Interesting Nonfiction

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealys critically acclaimed memoir Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth and Beauty, the story isnt...

Offers an updated definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. In this personal, eloquently-argued essay -- adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding...

Set in Aba, a town perched at 12,000 feet on the Tibetan plateau in the far western reaches of China that has been the engine of Tibetan resistance for decades, Eat the Buddha tells the story of a nation through the lives of ordinary people living in the throes of this conflict. Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick illuminates a part of China and the aggressions of this superpower that have been largely off limits to Westerners who have long romanticized...

"A stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking lens on the global refugee crisis, from a man who faced the very worst of humanity and survived to advocate for refugees everywhere One night when Mondiant Dogon, a Bagogwe Tutsi born in Congo, was very young, his father's lifelong friend, a Hutu man, came to their home with a machete in his hand and warned the family they were to be killed within hours. Dogon's family fled into the bush, where they began...

In this specially-commissioned anthology, sixty accomplished authors share secrets and insights into their writing lives: on their inspirations, methods, wild ideas and daily routines; on the pleasure and the pain in achieving their literary goals; on how they started out and how they hope to continue. They outline some golden rules for staying on track and talk candidly about what goes wrong as well as right. We hear from novelists, poets, biographers,...

"There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need...

"Hosts of the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, Ben Bowlin, Matthew Frederick, & Noel Brown discern conspiracy fact from fiction regarding 'stuff' the government doesn't want you to know. Conspiracies didn't always seem so clear and present. It used to be that people with tin-foil hats who were convinced of secret messages coming through the radio were easily disregarded as kooks and looney tunes. But these days, conspiracies feel alive and...

"By the time a baby is born, its brain has nearly 100 billion intricately shaped neurons wired together to comprise a small, soft-matter supercomputer. How is this incredibly complicated organ built in just nine months? This book is a step-by-step guide to what we know about the development of the human brain, from its earliest embryonic origin to birth and a little beyond. Written from an experimental neuroscientist's perspective, this book provides...

"In her newest collection, Moore selects essays that celebrate the music of the natural world as a reminder of what can be taken from us-the yowl of wolves, tick of barnacles, laughter of children, shriek of falling mountains. Alongside these selections are brand new essays born from the sorrow and iniquity of this new age of extinction, all bearing witness to the glories of this world and the sins against it. Each group of essays moves, as Moore...

"What makes sweat stink? Do human pheromones exist? Why do some people produce colorful sweat? And can we control how much we sweat? Taking readers around the globe from a smell-dating event in Moscow to a forensic lab in England that tracks criminal sweat and a legendary smoke sauna in Finland, The joy of sweat is a fresh take on a gross but engrossing fact of human life"--adapted from back cover.