Controversial Books for BooksOfFaith

This page shows the most "controversial" books in this library, as measured by the highest standard deviation of members' star ratings.

Standard Deviation Average Rating Your Rating Title
1.199 3.9 The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place by Ian Baker
1.189 3.53 Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
1.167 3.64 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
1.143 3.57 A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman by Lisa Shannon
1.123 3.38 Football for Dummies by Howie Long
1.109 3.3 It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us by Hillary Rodham Clinton
1.082 3.76 Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
1.078 3.35 In the Shadow of the Law by Kermit Roosevelt
1.07 3.63 Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner
1.069 3.49 Until I Find You by John Irving
1.066 3.68 The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
1.052 3.68 South of Broad by Pat Conroy
1.041 3.96 Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
1.041 3.41 His Brother's Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine by Jonathan Weiner
1.039 3.78 Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
1.036 3.5 A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi
1.036 3.87 The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
1.035 3.31 The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream by Jeremy Rifkin
1.034 3.89 About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory by Barry Lopez
1.034 3.91 Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
1.03 3.66 The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals by Luigi Barzini
1.029 3.43 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
1.024 3.78 Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia by Tom Bissell
1.022 3.87 Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle
1.02 3.72 A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis
1.017 3.57 Snow by Orhan Pamuk
1.011 3.73 The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
1.008 3.56 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
1.007 3.93 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
1.005 4.09 Yoga 28-Day Exercise Plan by Richard Hittleman
1 3.85 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
1 3.49 Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers
0.999 3.29 Disobedience by Jane Hamilton
0.997 3.35 A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
0.989 3.79 The Known World by Edward P. Jones
0.988 3.94 The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
0.988 3.41 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
0.986 3.55 The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey
0.983 3.85 True North by Jim Harrison
0.982 3.62 The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
0.978 3.93 Atonement by Ian McEwan
0.977 3.59 Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today by Tom Brokaw
0.975 4.05 Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour
0.971 3.83 Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
0.97 3.62 Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley
0.97 3.86 The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz
0.967 3.78 The Inhabited Woman by Gioconda Belli
0.967 3.68 The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw
0.962 3.96 Just Before Dark by Jim Harrison
0.961 3.63 Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
0.96 3.4 Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx
0.959 3.84 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
0.959 3.51 Longitudes and Attitudes by Thomas L. Friedman
0.959 4.08 de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens
0.958 3.76 My Losing Season by Pat Conroy
0.957 3.45 Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard
0.957 3.7 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
0.957 3.92 My Ántonia by Willa Cather
0.955 3.94 Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton
0.955 3.96 Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
0.954 4.07 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West
0.953 3.53 Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda by Omar Nasiri
0.95 3.85 Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
0.947 3.52 The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain by Paul Theroux
0.942 3.54 The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
0.942 3.88 The Founding Fish by John McPhee
0.941 4.13 Selected Poems by W. H. Auden
0.941 4.02 Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan
0.94 4.16 The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966 by Rick Atkinson
0.935 3.5 The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle
0.935 3.91 Pretty Birds by Scott Simon
0.934 3.82 The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado
0.934 3.37 Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert
0.933 3.55 The Women by T.C. Boyle
0.932 4.03 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
0.931 3.97 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
0.93 3.92 DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Florence & Tuscany by Christopher Catling
0.928 3.44 American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever
0.927 3.8 Beyond the Bedroom Wall: A Family Album by Larry Woiwode
0.927 3.67 A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle
0.927 3.44 Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy by Frances Mayes
0.926 3.67 A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen
0.926 4.08 DK Eyewitness Travel Guide : Great Britain by Michael Leapman
0.922 4.04 Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
0.92 3.79 How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen
0.919 4.08 An unexpected light : travels in Afghanistan by Jason Elliot
0.918 4.23 DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Vienna by Stephen Brook
0.917 3.81 In Tuscany by Frances Mayes
0.915 3.77 Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
0.915 3.56 Waiting by Ha Jin
0.91 4.03 You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
0.908 3.65 The Coffee Trader by David Liss
0.908 3.94 All the Names by José Saramago
0.907 3.16 Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found by Marie Brenner
0.907 3.91 Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
0.904 4.14 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
0.904 3.56 Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo
0.9 4.15 DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Prague by DK
0.898 4.02 Dalva by Jim Harrison
0.898 3.92 Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid
0.898 3.81 The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
0.898 3.73 In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
0.896 2.98 Blinding Light by Paul Theroux
0.895 3.86 Close Range by Annie Proulx
0.895 3.98 Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
0.891 3.8 The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
0.891 3.73 Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
0.89 3.66 My Other Life by Paul Theroux
0.89 3.85 The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
0.889 3.66 That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx
0.884 3.75 Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant
0.883 3.93 The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
0.882 4.24 Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey
0.881 3.62 Run by Ann Patchett
0.881 3.84 How Fiction Works by James Wood
0.88 3.88 A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
0.88 4.19 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
0.878 3.6 Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart
0.878 3.54 Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester
0.877 4.16 Selected Stories by Alice Munro
0.876 3.75 Great Books by David Denby
0.875 3.81 Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kira Salak
0.874 3.72 America America by Ethan Canin
0.874 3.91 The Fall by Simon Mawer
0.873 3.93 A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt
0.873 3.6 The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland by Saira Shah
0.873 3.61 Renegade: The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe
0.872 3.51 Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
0.872 3.91 Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
