Books of the year, 2010

Here is a meta-list of "best books of the year" lists; the selections I looked at did not thrill me, so here's my own list, in no particular order.  First tier:

Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, by John A. Hall.

Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Charles Emmerson, The Future History of the Arctic.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

David Grossman, To the End of the Land.

State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974, by Dominic Sandbrook.

The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty.

Winston's War: Churchill 1940-1945, by Max Hastings.

Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.

Peter Hessler, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.

Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850.

As toss-ins, from the second tier, there are Understanding the Book of Mormon, Philippson's Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, Peter Watson's The German Genius, Mark Schatzger's Steak, Lydia Davis's Madame Bovary translation, Vietnam: Rising Dragon, Daniel Okrent's Last Call, Gary Gorton's The Panic of 2007, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, W. John Kress, The Weeping Goldsmith: Discoveries in the Land of Myanmar, a few more good books here, and last but not least Cowen and Tabarrok Modern Principles. 

Brought to you by The Age of the Infovore.