I AM LEGEND, by Richard Matheson.

I am Legend is arguably the greatest short horror novel ever written, and its influence on the horror genre has been profound. Stephen King and many other of today's masters rank this book highly in their personal top ten lists of favorites. It is a short novel that can be read in one sitting; it is hard to put down, building in intensity from start to finish. Matheson creates an entirely new type of vampire fiction herein. Transcending the traditional vampire tale, he adds science fiction elements to produce a refreshing new interpretation of Stoker's legend. The most fascinating part of the story is the protagonist's (Richard Neville's) attempts to explain the legendary aspects of the vampire myth in scientific terms. His discovery of a bacterium, which he dubs vampiris, as the true source of vampirism struck me anew reading the novel again after the events of September 11, 2001. Although we only get pieces of the story regarding the outbreak of the vampiric plague, including a reference to bombings, it can easily be seen as the fruits of germ warfare. Neville even conjectures that the Black Death of the Middle Ages was caused by this same vampiris germ, and he extrapolates facts and ideas from that history in his attempts to understand why such defenses as garlic, crosses, and stakes driven into the heart actually are effective against the hordes of undead creatures menacing his own time. He studies academic texts and conducts experiments with the blood of these creatures, which is the means by which he identifies the bacterium. The essence of garlic has no effect on the germ when injected into a blood sample, which initially he is unable to explain, but he later is able to explain garlic's effectiveness. Less scientific tests lead him to conclude that crosses are only effective against "Christian" vampires; the cross has no meaning to for vampires who were once Jews and Moslems, but sacred symbols of those religions, such as the Torah and the Koran, do. All of these scientific tests and speculations are just fascinating.
Neville is essentially the last man on earth, and the loneliness of his situation is the central part of the story. Matheson is able to communicate Neville's emotional feelings vividly, making him very real. We gradually acquire the story of the deaths of Neville's wife and daughter, essentially experiencing the pain he goes through when these memories overcome him. We watch him drink himself into a stupor as each night finds him besieged in his fortified house, surrounded by vampires, including his old friend and neighbor, calling for him to come out. We watch him slowly lose his grip on sanity and come very close to giving up. Then, however, we watch him overcome his depression and courageously fight to live in the nightmare world he is trapped in. The scenes with the dog he finds are full of emotion and really gripped this reader. This is Neville's first contact with nonvampiric life, and his attempts to befriend and help the poor creature (at the same time finally finding a companion) touched me greatly and brought tears to my eyes. His eventual discovery of another human being like himself is also powerful and emotional, although to speak more about this aspect of the story is to risk giving something away to the future reader.
This is a story of one man overcoming all obstacles and fighting to defend his way of life and his very humanity. The novel deals with the human condition, the essential ingredient to effective horror writing. Neville struggles constantly with his doubts and fears, particularly as he commits acts that he would have condemned as barbarous in the time before the plague. His needs for companionship of any kind offer us a clear image of the inner soul of man. By the end of the story, he does indeed become legend, both in his world and in ours.

I AM LEGEND, by Richard Matheson

The book takes place between 1976 and 1979. The novel opens with the monotony and horror of the daily life of the protagonist, Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the only survivor of an apocalypse caused by a pandemic of a bacterium, the symptoms of which are very similar to vampirism. Every day he makes repairs to his house, boarding up windows, stringing and hanging garlic, disposing of vampires' corpses on his lawn and going out to gather any additional supplies needed for hunting and killing more vampires.
Neville's psychological disposition is a significant element in the novel, and his struggles with despair imbue the character with intensity and gravitas. The author emphasizes that he is an ordinary, flawed man trying to deal with an extraordinary catastrophe. It also explores the loneliness of being by himself, excitement and hope of finding others, and disappointment over still finding himself alone. During the evenings, Neville drinks whiskey and listens to records. The records referenced by name are sometimes puns on what's happening and sometimes they simply reflect Neville's mood.
Much of the story is devoted to Neville's struggles to understand the plague that has infected everyone around him, and the novel details the progress of his discoveries. Instead of asking the reader to accept a supernatural explanation for vampire phenomena, the author strives to offer scientific basis for such symptoms as aversion to garlic, craving of fresh blood, and resistance to bullets but vulnerability to stakes and sunlight. The aversion to mirrors and crosses is classified as psychological. Neville hypothesizes that he is immune to the bacteria because he was bitten by a vampire bat when he was stationed in Panama.
One day, a dog appears in the neighborhood. Neville spends weeks trying to win its trust and domesticate it. He eventually traps the terrified dog and wins it over, but it dies from the vampire infection a week later.
As the story progresses, it is revealed that some infected people have discovered a means to hold the disease at bay. However, the "still living" people appear no different than the true vampire during the day while both are immobilized in sleep. Thus, along with the vampires, Neville kills the still living people. He becomes a source of terror to the still living, since he can go around in daylight (which they can only do for a short length of time) and kill them while they sleep.
The still living send a girl named Ruth to spy on Neville, and they cleverly replicate Neville's relationship to the dog. Ruth pretends to be terrified of Neville at first sight, and rather than spend weeks trying to win her over, he attacks her and drags her back to his house. Though Neville is suspicious of her true nature and much of their interaction focuses on Neville's internal struggle between his deep seated paranoia and his hope, it is clear by his seizure of Ruth that the scales have tipped in favor of the irrational. Eventually Neville performs a blood test on her, revealing her true nature to him before she knocks him out. Ruth leaves a note telling him about the group of people like her, explaining that she was sent to spy and how monstrous he appears to them. Months later, the still living people attack, shooting Neville but taking him alive so that he can be executed in front of everyone in the new society.
Before he can be executed, Ruth provides him with a means of suicide. Neville chooses to take his own life because he finally realizes why the new vampire society regards him as a monster. Just as vampires were regarded as legendary monsters that preyed on the vulnerable humans in their beds, Neville has become the last of a dead breed: a mythical figure that kills both vampires and the infected living while they are sleeping. He becomes a legend as the vampires once were, hence the title

