Summer reading lists are popping up all over, in a nicely non-partisan way (see lists at The Guardian--where the Erin O'Connor mentioned is most definitely the other Erin O'Connor--and at National Review Online). Lots of good stuff listed there.

My own recent summer reads include Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (the granddaddy of true crime fiction, a chilling account of mass murder that is also a very intriguing window into how genres emerge), David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise (too funny, too true, should be read in Starbucks for proper frisson), and Tyler Anbinder's Five Points (a highly readable, densely researched account of life in nineteenth-century Manhattan's worst slum, with truly exceptional genealogical work on where Five Points' vast numbers of Irish immigrants came from). Currently reading: Saul Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, about a young man hovering anxiously outside of life as he awaits draft orders, and H.W. Brands' The Age of Gold, a can't-put-downer about the California gold rush.

All highly recommended.

The film In Cold Blood is excellent. And somewhat creepy because Robert Blake, who is on trial for murder, plays one of the murderers.