A Bed for the Night is a great book for anyone interested in the ethical, financial, geographic, and legal challenges facing humanitarianism as a field and the concept behind intervention itself. It's a critical book, and not one that will encourage fluffly concepts of 'doing good' for the sake of 'helpless' people.

Reiff's book looks at critical decisions made in 'disaster' situations and the effects of these decisions on the people who whose lives are on the line (as opposed to those whose jobs are on the line). Humanitarian work is exceedingly complex in terms of political relations, money, and access. This book asks the tough questions and rattles the answers you may think are the right ones.

Very worthwhile.

My grandfather died this
summer.  It wasn't a bad death, but nor was it a good one (can these
things be measured in such terms?).  In his last days there was only
one thing that really gave him peace and joy: A Sand County Almanac.  I
read it to him in his bed, in his chair, and in his hospital room.  His
reaction was always one of pure joy and awe at the language of holistic
conservation and the verbal diary sketches in this book.  It gave him
hope and excitement.  He would interrupt the nurses and ask them to sit
and listen, he would stop passing visitors and offer them a break to
take some in.  He asked all the family members if they had their own
copy.  The copy I read him had a note in it, written to a woman who
would eventually become his wife.  It was the first gift he had given
her.  It was the first book he gave me.

While the essays and writings describe a time and place some
distance from here (Wisconsin in the mid-Century), the themes and
language endure.  Leopold presents a rich world in which humans are
involved in their surroundings, as with all animals: not managers, not
divested actors.  While some ecologists may be critical of some of the
themes in this book (such as hunting), Leopold's perspective is one to
hear.  His writing has even influenced a new genre of back-to-the-land
musicians, perhaps most notably the band Brightblack Morning Light, who
live off the grid in New Mexico.

The last chapter I read of A Sand County Almanac, was October.  It
was about changes and seasons and golden Tamaracks, a fitting tribute
to my Wisconsin grandfather and the land he loved.

Themba

I have not read this book.  Let's just come clean on that right off the bat.  It's brand new. 

I
corresponded for a while with Emmanuel Jal while living in Oxford and
trying to figure out a way to use music, and hip-hop especially, to
document life and stem the rising tide of gang violence among Sudanese
refugee youth in Cairo who had fled the civil war, the genocide in
Darfur, or any number of other threats in the Sudan and along the way. 
I had spent the previous year with one of the gangs, hearing stories of
transit and tragedy, hope and reconnection, and ultimately desperation
and frustration (refugees have rights under international law, but
nobody actually provides them, and Sudanese certainly aren't 'priority'
refugees).

Emmanuel Jal came to my attention as an up-and-coming rapper in
London who was working to draw attention to Sudanese refugees and
battling the 'weak and helpless' refugee-camp stereotype used to
promote guilt-reduction-through-your-wallet TV ads.  Jal's story
is simultaneously unique and replicated everyday.  Only the luckiest of
refugees make it to Europe (and have books and documentaries about
them), but this doesn't belittle the journey.  Understanding what
happens to refugees in the world is, unfortunately, an understanding of
how dark international politics really is.

Why not start with War Child and see how the journey begins?

Cairo's city center is a crumbling testament to a more opulent time.  Its rooftop terraces are cracked and its marble staircases grooved and rounded by countless feet too nervous to trust ornate iron elevators last serviced too many years ago.   The Greek Club, an exclusive and smokey gathering place for beer-drinking artists and the late-night wealthy set, is perched above the city's wide main circle, poised with a view to the monument below.  It was in this hall, surrounded by an inconceivable and surreal cast of people, that I first heard about The Yacoubian Building.  At the table was an American expat translator who had just finished the English version of the new book by Alaa al-Aswany, and he was reluctant to say much about it.  The unspoken and internalized, it turns out, is a persistent theme.

The novel unfolds in layers, much of it in the streets around the Greek Club, intertwining personalities and brashly exposing the seething private pressures and vices that flow through the massively populated metropolis: things many in Cairo are reluctant to say much about.  Introducing an array of characters that includes a respected elderly gentleman, a policeman, a business owner, and two lovers whose lives diverge dramatically, the novel explores loneliness, desperation, religion, and nostalgia through the crossing of barriers and and the intersection of lives.  Corruption, homosexuality, fundamentalism, terrorism, and sexual dynamics are omnipresent unspoken realities in Cairo.  This novel exposes them.

The hugely successful (at least in Egypt) film adaptation was quickly restricted to a handful of theatres upon release and censored by order of the government.  That means it has to be good.

Themba

Just like all great photo documents, this book isn't put together by accomplished professionals and the photos within aren't posed in fancy studios.  The book contains no text.  The candid black and white photos almost voyeuristically present a wide variety of scenes - from punk brawls to public transport to homelessness to the absurdity of modern life in America.  The shots are real - real life, real people, real photos, no pretension and no ego.

You can call this 'underground photography' if you like (that's what amazon.com calls it) but it's not.  It's as street level as it gets.

Hamburger Eyes is a quarterly photo magazine out of San Francisco featuring a rotating cast of photographers including ex-Olympian Stefan Simikich and Ray Potes, the best photographers on the West Coast.  This is their first book.  And it's excellent.

Perhaps the irony of this book is that no self-respecting punk house would keep a nearly $30 coffee table book out for perusal by guests for afternoon tea. Most don't even have coffee tables. That said, this curious anthropology of the 'punk tribe' includes three infamous Olympia locations that many Olympians may not know exist, and others know intimately (perhaps too intimately for some).

Other Olympia punk houses have come and gone, some literally torn to the ground by frenzied inhabitants (RIP House of Doom), but the Red House, Track House, and Lucky 7 House continue to host people, pets, workshops, shows, and general mayhem into the future! The pictures in this book are a little blurry, but just imagine you're waking up off a bare mattress on the floor of the basement after a long night. Welcome home.

Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire was one of only a handful of non-Rwandans to experience the 1994 genocide first-hand. As the head of the criminally small and restricted UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Dallaire was charged with maintaining peace in the face of an expertly coordinated and horrifyingly efficient genocidal onslaught.

Challenged by lack of resources, orders 'not to act', and overwhelming international apathy, Dallaire watched his team killed, his efforts ignored, his friends slaughtered, and the country he loved literally become a mass grave in a matter of days. After a descent into alcoholism and a number of suicide attempts, he has begun to publicly describe his experience: including meetings with the coordinators of the genocide, efforts to protect innocent Rwandans, dealing with international abandonment, and the moral corruption that allowed the world to 'leave Rwanda to its fate'. This book is a critical document for everyone.

I moved to Rwanda not long after Dallaire left, and waited for a long time to see this book published. Perhaps only Philip Gourevich's "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" occupies the the same plane as Dallaire's book: as critical documents, compelling histories, and absolutely essential reading.