A Few of the Books on Ben Horne's Desk
Throughout the original series, a small group of books is visible among the ornamental debris of Ben Horne's desk.
We first see the books over Audrey's shoulder in episode 4, but it isn't until episode 5 that we see them in full. Their titles are unfortunately impossible for me to discern during the first season. We see them again in episodes 8, 11, 13, 18, 19, 27 (facing inwards), and 28. Some change places or are removed.
In episode 14 (Lonely Souls, 2.007), the titles of five of the seven books on Ben's desk can be read.
Book one appears to be My Three Years with Eisenhower by Captain Harry C. Butcher.
Book two is a 1981 edition of The History of a Free People, a Highschool textbook by Samuel Proctor McCutchen and Henry W. Bragdon.
Book three appears to be the 1954 book Biography of a Bank: The Story of Bank of America N.T. & S.A. by Marquis James and Bessie R. James.
Book four is Three Coins in the Birdbath, a collection of humorous essays by Jack Smith.
Book five is High Stakes and Desperate Men, a Reader's Digest collection of spy stories published in 1974.
During Ben Horne's arrest in episode 14, a single book rests at end of the desk. It almost seems to have been placed with the intention to gain the viewers' attention.
Ben's arrest.
The book is the 1933 novel Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann. A brief summary from Wikipedia, "Joseph and His Brothers is a four-part novel by Thomas Mann, written over the course of 16 years. Mann retells the familiar stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph, setting it in the historical context of the Amarna Period. Mann considered it his greatest work."
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