0.872 4.03 The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live by Sarah Susanka
0.869 3.89 The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll
0.864 3.77 The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
0.862 3.96 Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
0.861 4.21 The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
0.855 3.83 The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly
0.855 3.85 The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison
0.854 4.02 A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
0.854 4.02 A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
0.853 3.77 What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin
0.851 3.84 The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper
0.851 3.56 Wolf: A False Memoir by Jim Harrison
0.85 4.5 Novels: The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
0.846 3.69 The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
0.845 4.02 The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education by Craig M. Mullaney
0.842 3.89 Uffizi Gallery: The Official Guide All of the Works by Gloria Fossi
0.842 4.26 Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
0.841 4.05 No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
0.84 4.13 The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston
0.838 3.95 Off to the Side: A Memoir by Jim Harrison
0.837 3.89 A Writer's House in Wales by Jan Morris
0.837 3.46 Testimonies by Patrick O'Brian
0.836 3.94 Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
0.836 3.93 The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq by Rory Stewart
0.835 3.98 From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
0.834 3.92 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
0.834 3.77 Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle
0.833 3.94 The Night in Question: Stories by Tobias Wolff
0.832 3.88 The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby
0.832 3.87 The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James K. Galbraith
0.83 4.11 Coming into the Country by John McPhee
0.83 4.16 Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
0.83 3.59 The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones
0.829 3.94 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
0.829 3.98 The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese
0.829 3.74 Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr
0.828 4.04 Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times by George Crile
0.826 4.26 Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages by Harold Bloom
0.825 3.92 News from Tartary by Peter Fleming
0.825 4.15 What Is the What by Dave Eggers
0.825 4.09 Interpreter of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
0.824 4.18 Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
0.824 3.89 Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry
0.824 4.36 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
0.823 4.12 The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
0.822 3.98 Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler
0.822 4.08 The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory by David Plouffe
0.821 4.13 Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
0.82 4.05 A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird
0.817 4.13 Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
0.817 3.94 True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy
0.816 4.09 The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
0.812 4.05 The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
0.809 3.95 Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann
0.808 3.95 Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
0.807 4.28 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
0.806 3.98 The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
0.805 3.96 Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
0.803 3.7 Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, "Rabbit Remembered" by John Updike
0.8 4.3 Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof
0.8 4.09 Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard by Sara Wheeler
0.799 3.66 Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer
0.799 3.83 Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
0.798 4.15 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
0.797 4.08 T.C. Boyle Stories by T.C. Boyle
0.797 3.79 The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
0.796 3.68 The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election by Dan Baltz
0.795 4.02 DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Italy by DK
0.794 3.65 Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone by Jenni Ferrari-Adler
0.794 3.66 The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony Bourdain
0.793 3.84 Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick
0.791 4.03 Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
0.79 3.75 Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray
0.789 3.76 The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran
0.787 3.82 The Pillars of Hercules by Paul Theroux
0.787 3.94 A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: Stories by John Murray
0.786 3.93 Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu by Kira Salak
0.786 4.05 The World as I Found It by Bruce Duffy
0.782 3.76 The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
0.782 3.98 Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
0.781 4.25 Island: The Complete Stories by Alistair MacLeod
0.78 3.83 Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry
0.778 4.31 "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
0.777 3.83 Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography by David S. Reynolds
0.777 3.63 Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile
0.774 3.73 The Beast God Forgot to Invent: Novellas by Jim Harrison
0.77 4.04 The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik
0.767 3.91 Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King
0.766 3.83 The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam
0.766 4.11 Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin B. Wright
0.759 3.94 DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Rome by DK
0.758 3.7 The Summer He Didn't Die by Jim Harrison
0.758 4.55 Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works by Sally Fitzgerald
0.757 4.14 The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
0.752 4.12 Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power
0.752 3.36 Barefoot in Baghdad: A Story of Identity-My Own and What It Means to Be a Woman in Chaos by Manal Omar
0.749 4.3 The Cooking of Southwest France: Recipes from France's Magnificent Rustic Cuisine by Paula Wolfert
0.748 4.15 The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
0.745 4.21 My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese
0.743 4.22 The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
0.742 3.97 West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story by Tamim Ansary
0.737 4.18 Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
0.735 4.22 Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner
0.733 4.12 Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
0.728 4.44 Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
0.728 4.2 The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
0.711 3.49 Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey into the Heart of Darkness by Jeffrey Tayler
0.706 4.07 Oxford by Jan Morris
0.699 4.06 Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
0.693 3.8 Ocean of Words: Army Stories by Ha Jin
0.693 4.07 The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country by Jan Morris
0.69 3.82 Conundrum by Jan Morris
0.686 4.12 Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough
0.683 4.3 Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder by Kenn Kaufman
0.678 3.85 Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
0.676 4.3 King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
0.669 3.95 In the Memory of the Forest by Charles T. Powers
0.651 4.32 Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg
0.607 4.42 The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer by Gene Weingarten
0.58 4.4 Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir