What book would you force on your neighbors?

New York City is just the latest locale to turn reading into a civic duty. Predictably, though, New York's selection process has been contentious. The committee in charge rejected some of the city's most famous writers, including Henry James and Truman Capote, in favor of a contemporary, multicultural novel, and its final pick—Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker, about a Korean-American immigrant in Queens—is still being disputed by people who say it's insensitive to Asian-Americans.

Others simply find the "one city, one book" idea more hellish than utopian. In the New York Times, Harold Bloom said it was "rather like the idea that we are all going to pop out and eat Chicken McNuggets or something else horrid at once." Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote that New Yorkers would "have to get the taste of cod-liver oil out of their mouths before they can actually savor Mr. Lee's remarkable prose." Joseph Epstein agreed  in the Wall Street Journal: "A book has only to come with the municipal seal of approval for me to lose interest in it."

But these critics are missing the delicious opportunity to fantasize that this program suggests. Who doesn't have a book that they would want to force on friends and neighbors? Slate asked writers and critics, in New York and elsewhere, to suggest books for the cities they live in—or if they wished, for the cities and towns where they grew up. At the risk of turning Joe Epstein off 25 more books, here are the responses. (Click here to add your own; we'll post the best reader responses as they come in).

Alex Beam, Boston Globe columnist

The ur-Boston book that came to mind was Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah, or possibly George Higgins' masterful The Friends of Eddie Coyle. But the most inclusive, and perhaps most obvious book would be the most difficult to digest—J. Anthony Lukas' mammoth tome Common Ground.

Amy Bloom, fiction writer

I might force them to read Jane Hirshfield's collection of poems Given Sugar, Given Salt. Forcing would not be in the spirit of her work but everyone would be grateful afterwards and they would be murmuring lines and phrases for weeks afterwards. And, if I was confined to prose, perhaps Nick Hornby's How To Be Goodor, perhaps even more apt, Bruce Jay Friedman's Far From the City of Class,a truly dark, excruciatingly funny book.



Steven Brill, media entrepreneur

Robert Caro's The Power Broker.

Tom Brokaw, news anchor

Well, Yankton [South Dakota] counts as my hometown although I haven't lived there in 40 years—and knowing my old neighbors I don't think they'd take kindly to my suddenly telling them what to read. However, if they asked, I think I'd recommend Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee [by Dee Brown]. Yankton is named for a Sioux Tribe, and I have long believed S.D. needs to have a continuing dialogue on Indian issues and history.

Christopher Buckley, editor of Forbes FYI

Living in D.C., as I happily but ironically do, I guess the book I would force everyone to read is the Internal Revenue Code, the 2,000-odd page summation of our nation's taxes. For light reading, there's Code 193, "Tertiary Injectants." For the more serious reader, there's Code 90, "Illegal Foreign Irrigation Subsidies." There is something for everyone. Someone—Chesterton, I think—once said that he would rather read a bad book than a good book, because a good book reveals only the mind of its author, whereas a bad one reveals the minds of many. The IRC stands as a testament to the minds of many here in Washington. It would be useful for us all, collectively, to read what we have managed to produce, indeed, inspiring.

Cindy Chupak, writer/executive producer of Sex and the City

The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss for Washington, D.C. (just to remind President Bush that some people in the "Axis of Evil" simply butter their bread butter side down). About a Boy by Nick Hornby for New York City because it's so charming and funny that everyone would be able to smile and laugh for a while.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut for Tulsa, Oklahoma (my conservative hometown), because the short story "Harrison Bergeron" is a good reminder of the dangers of thought control, and the short story "Who Am I This Time" is a valentine to the rituals of community theater and dating.

Randy Cohen, New York Times' "The Ethicist"

This is an easy one: The Good, the Bad & the Difference, by Randy Cohen, to be published by Doubleday on March 19.