Notable nonfiction selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead by Alan S. Blinder (eBook)
The former Fed vice chairman says confidence would have returned faster with better government communication about policy.
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by Sasha Abramsky
This ambitious study, based on Abramsky’s travels around the country meeting the poor, both describes and prescribes.
The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: the Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn
A noted Harvard historian looks at the chaotic decades between Jamestown and King Philip’s War.
The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund by Anita Raghavan
Indian-Americans populate every aspect of this meticulously reported true-life business thriller.
The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass
Bass reveals the sordid White House diplomacy that attended the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
Ben Franklin’s sister bore 12 children and mostly led a life of hardship, but the two corresponded constantly.
The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood by Roger Rosenblatt
In his memoir, Rosenblatt recalls being a boy learning to see, and to live, in the city he scrutinizes.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin (CD book, large print book)
Historical parallels in Goodwin’s latest time machine implicitly ask us to look at our own age.
The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery by George Johnson
Johnson’s fascinating look at cancer reveals certain profound truths about life itself.
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings
This excellent chronicle of World War I’s first months by a British military historian dispels some popular myths.
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
A disquieting but riveting examination of nuclear risk.
Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien
O’Brien reflects on a fraught and distinguished life, from the restraints of her Irish childhood to literary stardom.
Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker
Baker’s treatment of the George W. Bush administration is haunted by the question of who was in charge.
Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1858-1877 by Brenda Wineapple
A masterly Civil War-era history, full of foiled schemes, misfired plans and less-than-happy endings.
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
Chang portrays Cixi as a proto-feminist and reformer in this authoritative account.
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Digressive essays, loosely about storytelling, reflect a difficult year in Solnit’s life.
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink (CD book)
The case of a surgeon suspected of euthanizing patients during the Katrina disaster.
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prism of Belief by Lawrence Wright (eBook)
The author of “The Looming Tower” takes a calm and neutral stance toward Scientology, but makes clear it’s like no other church on earth.
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson (large print book)
The final volume of Atkinson’s monumental war trilogy shows that the road to Berlin was far from smooth.
The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince by Jane Ridley
He was vain, gluttonous, promiscuous and none too bright, but “Bertie” emerges as an appealing character in Ridley’s superb book.
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett (CD book)
A searing memoir of a young woman’s brutal kidnapping in Somalia.
Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch
A commanding biography by a Harvard professor.
Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death by Katy Butler
Butler’s study of the flaws in end-of-life care mixes personal narrative and tough reporting.
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
By contextualizing T. E. Lawrence, Anderson is able to address modern themes like oil, jihad and the Arab-Jewish conflict.
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell (audio download, CD book, eBook)
The lesson conveyed loud and clear by the Facebook executive is that women should step forward and not doubt their ability to combine work and family.
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
Cases of troubled young Internet prostitutes murdered on Long Island add up to a nuanced look at prostitution today.
Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures by Mary Ruefle
The poet muses knowingly and merrily on language, writing and speaking sentences that last lifetimes.
Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn
Guinn’s tour de force examines Manson’s rise and fall, the 1960s music industry and the decade’s bizarre ambience.
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
Fuller’s extensive intellectual accomplishments are set in contrast with her romantic disappointments.
Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
A raw, beautiful elegy for Ward’s brother and four male friends, who died young in Mississippi between 2000 and 2004.
Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance by Carla Kaplan
A remarkable look at the white women who sought a place in the Harlem Renaissance.
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor (audio download, CD book, eBook, large print book)
Mostly skirting her legal views, the Supreme Court justice’s memoir reveals much about her family, school and years at Princeton.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit (CD book)
Shavit, a columnist for Haaretz, expresses both solidarity with and criticism of his countrymen in this important and powerful book.
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
The British wayfarer and travel writer is the subject of Cooper’s affectionate, informed biography.
The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox
Focusing on an unheralded but heroic Brooklyn classics professor, Fox turns the decipherment of Linear B into a detective story.
The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan I. Koerner (eBook)
Refusing to make ’60s avatars of the unlikely couple behind a 1972 skyjacking, Koerner finds a deeper truth about the nature of extremism.
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark
A Cambridge professor offers a thoroughly comprehensible account of the polarization of a continent, without fixing guilt on one leader or nation.
The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley
A look at countries that are outeducating us — Finland, South Korea, Poland — through the eyes of American high school students abroad.
Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel
Finkel tracks soldiers struggling to navigate postwar life, especially the psychologically wounded.
The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream by Thomas Dyja (eBook)
This robust cultural history weaves together the stories of the artists, styles and ideas that developed in Chicago before and after World War II.
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral– Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!– in America’s Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich
An entertaining and deeply troubling view of Washington.
Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 by Lynne Olson
The savage political dispute between Roosevelt and the isolationist movement, presented in spellbinding detail.
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov
Digital-age transparency may threaten the spirit of democracy, Morozov warns.
To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam
Beam’s wrenching study is a triumph of narrative reporting and storytelling.
Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and the American Strategy by Kenneth M. Pollack
The Mideast expert makes the case for living with a nuclear Iran and trying to contain it.
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (audio download)
With a nod to John Dos Passos, Packer offers a gripping narrative survey of today’s hard times; the 2013 National Book Award winner for nonfiction.
The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan
Why did the peace fail, a Canadian historian asks, and she offers superb portraits of the men who took Europe to war in the summer of 1914.
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (eBook)
Deraniyagala’s unforgettable account of her struggle to carry on living after her husband, sons and parents were killed in the 2004 tsunami isn’t only as unsparing as they come, but also defiantly imbued with light.
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem (eBook)
Mooallem explores the haphazard nature of our efforts to protect endangered species.
Year Zero: A History of 1945 by Ian Buruma
This lively history shows how the Good War turned out badly for many people and splendidly for others less deserving.