Looking for great tomes to curl up with between self-hating bouts of channel surfing? Check out these amazing page-turners guaranteed to make you either the next "Jeopardy!" champion or just another annoying pedant.

1) "Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History" by James A. Morone (Yale). History books aren't supposed to be this addictive. Morone chronicles the American penchant for reducing the complexity of our political and social landscape to a set of handy moral propositions like: Don't smoke, don't drink, don't gamble, don't have sex and don't have aspirations to freedom if you're a minority or a woman.

Beginning with the New England Puritans, Morone unearths the surprising links between reactionary laws and progressive politics. Folks of all political persuasions will shudder at the mendacity and lies underlying our saintliest crusades. "Hellfire Nation" is the perfect antidote to the triumphalism of this year's presidential election that has politicians of both parties genuflecting before the false idol of "moral values."

2) "Chronicles: Volume One" by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster). As tempting as it is to read Dylan's long-promised autobiography in one sitting, that would be a mistake. "Chronicles" has all the delicacy and truth of a fine, rare wine or a recently excavated folk recording from Appalachia circa 1937. Why gulp down the ruminations of such a singularly American artist when you have the opportunity to enjoy so many witty, skeptical, dark and wistful observations of what it took to become the myth of Bob Dylan?

3) "Men and Cartoons" by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday). It's always a mistake to make categorical statements like so-and-so is the best writer writing in English, etc., but sometimes it's necessary to throw caution to the wind and say what's on one's mind. I happen to believe Lethem is the man to beat in fiction these days. His latest collection of short stories is devoid of a single clunker. Every tale of ennui, cosmic regret and petty yearning is perfectly realized. The brevity of the book and perfection of the stories puts every other member of his generation to shame.

4) "Your Negro Tour Guide: Truths in Black and White" by Kathy Y. Wilson (Emmis). For those who have never had the pleasure of reading Wilson's hilarious and poignant weekly columns in Cincinnati CityBeat, this collection may almost be too much of a good thing. Sitting down with "Your Negro Tour Guide" without adequate preparation is like sitting down with an Old Testament prophet struggling with Tourette's syndrome. You're going to hear the truth laced with generous dollops of profanity, and it just might break your heart before killing you.

5) "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age" by Marcus Rediker (Beacon). University of Pittsburgh history professor Rediker is the nation's leading authority on swashbucklers, knaves at sea, egalitarian autocrats and peg-legged criminals fleeing the brutal hypocrisy of the Enlightenment. Rediker's mastery of all things nautical and not-so-nice has turned normally dry scholarship into a fascinating journey into history, forcing the reader into a sympathetic understanding, if not acceptance, of 18th century piracy on its own terms.

6) "Neoconomy: George Bush's Revolutionary Gamble with America's Future" by Daniel Altman (BBS). Economist and journalist Altman demonstrates in accessible prose how a few bad ideas by President Bush's economic gurus threaten to unravel Roosevelt's New Deal and the stability of the capitalist system along with it.

Other books that make the one-hour daily commute bearable: "Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War" by Melvin Patrick Ely; "Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer" by Peter Turchi; "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason" by Sam Harris; "What Narcissism Means to Me: Poems by Tony Hoagland" and "Speak What We Feel, Not What We Ought to Say: Four Who Wrote in Blood -- G.K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare," by Frederick Buechner.