Here are 72 books from the 1663 reviewed that have particularly impressed me, divided into fiction and nonfiction lists.
They can also be found in the other indices, marked with a **.
Fiction
Non-Fiction
- Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler: Proofs from THE BOOK**
- mathematical results that are beautiful, accessible, and profound
- Kevin Bales: Disposable People**
- a passionate but scholarly study of modern slavery
- Joel Beinin, Joe Stork: Political Islam**
Essays from Middle East Report
- David Bellos: Georges Perec**
A Life in Words
- Marcel Berger: Geometry Revealed**
A Jacob's Ladder to Modern Higher Geometry
- Samuel Bowles: Microeconomics**
Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution
- Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century**
- a social and economic history of the shaping of the modern world
- Timothy Brook: The Confusions of Pleasure**
Commerce and Culture in Ming China
- Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth: How Monkeys See the World**
Inside the Mind of Another Species
- John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, et al.: The Symmetries of Things**
- repeating patterns, from the plane to higher dimensions
- Frederick Crews: Postmodern Pooh**
- biting parody of modern literary criticism
- Robert Cribb: Historical Atlas of Indonesia**
- learned and lavish
- Paul N. Edwards: A Vast Machine**
Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
- Thomas Eisner: For Love of Insects**
- the grand synthesis of a veteran scientist
- Gary William Flake: The Computational Beauty of Nature**
Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
- Ronald Fraser: Blood of Spain**
An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War
- Stephen Jay Gould: Ontogeny and Phylogeny**
- the history of recapitulation; developmental timing and evolution
- Stewart Guthrie: Faces in the Clouds**
A New Theory of Religion
- Joel David Hamkins: Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics**
- from numbers and rigor to incompleteness and set theory
- Cemal Kafadar: Between Two Worlds**
The Construction of the Ottoman State
- Audrey Kahin: Regional Dynamics of the Indonesian Revolution**
- an unusually appealing essay collection on 1945-50
- Patrick Vinton Kirch: On the Road of the Winds**
An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Conquest
- Donald E. Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming**
Fundamental Algorithms; Seminumerical Algorithms; Sorting and Searching
- Daniel J.C. Kronauer: Army Ants**
Nature's Ultimate Social Hunters
- Richard Lewontin: Human Diversity**
- the realities of human biological variation
- Cecilia Lindqvist: China, Empire of the Written Symbol**
- Chinese history and culture through written characters
- Jessica Litman: Digital Copyright**
- intellectual property and the Internet
- Mario Liverani: Israel's History and the History of Israel**
- ancient histories, normal and invented
- Paul Lockhart: Arithmetic**
- a deep look at elementary mathematics
- Harry Mathews, Alastair Brotchie: Oulipo Compendium**
- people, works, and forms, with extensive examples
- John McPhee: Annals of the Former World**
- travels across the United States with geologists
- Christopher Moore, Stephan Mertens: The Nature of Computation**
- L, P, NP, EXP, co, SPACE, TIME, BPP, BQP, ...
- Arthur Morris: The Art of Bird Photography**
The Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques
- Brian Morris: Anthropological Studies of Religion**
An Introductory Text
- Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability**
The Practice of Simplicity
- Karl J. Niklas: The Evolutionary Biology of Plants**
- evolution makes sense of otherwise unconnected areas of botany
- S. Robert Ramsey: The Languages of China**
- social, cultural, and historical background as well as linguistics
- James C. Scott: Weapons of the Weak**
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
- Camilla Townsend: The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs**
- using indigenous Nahuatl sources
- Mary E. White: After the Greening**
- a geological and botanical history of Australia