INTO THE WILD, by Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild is the story of Christopher McCandless, who grew up in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., Annandale, Virginia, and died at age 24 in a wilderness area of the state of Alaska. After graduating in 1990 from Emory University, McCandless ceased communicating with his family, gave away his savings of $24,000 to OXFAM and began travelling, later abandoning his car and burning all the money in his wallet.
In April 1992, an Alaskan named Jim Gallien gave McCandless a ride to the Stampede Trail in Alaska. There McCandless headed down the snow-covered trail to begin an odyssey with only ten pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, a camera, several boxes of rifle rounds, some camping gear, and a small selection of literature—including a field guide to the region's edible plants, Tana'ina Plantlore. He took no map or compass. He died some time in August, and his decomposed body was found in early September by moose hunters.
The book begins with the discovery of McCandless's body inside an abandoned bus (63°51'36.13"N 149°24'50.62"W)[3] and retraces his travels during the two years he was missing. Christopher shed his real name early in his journey, adopting the moniker "Alexander Supertramp". He spent time in Carthage, South Dakota with a man named Wayne Westerberg, and in Slab City, California with Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob. Krakauer interprets McCandless' intensely ascetic personality as possibly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and his favorite writer, Jack London. He explores the similarities between McCandless' experiences and motivations and his own as a young man, recounting in detail his own attempt to climb Devils Thumb in Alaska. He also relates the stories of some other young men who vanished into the wilderness, such as Everett Ruess, an artist and wanderer who went missing in the Utah desert during 1934 at age 20. In addition, he describes at some length the grief and puzzlement of McCandless's family and friends.
McCandless survived for approximately 112 days in the Alaskan wilderness, foraging for edible roots and berries, shooting an assortment of game—including a moose—and keeping a journal. Although he planned to hike to the coast, the boggy terrain of summer proved too difficult and he decided instead to camp in a derelict bus. In July, he tried to leave, only to find the route blocked by high water. Toward the end of July, after apparently remaining healthy for more than three months, McCandless wrote a journal entry reporting extreme weakness and blaming it on "pot. seeds." As Krakauer explains, McCandless had been eating the roots of Hedysarum alpinum, a historically edible plant commonly known as wild potato (also "Eskimo potato"). , which are sweet and nourishing in the spring but later become too tough to eat. When this happened, McCandless may have attempted to eat the seeds instead. Krakauer theorizes that the seeds contained a poisonous alkaloid, possibly swainsonine (the toxic chemical in locoweed) or something similar. In addition to neurological symptoms such as weakness and loss of coordination, the poison causes starvation by blocking nutrient metabolism in the body.
According to Krakauer, a well-nourished person might consume the seeds and survive because the body can use its stores of glucose and amino acids to rid itself of the poison. Since McCandless lived on a diet of rice, lean meat, and wild plants and had less than 10% body fat when he died, Krakauer theorized he was likely unable to fend off the toxins. Roots of wild potato were used extensively by aboriginal people, eaten both raw and cooked and used as a licorice substitute. Inuit hunters eat wild potato roots while hunting. However, when the Eskimo potatoes from the area around the bus were later tested in a laboratory of the University of Alaska Fairbanks by Dr. Thomas Clausen, toxins were not found. In the most recent edition of his book, Krakauer has slightly modified his theory regarding the cause of McCandless' death. He believes the seeds of the wild potato had been moldy, and it is the mold that contributed to the seeds' toxicity. The exact cause of the young man's death remains open to question. McCandless may simply have starved to death, a theory backed by the fact that McCandless weighed an estimated 67 pounds at the time his body was discovered.

THE INNOCENT MAN, by John Grisham

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet.In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits—drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa.In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder.With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row.If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!), by Stephen Colbert, Richard Dahm, Paul Dinello, Allison Silverman et al.

From the host of television's comedy-punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23 hours of your day. This book contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast, his most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form. Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones. You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.--From publisher description.

AN INCONVENIENT BOOK, by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe

FUNNY.
OUTRAGEOUS.
TRUE.
Have you ever wondered why some of the biggest problems we face, from illegal immigration to global warming to poverty, never seem to get fixed? The reason is simple: the solutions just aren’t very convenient. Fortunately, radio and television host Glenn Beck doesn’t care much about convenience; he cares about common sense.
Take the issue of poverty, for example. Over the last forty years, America’s ten poorest cities all had one simple thing in common, but self–serving politicians will never tell you what that is (or explain how easy it would be to change): Glenn Beck will (see chapter 20).
Global warming is another issue that’s ripe with lies and distortion. How many times have you heard that carbon dioxide is responsible for huge natural disasters that have killed millions of people? The truth is, it’s actually the other way around: as CO2 has increased, deaths from extreme weather have decreased. Bet you’ll never see that in an Al Gore slide show.
An Inconvenient Book contains hundreds of these same “why have I never heard that before?” types of facts that will leave you wondering how political correctness, special interests, and outright stupidity have gotten us so far away from the commonsense solutions this country was built on.
As the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, The Glenn Beck Program, and a prime–time television show on CNN Headline News, Glenn Beck combines a refreshing level of honesty with a biting sense of humor and a lot of research to find solutions that will open your eyes while entertaining you along the way.