This might better have been subtitled “the reading habits of famous, mostly literary, people”. It’s not so much the story of books that have “stirred the world” as it is of books that were read by people who did the stirring. Not that it’s uninteresting; the interview with David McCullough on the reading habits of American presidents is particularity good. It does, however, lack the cohesiveness of Basbanes’ earlier books-about-books. His failure to include any discussion of religious works, other than a chapter devoted to Elaine Pagels’ unorthodox treatment of the Bible, is a glaring omission.