Here are 62 books that Shibumi fans have personally recommended if you like
Shibumi.
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I came to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1988 to serve as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge (played by Martin Sheen in the movie Selma). I was convinced that the death penalty could be justly administered, and seeing Ted Bundy’s final appeal did little to change my mind. Subsequent cases, however, slowly worked a change in my attitude as I saw an execution’s effect on everyone involved in the process. My passion comes from this behind-the-scenes look at capital punishment in America.
I was shaken to my core not only by Capote’s character study of two different yet partnered killers but also by his behind-the-scenes depiction of the death penalty process. For the first time, I began to see how capital punishment affects all those involved in its machinations.
The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I love to read. I always have. I also love to write mysteries that, hopefully, keep my reader guessing until the end of the book. I look for books that not only provide me with a mystery to solve but also inform me of situations and/or places I would otherwise never learn about. I have found all the books on my list to fill that need. They are just an example of the many I have found and read.
This book provided an insight into WWII in Italy. It is captivating and informative.
It tells the story of Pino, a brave 17-year-old who not only spied on the Germans who occupied his homeland but also crossed the Alps many times to save Jewish people. Full of mystery and intrigue, it was hard to put down until the end.
Soon to be a major television event from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland.
Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the USA Today and #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager-obsessed with music, food, and girls-but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape…
Every book in my list is about change and exploring alternative lifestyles. More specifically, they are all about lifestyle change, with some very dystopian. Meaning the change was the result of the old way no longer being available. Each book is different, but all result in a different way of life, one that includes the basics we all strive for: survival, safety, consistency, family, friendship, love, with a creative outlet. These all nurture our passions and provide for a life that respects our beliefs, morals, and spirituality. And all have extremely strong characters. I also embrace change and look forward to the new, the innovative, and the unknown.
I am recommending this book as it introduces the lead character to a new lifestyle from that which she’s used to in the United States. Business and life in Hong Kong are at first crazy and overwhelming, but then she slowly, over time, learns how to adapt and thrive. She begins to feel at home in Hong Kong and doesn’t want to return to her life in the United States.
This is how I felt when I first came to Thailand. But once I became more familiar with life in Thailand, I realized that living on a remote island would be perfect for me at retirement. I embraced change, and I’ve never looked back.
This book is a terrific story that takes place in an amazing city where the old and the new collide. The characters are relatable, allowing us to experience their challenges alongside them. It’s a story you…
Taking place over the course of an eventful week in 1963 Hong Kong, James Clavell’s Noble House is a masterfully woven novel of true suspense.
Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of the illustrious yet financially troubled Struan empire, is racing to undo the damage his predecessor left behind and to once again stand on stable ground. And he’ll do whatever it takes—including striking a hard-fought deal with an American millionaire. But his rival, Quillan Gornt, has other plans. Suddenly caught in a dubious plot involving Soviet spies, Hong Kong’s criminal underground, and the hostile takeover of his company, Dunross holds…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
Apart from being an armchair historian and author of thriller and suspense novels, I’ve been a lifelong collector of original handwritten historical manuscripts—parchments and papyri from medieval times, papal documents from the Middle Ages, ancient illuminated manuscripts from hundreds of years ago, Gregorian chanting parchments…anything memorializing the human need to communicate and tell stories or document historical events. My home is like a museum, with framed historic written memorabilia on every wall, precious reminders of moments in time when someone thought what they were doing needed to be documented, usually in some form of achingly beautiful calligraphy when art was more important than expediency.
Robert Ludlum has been a favorite author of mine for years and was the inspiration for me to become a writer myself some thirty years ago. His plotlines are so intricately woven you question whether the stories are actually true. Of course, he’s best known for the Jason Bourne series, but those weren’t my favorite of his books. The Chancellor Manuscript stands out for its breathtakingly intricate plotting and well-drawn characters. One of those books you can read again years later and it will still be fresh.
