Rough Crossings - Britain, The Slaves and The American Revolution by Simon Schama

Superb historical account. Very thoroughly researched - comprehensive comes to mind. Scholarly but not too scholarly. Schama includes enough of the human anecdotal to keep our interest while presenting this historical account of some lesser-known parts of The American Revolution and The French Revolution - oh, and some history of Canada and Nova Scotia as well. The reality is a little daunting - survival as a slave is so (fortunately) removed from our own modern lives.

State of War - The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen

So good as to be incredibly depressing. If you follow the news, not much of this will come as a surprise - and I'm old and jaded enough to be not-as-horrified-as-I-should-be, or would have been in my twenties or thirties. The Bush adminsitration and the CIA both absolutely ooze incompetence - and that is very scary, but not new. Still, I am comforted that it has been written down. The power of the word - may it yet do some good.