Best of 21st Century Non-fiction
Top 10 Best of 21st Century Non-fiction
: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
| Author | Susan Cain |
| ISBN | 0307352145 |
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many...
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
| Author | Robert M. Sapolsky |
| ISBN | 1594205078 |
Why do we do the things we do?
More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful...
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062457738
In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.
For decades, we’ve been told that...
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
| Author | Christopher Hitchens |
| ISBN | 0446579807 |
In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case
against religion.
With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is...
Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick
| Author | David Frye |
| ISBN | 1501172700 |
In Walls historian David Frye tells the epic story of history’s greatest manmade barriers, from ancient times to the present. It is a haunting and frequently eye-opening saga—one that reveals a startling link between what we build and how we live.
With Frye as our raconteur-guide, we...
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
| Author | Matthew Desmond |
| ISBN | 0553447432 |
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century...
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
| Author | Isabel Wilkerson |
| ISBN | 0679444327 |
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From...
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics.Daniel James Brown's robust book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic...
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
| Author | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
| ISBN | 1400067820 |
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost philosophers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder.
In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder...
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
| Author | Ed Yong |
| ISBN | 0062368591 |
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous,...
The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives...
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
| Author | Deborah Blum |
| ISBN | 1594202435 |
Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days...
| Author | Mark Kurlansky |
| ISBN | 0142001619 |
From the Bestselling Author of Cod and The Basque History of the World
In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story...
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
| Author | Steven Pinker |
| ISBN | 0525427570 |
If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress...
The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge
| Author | Matt Ridley |
| ISBN | 0062296000 |
The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order...
| Author | Margot Lee Shetterly |
| ISBN | 0062363603 |
The #1 New York Times Bestseller. Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human...
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
| Author | Laszlo Bock |
| ISBN | 1455554790 |
From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work-and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed.
"We spend more time working than doing anything else...
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with...
A History of the World in 100 Objects
| Author | Neil MacGregor |
| ISBN | 1846144132 |
Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects takes a bold, original approach to human history, exploring past civilizations through the objects that defined them. Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects...
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
| Author | Joshua Wolf Shenk |
| ISBN | 0618773444 |
A thoughtful, nuanced portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles.
Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy reveals how this illness...
| Author | John Lewis |
| ISBN | 1603094008 |
The #1 New York Times bestselling series continues! Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare...
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
| Author | Katherine Boo |
| ISBN | 1400067553 |
From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities.
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced...
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
| Author | David McCullough |
| ISBN | 1416571760 |
The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring - and until now, untold - story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.
After...
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
| Author | Helen Castor |
| ISBN | 0571237053 |
When Edward VI - Henry VIII’s longed-for son - died in 1553, extraordinarily, there was no one left to claim the title King of England. For the first time, all the contenders for the crown were female.
In 1553, England was about to experience the ‘monstrous regiment’ - the unnatural rule...
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
| Author | Doris Kearns Goodwin |
| ISBN | 0743270754 |
Winner of the Lincoln Prize
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On...
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
A New York Times bestseller
Winner of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction
A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently.
...
