way, are the Goodreads ratings, which I put together just because that’s the kind of thing that I do.

1. Oath and Honor: a Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney 4.59
2. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce a Responsive Government by Chris Achen and Larry Bartels 3.99
3. The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese 3.99
4. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 3.75
5. How Ike Led by Susan Eisenhower 4.34
6. Spies of No Country by Matti Friedman 3.93
7. Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World by David L. Roll 4.46
8. The Books of Jacob: A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, etc. by Olga Tokarczuk 4.02
9. One Summer, America, 1927 by Bill Bryson 4.09
10. Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross 3.91
11. Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study by George E. Vaillant 4.15
12. The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World by Jay Winik 4.07
13. Tablets Shattered: The End of the American Jewish Century by Joshua Leifer 4.15
14. Here All Along: Finding Spirituality and a Deeper Connection to Life in Judaism by Sarah Hurwitz 4.43
15. Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass 4.28
16. American Priestess by Jane Fletcher Geniesse 3.60
17. Vision by David S. Tatel 4.44
18. Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet by Robert Pinsky 3.96
19. Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson 4.53
20. The Rigor of Angels by Willian Egginton 4.26
21. Israel – a Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby 4.33
22. To Be a Jew Today by Noah Feldman 4.22
23. Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore 4.08
24. A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan 4.38
25. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa 4.03
26. The Yeshiva by Chaim Grade 4.14
27. The Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett 4.19
28. An Ordinary Man by Richard Norton Smith 4.44
29. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson 4.30
30. Destiny of the Republic: a Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candace Millard   4.21