Good Things of 2012 (http://rasmusen.org/special/_amazon/xmas2012.htm)

1. Dropbox is a free Internet storage service that allows you to work with your files on different computers and allows selective access to them to other people.

2. Corporate Law Stories, (2009) edited by J. Mark Ramseyer, the man who (with myself) wrote the raciest article ever on Section 382 limitations on net operating loss carryforwards. General Editor Paul Caron's whole "Law Stories" series is worth reading.

3. Style (1955) by Cambridge critic F. L. Lucas. "The best book on the art of writing that I know," says Joseph Epstein. So civilized, too!

4. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012) by Charles Murray. Nietzsche said that the English make up for preaching immorality by living morally; Murray says the American elite do the same.

5. Uncle Ray's Roasted Garlic potato chips , delicious, and with a story on the back of each bag. The Michigan company's website is: here. Commentary is at Mlive.com

6. Euclidean geometry . Your first stop is the D. E. Joyce website. There are lots of good books besides the original: Heath's classic commentary, Geometry: Euclid and Beyond; Geometry from Euclid to Knots; The Four Pillars of Geometry; Venema and Hilbert's same-titled Foundations of Geometry. But Proposition I-4 bothers me.

7. Coriolanus (1608), by William Shakespeare. Underrated, perhaps because the inflexible Coriolanus implausibly softens towards the end.

8. God's Battalions:The Case for the Crusades(2009) by Rodney Stark. Good history and analysis.

9. Warrior Baek Dong Soo (2011). 29 episodes 18th century intrigue, combat,and jokes that the entire family can watch on HuLu. The best Korean TV serial I've seen.

10. Peace, They Say (2012) by Jay Nordlinger. A neat angle on history, written engagingly and politely but with the necessary condemnation and humor.

11. Online teaching, C530 in Kelley Direct in particular. I think this is about as good for the MBA students' education, done right, but much more convenient for teacher and student alike. Might not work for immature students, though.

12. Children�s picture books from Project Gutenberg for the Kindle or computer. Great for car trips.

Other Finalists: Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox. Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics; Davies's, Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations. Michael Lewis's Boomerang. . The Vile Village (2001) by Lemony Snicket. Pandora's Tango Radio channel. Hellman's Great Feuds in Science.

Lists of good things from other years are at Rasmusen.org/_amazon/special/amazon.htm.