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1	Jodee Blanco Please Stop Laughing At Me Jodee Blanco has traveled a road too many have traveled before her, and after her -- as a teenager, she was bullied in school in the 1970s. No, she was tormented in school. She turned the abuse around, though, and used it as a tool to make herself a successful adult.
2	Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper A teenage girl who has survived a rare form of leukemia now needs a kidney transplant, in Jodi Picoult's novel. There's no trouble finding a perfect match, though, because the girl's parents conceived a little sister for their daughter specifically to provide a donor match. But there is a problem: the little sister, who's 13 now, has decided she would rather not be forced to donate a kidney. And she's hired a lawyer.
3	Timothy Tyson Blood Done Sign My Name In 1970 a young black man named Henry Marrow was murdered in Oxford, North Carolina, by a hot-tempered white businessman. That businessman's son was a friend of then-11-year-old Timothy Tyson, who's now a professor and who now retells the story -- and its tragic aftermath.
4	Howell Raines The One That Got Away By 2001, veteran newspaperman Howell Raines had reached the top of his profession, with his appointment as executive editor of the New York Times. Within less than two years, Raines was painfully pulled down from that lofty perch by the Jayson Blair scandal at the Times, an episode that forced him to reassess his life and his career. One result of his rumination is his new memoir "The One That Got Away."
5	Amy Tan The Bonesetter's Daughter Superstition, ghosts, curses, and a poignant but troubled mother-daughter relationship highlight this Amy Tan novel, a story that takes place in early 20th century China and modern-day California.
6	Barack Obama Dreams From My Father Barack Obama was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother in 1961, but his parents divorced when he was just two years old. Obama has said his father was little more than a myth to him, at the time of the elder Obama's death in 1982. Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put perspective on his mixed-race heritage. The result was his book "Dreams From My Father," first published in 1995. That's when Eye on Books talked with him. Get a FREE transcript
7	Laura Leedy Gansler The Mysterious Private Thompson In the Civil War, there was a young Union soldier from Michigan named Franklin Thompson, who distinguished himself on the battlefield, but after two years suddenly went missing. The Army never found Private Thompson, because he was actually a "she" -- Canadian-born Sarah Emma Edmonds, who had posed as a man. Her remarkable story is told in Laura Leedy Gansler's book.
8	Gary Paulsen How Angel Peterson Got His Name For three decades Gary Paulsen has been writing autobiographical fiction for young readers, and has built a large and loyal following for his true-to-life stories. His latest book is better than true-to-life, it's true. Paulsen tells stories from his own 13th year, a time when he and his buddies in Minnesota undertook what we would today call "extreme sports" -- but they were just trying to have fun.
9	Richard Florida The Flight of the Creative Class The United States is facing a brain drain. Increasing numbers of the world's most intelligent and creative people are choosing to live and work elsewhere, says Richard Florida, a professor of urban planning and a leading voice in regional economic development. In 2002 he described what he called The Rise of the Creative Class, in a book by that name. Now he's describing something much more alarming.
10	Glenn Hurowitz Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party There are many theories about why the Democrats have been unable to get much done in the last twenty years, even when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Many of those theories try to identify what the party didn't, or couldn't, do. But in the end, says journalist, blogger, and progressive activist Glenn Hurowitz, those theories assume that the Democrats don't know what to do. He says that's not the case at all -- they know what to do. They just don't have the courage to do it. His book "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party" challenges Democrats to follow the examples of courageous people like Paul Wellstone, Nancy Pelosi, and MoveOn.org.

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