FOR YOUR EGO:

The Age of Turbulence
By Alan Greenspan
(Penguin Press, 544 pages, $35)
Come on, you don't really care about the Federal Reserve Board or monetary policy. But why be left out of the economic conversation? Greenspan is all over the place these days. The semi-tell-all by the former chairman of the Fed disses the Bushies but, hey, Greenspan really needs to cover that $8 million advance.

Einstein
By Walter Isaacson
(Simon & Schuster, 704 pages, $32)
We love the cover—gee, Einstein looks like a fun fellow—and Isaacson delivers nicely on the prose too. He explains the great scientist's major ideas without jargon while making it clear that Einstein's personal life was more complicated than the theory of relativity.

A Life Decoded
By J. Craig Venter
(Viking Adult, 400 pages, $26)
Almost no one but J. Craig Venter understands what J. Craig Venter does for a living, but the human genome—and Venter's race against government scientists to crack it—supplies this book with a compelling narrative. In fact, Venter has delivered a broadside at the destructive politics of Big Science.

FOR YOUR THREE-HOUR DELAY AT GATE B-18:

Water for Elephants
By Sara Gruen
(Algonquin, 335 pages, $24)
Want to run off and join the circus? After reading Gruen's wonderfully inventive novel of an old man's haunting reminiscences of his circus days during the Depression, you may change your mind. Or maybe not. And as for that Polish-speaking elephant—well, we don't want to give too much away.

The Tin Roof Blowdown
By James Lee Burke
(Simon & Schuster, 384 pages, $26)
Even if you think you've read enough about Hurricane Katrina, check out Burke's noir novel about the underbelly of New Orleans in the wake of the storm. There are looters, shooters, grifters, and psychopaths, along with cops trying to sort them all out. Burke knows the territory, and you get the impression he didn't have to make a lot of it up.

Boom!
By Tom Brokaw
(Random House, 688 pages, $29)
Sex, drugs, feminism, rock 'n' roll—the author of The Greatest Generation takes on the 1960s in this volume, which consists mostly of interviews with the visionaries, leaders, and ordinary people of that turbulent era. Do you actually want to read this much about what some would call the Self-Indulgent Generation? Yes, because Brokaw offers an evenhanded, nuanced perspective.

FOR YOUR NINE-HOUR DELAY:

Herodotus
By Robert B. Strassler
(Pantheon, 1,024 pages, $45)
Correct, that's 1,024 pages. And never mind that this tome weighs more than your laptop. Herodotus, a Greek historian in the fifth century B.C., is widely considered the father of the historical narrative, and this new translation of his account of the Greco-Persian wars is engrossing stuff.

FOR COCKTAIL CONVERSATION:

Guinness
By Bill Yenne
(Wiley, 250 pages, $25)
We always like to find a book we can drink along with, and this is one of those. It's a well-paced history of what's arguably the world's best-known brewery.

Carpe Diem
By Harry Mount
(Hyperion, 272 pages, $20)
If you studied Latin in high school or college and, like us, don't remember a thing, this is your book. Mount uses fun facts—that Angelina Jolie has a Latin phrase tattooed on her belly, for instance—to make a convincing case that the "dead language" is still very much alive.

Vermeer's Hat
By Timothy Brook
(Bloomsbury, 288 pages, $28)
We had no idea globalization was more than 350 years old! In truth, this is a smart, eclectic look at 17th-century history that uses the Dutch master's paintings to illuminate the beginnings of worldwide trade and travel.

FOR YOUR WALLET AND AMBITIONS:

A Million Bucks by 30
By Alan Corey
(Random House, 192 pages, $14)
Yeah, okay, another book by a precocious millionaire. But it's a great buy for a college graduate or the Gen Xer who just moved back home.

Warren Buffett Speaks
By Janet Lowe
(Wiley, 288 pages, $20)
Since the amount of money he's giving away is more than the G.D.P. of many countries, this one is a no-brainer. Be aware, though, that half the book is made up of Buffett's musings on life, friends, and family and that his discussion of investment strategies is not, strictly speaking, a guide to personal finance.

Invest Like a Shark
By James Deporre
(FT Press, 240 pages, $26)
Though deaf, jobless, and almost broke, DePorre figured out how to make real money in the stock market. Part biography, part personal-finance guide, the book basically argues that most small investors in the markets are guppies when they need to be swimming like great white sharks.