books: nonfiction Archives

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Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) (October 15, 2006)

Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir (Janice Erlbaum) (August 05, 2006)

Somehow I came across Janice Erlbaum's blog, girlbomb, and figured out from there she'd written a book about her turbulent adolescent years, when she ran away from home and lived in various shelters and group homes, then on her own.... ... (continued)

Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) (July 25, 2006)

Interesting, in the way Malcolm Gladwell books are interesting, but very narrow in the way that an economist's point of view can be. Reading to your child or taking him to a museum may not raise his test scores in... ... (continued)

Running With Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) (March 02, 2006)

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Jarhead (Anthony Swofford) (November 11, 2005)

He'll tell you about each and every time he pissed his pants, from the first time in boot camp until he was getting shot at in the Desert. ... (continued)

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year (Anne Lamott) (October 28, 2005)

My friend S loaned me this book with some trepidation, since she is always hounding me to hurry up and make a baby already. ... (continued)

The Onion Field (Joseph Wambaugh) (October 26, 2005)

Not exactly 'gripping' as the back cover quotes attest, but still a good police/courtroom procedural. ... (continued)

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris) (September 30, 2005)

David Sedaris' style is shifting. There's a certain poignancy in many of his stories now, particularly the ones about his family. ... (continued)

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (Anne Lamott) (September 26, 2005)

I'm still not sure what I think of Anne Lamott. ... (continued)

Scribbling the Cat (Alexandra Fuller) (September 25, 2005)

I think this book did not get as good reviews as her first, but I like Fuller's spare style. ... (continued)

The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson) (August 05, 2005)

This book makes me wish I was alive in the 1890s. ... (continued)

King Leopold's Ghost (Adam Hochschild) (July 31, 2005)

This is the saddest book I ever read, and it's all true, and I bet, unless you are already something of an afrophile, you don't know most of it. ... (continued)

A Tribe Apart: A Journey Into the Heart of American Adolescence (Patricia Hersch) (July 17, 2005)

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The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) (April 01, 2005)

I loved it and I wrote a great entry but then Movable Type ate it. It went something like this ... ... (continued)

The Village of Waiting (George Packer) (March 14, 2005)

This book surprised me in three ways ... ... (continued)

In Pharoah's Army (Tobias Wolff) (January 21, 2005)

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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (Barbara Ehrenreich) (January 19, 2005)

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This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolff) (December 26, 2004)

E gave me this one for Christmas and I read it aloud on our drives to and from Michigan, half on the way up, half on the way back. A great book, and a great one for reading aloud: Not... ... (continued)

What Should I Do With My Life? (Po Bronson) (December 22, 2004)

I was curious about this book because a) this is a question I ask myself a lot and b) I enjoy voyeuristic peeks into other peoples' lives. ... (continued)

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (Jon Krakauer) (November 12, 2004)

You can't make this stuff up. If the contents of this book were presented to me as fiction, I would dismiss them as too unbelievable. ... (continued)

The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe) (September 16, 2004)

I was born just before the final Apollo mission (17) in 1972. After that, nothing much happened (well, nothing except Skylab) until the first shuttle went up in 1981 ... ... (continued)

The Elements of Style (William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White) (June 23, 2004)

For people who care deeply about language, it’s akin to a religious text. Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you... ... (continued)

Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi) (May 12, 2004)

Holy cow, I finished a book! It's been a while. I've been working on two nonfiction books, which always take longer for me to finish. This one was hard to put down, though -- the story of what daily life... ... (continued)

In the Shadow of Man (Jane Goodall) (January 29, 2004)

This very readable book was a lot more about the chimpanzees than I expected, and a lot less about Jane Goodall than I wished. I suppose that tells you something about this amazing woman. In the early 1960s Goodall, barely... ... (continued)

The White Album (Joan Didion) (January 17, 2004)

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Slouching Toward Bethlehem (Joan Didion) (November 27, 2003)

I just read Didion's essay "The White Album" for the first time (in the anthology of The Best American Essays of the Century), then I came back to this book, which I had never finished, and I reread the title... ... (continued)

