The fall of the Twin Towers.  Al-Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism on the rise.  Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.   Intifada.  Chechnya.  The Janjaweed.  The tsunami.  SARS.  Benazir Bhutto assassinated.  The Great Recession.  The Patriot Act.  Reality TV.  Mel Gibson.  There was plenty to be scared of in the first decade of the 21st Century.  We were so frightened, we even started a war against terror itself.  We started out with Clinton and ended with Obama, but mostly we got the misunderestimations of George Bush.  There were other, less terrifying developments: The Eurozone.  GPS.  Hybrid cars.  Atheism bestsellers.  Martha Stewart went to jail.  Peter Jackson did LOTR fans proud (except for Tom Bombadil fanatics).  Kids got their news from The Daily Show.  Hunter Thompson’s ashes were shot from a cannon.  Vets coming home with PTSD were refused treatment by the government they bravely served.  It was that kind of decade.

Here they are: some of my favorite books, films and music from the 2000s.

Favorite 00s Films

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007)
Fat Girl (Breillat, 2001)
American Splendor (Berman, 2003)
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001)
Dogville (von Trier, 2003)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, 2004)
Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
Talk to Her (Almodovar, 2002)
Juno (Reitman, 2007)
The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck, 2006)
Moulin Rouge! (Luhrmann, 2001)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
No Country for Old Men (Coen, 2007)
Once (Carney, 2006)
Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky, 2000)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008)
Tarnation (Caouette, 2004)
Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000)
Downfall (Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Waking Life (Linklater, 2001)
The White Ribbon (Haneke, 2009)
Yi Yi (Yang, 2000)

Favorite 00s Music

PJ Harvey  Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea (2000)
Shelby Lynne  I Am Shelby Lynne (2000)
U2  All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)
Mariza  Fado em Mim (2000)
Greg Osby  Invisible Hand (2000)
Pérotin  Perotin (Hilliard Ensemble) (2000)
Johann Sebastian Bach  Mass in B Minor (Gächinger Kantorei & Bach-Collegium Stuttgart/Rilling) (2000)
Macy Gray  The Id (2001)
Buddy Guy  Sweet Tea (2001)
Jason Moran  Black Stars (2001)
Wilco  Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
Beck  Sea Change (2002)
Sleater-Kinney  One Beat (2002)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs  Fever to Tell (2003)
The New Pornographers  Electric Version (2003)
Arcade Fire  Funeral (2004)
Sufjan Stevens  Illinois (2005)
My Morning Jacket  Z (2005)
Petra Haden  Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (2005)
John Adams  The Dharma at Big Sur (BBC Symphony Orch./Adams) (2006)
The Hold Steady  Boys and Girls in America (2006)
Camera Obscura  Let’s Get Out of This Country (2006)
Arcade Fire  Neon Bible (2007)
The New Pornographers  Challengers (2007)
The Swell Season  Once: Music From the Motion Picture (2007)
PJ Harvey  White Chalk (2007)
Los Campesinos!  Hold On Now, Youngster… (2008)
Tune-Yards  Bird-Brains (2009)
Leonard Bernstein  Mass (Baltimore Symphony Orch./Alsop; Sykes) (2009)

Favorite 00s Books

Dave Eggers  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
Ian McEwan  Atonement  (2001)
David McCullough  John Adams (2001)
Leif Enger  Peace Like a River (2001)
Jeffrey Eugenides  Middlesex (2002)
Janet E. Browne  Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002)
Edward P. Jones  The Known World (2003)
Bill Bryson  A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
David Maraniss  They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (2003)
Steve Coll  Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
David Crystal  The Stories of English (2004)
Tim Riley  Fever: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Transformed Gender in America (2004)
Kazuo Ishiguro  Never Let Me Go (2005)
Charles C. Mann  1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005)
Joan Didion  The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Duncan Clark  The Rough Guide To Classical Music (2005)
Michael Pollan  The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006)
Julie Phillips  James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (2006)
Philip Lopate (ed.)  American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now  (2006)
Alex Ross  The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)
Annette Gordon-Reed  The Hemingses of Monticello (2008)
Mark Harris  Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood  (2008)