What I'm Reading Now

Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative  Brain

David M. Robinson, ed. The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Writings

Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, eds. The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts

Recommended

It's not enough anymore to say that war is evil and leave it at that. We need to develop an understanding of the forces that lead to war that is as nuanced and complex as the phenomenon itself. Here are some books to begin this heartbreaking, essential exploration:

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
Hedges is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and a former divinity student. He draws on his own experience in combat zones and on the literature of warfare from Homer to the present to take a moving look at the seductions and addictions of war.

The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
In this unforgettable blending of memoir and fiction, Vietnam veteran O'Brien gives us a sense of what war is like for the soldiers who fight it, and what they face when they return home.

A Terrible Love of War
by James Hillman
The foremost thinker in depth (Jungian) psychology today, Hillman explores the archetypal impulse to wage war. In his usual uncompromising and provocative way, he considers war as an authentic religious phenomenon, which is why humans are simultaneously so attracted to it and find it so terrible.

Previous Recommendations

Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004)
If you're interested in the extraordinary explorations of mind and consciousness now going on but find the science a little daunting, this is a great place to dive in. Blackmore taught the subject for ten years, so she's found accessible ways to explain complicated ideas. Oh, and by the way, she's been practicing Zen meditation for twenty years. The book has a slightly frenetic manga-meets-PowerPoint design, but it's remarkably comprehensive and insightful.

Stephen Batchelor, Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil (Riverhead Books, 2004)

Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), especially the chapter titled "What the Buddha Saw"

Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain (Scribner, 2004)