Mali Blues (Llieve Joris) (October 21, 2003)

I read the English translation of Mali Blues, which was originally written in Dutch. It's a modern and down-to-earth travelogue. I had a hunch it wouldn’t be outstanding, and, loose in structure, it does ramble a bit aimlessly. However, Joris'... ... (continued)

Mali: The Bradt Travel Guide (Ross Velton) (May 01, 2003)

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The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (Susan Orlean) (April 01, 2003)

As soon as I learned from Susan Orlean's website that a) she, the author of The Orchid Thief, wrote this book of essays ("My Encounters With Extraordinary People") and b) it contained the essay that was the inspiration for my... ... (continued)

The Orchid Thief (Susan Orlean) (February 20, 2003)

I didn't especially enjoy the movie Adaptation, but it did motivate me to buy and read this book. I rarely read nonfiction, and found real delight in this book. It's full of history and botany and other hard facts, but... ... (continued)

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Alexandra Fuller) (December 20, 2002)

The totally riveting memoir of a girlhood spent on farms in central and east Africa. Eric selected this for me based on a review in the Economist. Its episodes are beautifully composed of vivid scenes. I wish I learned more... ... (continued)

Creating a Literary Life (Carolyn See) (November 20, 2002)

Oh, how it makes one cringe to read a book on writing that one finds poorly written. So many exclamation points! So much self-effacement! And then, these almost poignant little paragraphs at the end: Since John has died, I live... ... (continued)

Fraud (David Rakoff) (October 25, 2002)

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The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs) (October 10, 2002)

A classic of urban planning from 1961. Unfortunately I only read half a chapter of this book before it was due back at the library; I can't concentrate as well on non-narrative nonfiction as I can on fiction or narrative... ... (continued)

The Last American Man (Elizabeth Gilbert) (October 01, 2002)

Not exactly a biography, but a book-length profile of Eustace Conway, who runs Turtle Island Preserve, and has outdoor survival skills—and an ego—unrivalled in the U.S. He hiked the Appalachian Trail in loincloth, eating berries and roots. He rode a... ... (continued)

The Ponds of Kalambayi (Mike Tidwell) (September 15, 2002)

Mike Tidwell was finishing his Peace Corps tour when E. was a brand-new volunteer. They both worked in the fisheries program in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Mike finished his two-year tour and returned to... ... (continued)

What'll You Take For It? (Annie Proulx) (September 10, 2002)

A practical (and out-of-print) guide to bartering by one of my favorite fiction writers.... ... (continued)

Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser) (July 07, 2002)

A gift from E. after our most recent conversation about vegetarianism. It's full of alarming information, but never alarmist, and thankfully Schlosser wraps up with a concise list of things that need to change. (How to change things? Vote with... ... (continued)

As Nature Made Him (John Colapinto) (May 20, 2002)

Colapinto resists the temptation to sensationalize the story of David Reimer, who was born a boy (one of a pair of twins), lost his penis in a terrible hospital accident, and was raised as a girl until he was 14,... ... (continued)

Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand) (December 01, 2001)

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The Shadow of the Sun (Ryszard Kapuscinski) (May 01, 2001)

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On Boxing (Joyce Carol Oates) (December 01, 2000)

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Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (Adeline Yen Mah) (April 15, 2000)

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An Island Out of Time (April 01, 2000)

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Geeks (February 01, 2000)

Of course Jon Katz plugs his own book on Amazon.com's Web site. After all, Geeks is about the way the Internet is changing people's lives. It's about people making connections, especially the kind of people -- the "lost" people --... ... (continued)

My Kitchen Wars (October 01, 1999)

A good memoir can be written about a series of interesting events, but the best memoirs have a unifying theme. Betty Fussell, food writer and food history expert, has written a unique memoir about her life in food and war.... ... (continued)

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (October 01, 1998)

You may know a little about your brain's hemispheres. Maybe you've heard that a "right-brained" person is more creative, and a "left-brained" person is good at math. Or is it the other way around? Leonard Shlain, a surgeon, can tell... ... (continued)