The best books of 2010 from The Economist: Books and arts

It wasn't a good year for big analytical books, but 2010 yielded some very fine books on Russia and China.

Download the podcast of that Economist discussion here. First that list:

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. By John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Sleazy, personal, intrusive, shocking and horribly compulsive, particularly about Hillary Clinton and John McCain. By two American journalists, one of whom, John Heilemann, worked for The Economist until 1995. The 2008 presidential race as high-quality political porn.

If you don't care for podcasts, and/or you need that information, right this minute, check this printed/published page out. Second on that list:

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. By David Remnick. Beautifully written, artfully constructed and full of new detail about the president—from his Hawaiian childhood to the Indonesian interlude and his years in Chicago, by the editor of the New Yorker.

Faking It from NYT Freakonomics Radio by freakonomics.podcast@gmail.com (Co-produced by American Public Media’s Marketplace® and WNYC.)

It’s not only our politicians who fake it. William Ian Miller, a law professor at the University of Michigan, admits that his own anxieties about teaching law led him to write the book Faking It. (He’s really a medieval historian.) This podcast features people who fake their religion, their political views – even their desire to have kids. That might sound terrible, but you have to ask: could society survive without lies like these?

Read the full NYT Freakonomics Radio feature here, and listen to their podcast. See also: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, The Anatomy of Disgust