“[The Chancellor Manuscript] exerts a riveting appeal, as it seems to justify our worst nightmares of what really goes on in the so-called intelligence community in Washington.”—The New York Times Book Review
Did J. Edgar Hoover die a natural death? Or was he murdered? When a group of high-minded and high-placed intellectuals known as Inver Brass detect a monstrous threat to the country in Hoover’s unethical use of his scandal-ridden private files, they decide to do away with him—quietly, efficiently, with no hint of impropriety. Then bestselling thriller writer Peter Chancellor stumbles onto information that makes his previous books look…
I am a sociologist, and I have a passion for ethnographic research. I just love good stories and good storytelling. I’ve published articles on migrant workers, civil society, and labor rights in Southeast Asia. My research interests have expanded to include metaverse technology in education, authentic learning, and the flipped classroom. I have worked as a freelance copywriter, writer, biographer, and editor for a variety of private and non-profit agencies and organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund and Michelin Guide. I also trained and competed in Latin dance, the foundations of which have been applied to my writing and teaching.
I love this book because it is a refreshing look at the trade in artifacts through the experiences of the artisans who produce them. Frederick Wherry tells us how handicraft artisans are able to utilize their special skills and creative talents, their personal and social connections, and their resourcefulness to their advantage while protecting their livelihood and their craft.
I love Wherry’s acute observations that are colorfully captured in his book, which allows us to see how authenticity gets generated in different situations and how it has protected some artisans from competition.
Today it is not uncommon to find items in department stores that are hand-crafted in countries like Thailand and Costa Rica. These "traditional" crafts now make up an important part of a global market. They support local and sometimes national economies and help create and solidify cultural identity. But these crafts are not necessarily indigenous. Whereas Thailand markets crafts with a long history and cultural legacy, Costa Rica has created a local handicraft tradition where none was known to exist previously. In Global Markets and Local Crafts, Frederick F. Wherry compares the handicraft industries of Thailand and Costa Rica to…
So many of the problems we face as a society stem from the way our economy works. But the economy is presented as something technical and dry, or even simply the ‘natural state of things’. It makes it hard for people to understand where power lies, or even to imagine how it could be otherwise. If we want things to be different – and we really need things to be different – we’ve got to find better ways of communicating what’s going on. I’ve chosen some books that do this – to explain how economic decisions are made. And always to point to the possibility of it all being very different and much better.
In the late 1990s, a new type of economy was being born, one dominated by massive corporations, whose logos were increasingly ubiquitous, and who were driving a culture of consumerism among young people.
Klein traced this corporate dominance to a new form of capitalism in which corporations were becoming ever less interested in the stuff they actually made, be it trainers, takeaway coffee, or jeans. Rather, they were selling a brand, and replacing our very notion of ourselves as citizens living in a democracy with one of consumers shopping in a marketplace.
Klein’s book looks at how companies like Nike and Starbucks transformed society – and what people were doing to challenge their dominance.
A Tenth Anniversary Edition of Naomi Klein's No Logo with a New Introduction by the Author
NO LOGO was an international bestseller and "a movement bible" (The New York Times). Naomi Klein's second book, The Shock Doctrine, was hailed as a "master narrative of our time," and has over a million copies in print worldwide.
In the last decade, No Logo has become an international phenomenon and a cultural manifesto for the critics of unfettered capitalism worldwide. As America faces a second economic depression, Klein's analysis of our corporate and branded world is as timely and powerful as ever.
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I am the author of six espionage books, 5 featuring allied spy, Eva Molenaar operating at the highest levels of Hitler’s Reich. The 6thThe Road of a Thousand Tigers, is my homage to le Carre and Ian Fleming. I have loved the spy genre since I first read The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers and grew up seeing every Bond movie since The Man with the Golden Gun at the cinema.
Published in 2001, The Constant Gardener is my favorite le Carre Novel. A British diplomat in Nairobi, Justin Quayle, is informed his activist wife, Tess has been killed in a remote part of Kenya along with a doctor friend. As Quayle investigates her life (in a similar way to Eric Ambler unfolds Dimitrios’s life), he uncovers her work exposing large pharmaceutical companies’ unethical experiments in the poorest regions of Africa. This leads to her brutal death and cover-up at a diplomatic and political level. It is an exceptional book that makes you rethink how medicine and the industry behind it operates. After the collapse of the USSR, le Carre seemed to struggle with his work, The Constant Gardener though, kick-started another two decades of great writing from him.
