World Citizen Challenge

Date: January 1st through December 31st of 2009

Host: Eva

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Basically, read books about the world. There are a variety of levels of participation. And a variety of categories. I obviously secretly love failure, because I'm going for the post graduate level. That means seven books, including one from each of the six categories.

My list of possibles:

***Note 1--I tried very hard to stick with only books that we already owned, but a couple (*) have been on my wish list for a long time, and I figured this was a good excuse to possibly finally pick them up.

***Note 2--I'm not entirely sure I have all these books in the appropriate category. Please feel free to set me straight.

Politics:

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith

A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa by Howard W. French

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov

*A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela

*House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe by Christina Lamb

Economics:

*The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs

History:

The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader

Culture:

*Labor's Lot: The Power, History, and Culture of Aboriginal Action by Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

Worldwide Issues:

Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones by Greg Campbell

Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster by Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro

The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention edited by Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner

Memoirs:

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Joung Ung

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan by Benson Deng, Alephonsian Deng, and Benjamin Ajak with Judy A. Bernstein

In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom by Qanta A. Ahmed MD

Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon (This isn't exactly a memoir. But I'm not sure it quite fits under economics either. Just wasn't sure where to put it, but thought it definitely fit in with the spirit of the challenge, so I wanted to use it.)