Readers > New Books > Nonfiction, November 2007
Nonfiction, November 2007
- Armstrong, Karen
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Historian Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, life and afterlife of history's most powerful book. She analyzes the social and political situation in which oral history turned into written scripture, how this scripture was collected into one work and how it became accepted as Christianity's sacred text.
- Ashenburg, Katherine
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Did Napoleon know something we didn’t when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher — a man who washes in warm or hot water — invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.
- Ball, Edward
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The Genetic Strand is the story of a writer's investigation, using DNA science, into the tale of his family's origins. National Book Award winner Edward Ball has turned his probing gaze on the microcosm of the human genome, and not just any human genome — that of his slave-holding ancestors. What is the legacy of such a family history, and can DNA say something about it?
- Borchert, Don
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Mild-mannered librarian tells all in shocking new book! Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir.
- Brokaw, Tom
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Published as the fortieth anniversary of 1968 approaches, Boom! gives us what Brokaw sees as a virtual reunion of some members of "the class of ’68," offering moving reflections and frank personal remembrances about people's lives during a time of high ideals and profound social, political and individual change. We hear stories of how this formative decade has led to a recalibrated perspective — on business, the environment, politics, family, our national existence.
- Bryson, Bill
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William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
- Cordery, Stacy A.
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Alice Roosevelt Longworth lived her entire life on the political stage and in the public eye, earning her the nickname "the other Washington monument." In this new biography — the first in twenty years — Stacy A. Cordery presents a detailed and richly entertaining portrait of the witty and whip-smart daughter of Teddy Roosevelt.
- Dirda, Michael
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In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world’s most entertaining books. Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, essay and children's literature. Whether writing about Petronius or Perelman, Dirda makes literature come alive.
- Figes, Orlando
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Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond, Orlando Figes re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family or, perversely, end up saving it. Drawing on a huge collection of newly discovered documents, The Whisperers reveals for the first time the inner world of ordinary Soviet citizens as they struggled to survive amidst the mistrust, fear, compromises and betrayals that pervaded their existence.
- Kessler, Ronald
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Drawing on unprecedented access to FBI and CIA counterterrorism operatives, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler presents the chilling story of terrorists' relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots.
- Lehrer, Jonah
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An ingenious blend of biography, criticism and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science to listen more closely to art, for the right minds can combine the best of both to brilliant effect. Focusing on a group of artists — a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer and a handful of novelists — Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the human mind that science is only now rediscovering.
- Mosley, Charlotte
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The great wits and beauties of their age, the Mitford sisters were immoderate in their passions for ideas and people, counting among their diverse friends Adolf Hitler and Queen Elizabeth II, Cecil Beaton and President Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh and Givenchy. Not since the Brontës have the members of a single family written so much about themselves, or have been so written about.
- Pollan, Michael
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"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma.
- Rasenberger, Jim
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By turns gripping and humorous, shocking and delightful, Jim Rasenberger's America, 1908 brings to life our nation as it was one hundred years ago, at a moment of delirious optimism and pride, a time when Americans believed that even the most intractable problems would soon be solved and that the future was bound to be better than the past.
- Ray, Rachael
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In this irresistible collection Rachael continues to work her 30-minute magic with nearly 100 awesomely delicious, brand-new recipes. From pasta to pizzas, soups to sandwiches, and chicken, fish and meat, you’ll find a 30-minute-meal to suit every appetite.
- Roizen, Michael and Oz, Mehmet
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Wouldn't you like to know how to prevent your body from aging badly? Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz explain the principles of longevity and many of the causes of aging and how to fight the effects. The climax of the book is a 14-day plan to help you along your path to staying young.
- Schenone, Laura
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James Beard Award-winning author Laura Schenone undertakes a quest to retrieve her great grandmother's ravioli recipe, reuniting with relatives as she goes.
- Terkel, Studs
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At nearly ninety-five, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. In Touch and Go, he offers a memoir which — embodying the spirit of the man himself — is youthful, vivacious and enormous fun.
- Thomas, Clarence
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In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.
- Waugh, John C.
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How did Abraham Lincoln, long held as a paragon of presidential bravery and principled politics, find his way to the White House? How did he become this one man great enough to risk the fate of the nation on the well-worn but cast-off notion that all men are created equal? Award-winning historian John C. Waugh brings Lincoln's path into new relief by letting the great man tell his own story, at a depth that brings us closer to understanding this mysterious, complicated man.