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- Jennifer Kushnier
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (2012) What does it mean to strive for a better life when everything is against you?
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005) The concept of Freakonomics looks at a variety of behavioral and social phenomena through an economic lens.
- Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (2012) The winner of more than a dozen awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and Books for a Better Life Award, Solomon’s work draws on a decade of research interviewing more than 300 families.
- Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (2020) Published mere months after the discovery of the novel coronavirus and just ahead of the resulting surge of anti-Asian violence and othering that Asian Americans experienced in its wake, this is an essential read for the moment we’re in.
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1) by Maya Angelou.
- Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser.
- Therevolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff
- Theinvisible Kingdom, Meghan O’Rourke
- How Far The Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler
- His Name Is George Floyd, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
- Constructing A Nervous System, Margo Jefferson
- An Immense World, Ed Yong
- Theescape Artist, Jonathan Freedland
- Ducks, Kate Beaton
- Southto America, Imani Perry
- Inlove, Amy Bloom
Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff revisits the American Revolution in her engrossing biography of founding father Samuel Adams. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams centers on the years leading up to 1776 when Adams helped fan the earliest flames of the independence movement. Though he drove the anti-British rebellion in Massachusetts and had an outsiz...
Beginning in the late 1990s, Meghan O’Rourke was tormented by mysterious symptoms that would consume her life for years to follow. She describes her wrenching experience searching for a diagnosis in The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, a 2022 National Book Award finalist. O’Rourke’s reported memoir is an indictment of the U.S. health...
Sabrina Imbler thoughtfully examines connections between science and humanity, tying together what should be very loose threads in 10 dazzling essays, each a study of a different sea creature. In one piece from their debut collection, Imbler explores their mother’s tumultuous relationship with eating while simultaneously looking at how female octop...
In their engaging book, Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnpia expand on their reporting of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice centers on the life Floyd led before he was killed, captured through hundreds of interview...
In her second memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson brilliantly interrogates and expands the form. Constructing a Nervous Systemfinds the author reflecting on her life, the lives of her family, and those of her literary and artistic heroes. Jefferson oscillates between criticism and personal narrative, engaging with ideas about performance,...
Journalist Ed Yong reminds readers that the world is very large and full of incredible things. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the unique ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong’s absorbing book is a joyful blend of scientific ...
When he was just 19 years old, Rudolf Vrba became one of the first Jews to break out of Auschwitz. It was April 1944, and Vrba had spent the last two years enduring horror after horror at the concentration camp, determined to make it out alive. As Jonathan Freedland captures in his harrowing biography, Vrba was fixated on remembering every atrocity...
In 2005, Kate Beaton had just graduated from college and was yearning to start her career as an artist. But she had student loans to pay off and the oil boom meant that it was easy to get a job out in the sands, so she did. In her first full-length graphic memoir, Beaton reflects on her time working with a primarily male labor force in harsh condit...
For her striking work of nonfiction, Imani Perry takes a tour of the American South, visiting more than 10 states, including her native Alabama. Perry argues that the associations and assumptions made about the South—with racism at their core—are essential to understanding the United States as a whole. While there is plenty of history embedded thro...
After Amy Bloom’s husband Brian was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she supported him through the impossibly difficult decision to end his life, on his terms, with the aid of an organization based in Switzerland. Bloom’s memoir begins with their last flight together—on the way to Zurich—as she reflects on the reality that she will be flying hom...
- Annabel Gutterman
- 5 min
- Reedsy
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Buy on Amazon. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful history of racial violence in the United States — and what it means to be black in this country today.
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Buy on Amazon. A disarming “biography” of disease, The Emperor of All Maladies chronicles thousands of years of people grappling with the terrifying specter of cancer.
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. Buy on Amazon. When the next major mass extinction hits the planet, as scientists foretell it soon might, humanity will be the victim — and the perpetrator.
- How to Survive a Plague by David France. Buy on Amazon. David France has been one of the key chroniclers of the AIDS epidemic in the United States since its beginnings.
- Annabel Gutterman
- Some People Need Killing, Patricia Evangelista. The title of Patricia Evangelista’s memoir is rooted in a conversation the journalist once had with a vigilante who made that unnerving declaration.
- Doppelganger, Naomi Klein. What would you do if all of a sudden people started mixing you up with a person whose beliefs you can’t stand? Leftist activist and author Naomi Klein has been forced to answer this exact question: she is constantly confused with Naomi Wolf, who has spent the past few years spreading antivaccine rhetoric and fringe conspiracy theories.
- To Free the Captives, Tracy K. Smith. In her memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith crafts a searing narrative about being Black in America.
- A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall. In February 2012, 5-year-old Milad Salama boarded a bus with his fellow Palestinian classmates en route to a theme park.
Nov 8, 2021 · 20 of the Best Nonfiction Books of All Time for a Big Dose of Reality. Thinking about what your next read should be? We have you covered with these true stories. By Lizz Schumer Published:...
Dec 31, 2017 · The 100 best nonfiction books of all time: the full list. After two years of careful reading, moving backwards through time, Robert McCrum has concluded his selection of the 100 greatest...