'The book breathes life, anger and excitement' Observer
Tessa Quayle, a brilliant and beautiful young social activist, has been found brutally murdered by Lake Turkana in Nairobi. The rumours are that she was faithless, careless, but her husband Justin, a reserved, garden-loving British diplomat, refuses to believe them. As he sets out to discover what really happened to Tessa, he unearths a conspiracy more disturbing, and more deadly, than he could ever have imagined.
A blistering expose of global corruption, The Constant Gardener is also the moving portrayal of a man searching for justice for the woman he has barely…
I’m still in love with good sci-fi and fantasy after 30 years, but folk can get most terribly sniffy about it: ‘Lack of character’, ‘leaden exposition’, the list of accusations rolls on (sadly, a chunk of today’s SFF earns it). But. Every so often a work pops up that looks to the unwary book clubber like a ‘proper novel’; beneath its sexy but abstract cover and pared-back blurb lies a world of adventure that’s like LSD in an innocent mug of tea. Some writers just refuse to accept that speculation (about time and/ or space) needs to sacrifice truth. I’ve picked a few books that stand out to me for this reason – debate their merits with gusto, preferably over a good Martini at 2am.
Banks is a freak of nature: he wrote sci-fi of the pinkest blood as well as prize-winning literary fare; all it took to indulge this duality was the use of a spare initial. The Business is one of the subtler interlopers: a minimalist, monochrome cover and a tale of corporate greed. Banks dials what could have been a staid techno-thriller up to 11 with killer prose, a razor-sharp protagonist, and outrageous flirting with the edges of possibility: magnates who get their jollies beaching cruise liners, hollowed-out mountain lairs, revving supercars to the destruction around the Swiss mountains. This is a novel that pops with the wit and flair of a writer at the height of his powers and determined to have a blast.
Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation. Financially transparent, internally democratic and disavowing conventional familial inheritance, the character of The Business seems, even to Kate, to be vague to the point of invisibility. It possesses, allegedly, a book of Leonardo cartoons, several sets of Crown Jewels and wants to buy its own State in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations.
Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley, a ranch in Nebraska, the firm's secretive Swiss headquarters, and…
Avinash Dixit is an emeritus university professor of economics at Princeton. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was President of the American Economic Association for the year 2008.
A brilliant sweep through the millennia of commerce around the world. If you think globalization happened over the last quarter-century, you are wrong by about 5000 years. Find out how and why.
A sweeping narrative history of world trade—from Sumer in 3000 BC to the firestorm over globalization today—that brilliantly explores trade’s colorful and contentious past and provides fresh insights into social, political, cultural, and economic history, as well as a timely assessment of trade’s future.
Adam Smith wrote that man has an intrinsic “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” But how did trade evolve to the point where we don’t think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world?
In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
I’ve read countless books and articles on business, leadership, and sustainability—but the ones I return to are those that grapple with purpose. I’m drawn to anything that challenges the "business as usual" status quo and shows how business can be a force for good. Having worked across sectors and shaped my own thinking around the challenges facing business and society, I know how powerful purpose can be when done right. But more than that, I feel it—these books fuel my belief that meaningful change is possible. If you care about business’s potential to positively shape society and the planet, give them a go.
I wrote extensively about Paul Polman in my own book—particularly about his courage. What I admire most is that he didn’t just talk about purpose; he lived it and delivered it.
Reading this book reminded me why I found his leadership at Unilever so compelling. Like purpose itself, Unilever isn’t perfect—but what Polman stood for and what he managed to achieve showed what’s truly possible when courage, conviction, and commitment meet strategy.
I loved how the book balances idealism with practical insight. It pushed my thinking further, reaffirming that profit and purpose can and must coexist if business is to remain relevant in today’s world.
Named one of 10 Best New Management Books for 2022 by Thinkers50
"An advocate of sustainable capitalism explains how it's done" - The Economist
"Polman's new book with the sustainable business expert Andrew Winston...argues that it's profitable to do business with the goal of making the world better." - The New York Times
Named as recommended reading by Fortune's CEO Daily
"...Polman has been one of the most significant chief executives of his era and that his approach to business and its role in society has been both valuable and path-breaking."…
