The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture
Brink Lindsey
With breathtaking analysis, Lindsey offers a dizzying look back at American economics, politics, and culture to examine the complexities of prosperity.
306.342/LIN
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Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900
Jack Beatty
Take a trip back to a time when economic titans and corrupt politicians roamed the land.
973.8/BEA
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The Age of Lincoln
Orville Vernon Burton
This author gives a fiercely original account of the seven decades, 1830 through 1900, that pivoted around the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
973.5/BUR
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American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
Joseph J. Ellis
Ellis displays outstanding acuity about the successes and failures of the Founders as he selects key moments from the American Revolution and early Republic, dramatizes them, and analyzes their crucial ramifications for America’s future.
973.3/ELL
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American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion
Paul M. Barrett
In a fascinating study, Barrett puts a human face on issues dividing American Muslims today.
297.0973/BAR
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Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Amerigo Vespucci—pimp, flimflam man, diplomat, and inventive writer—is brightly animated in this compelling biography.
B/VESPUCCI
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Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
Cullen Murphy
The former managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly provides a provocative (and sometimes funny) extended essay comparing the old with the new.
970.01/MUR
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Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
Richard Rhodes
Richard Rhodes sheds new light on, and cracks some myths about, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Also available as an eBook
355.0217/RHO
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The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
William Langewiesche
World nuclearization “has become the human condition,” Langewiesche warns in this brief, tightly packed study that precisely defines an issue worthy of being at the forefront of our international policy.
355.0217/LAN
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Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Paul Hawken
Environmentalist Hawken presents a unique, avidly detailed, and encouraging chronicle of the great global surge in activist groups dedicated to social justice and ecological sustainability.
333.72/HAW
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Boone
Robert Morgan
He did more for America than popularize that coonskin cap.
B/BOONE
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Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Daniel Tammet
Belying the concept of autism as incapacitating, Tammet’s astonishingly precise and personal autobiography is the awe-inspiring yet ingratiating record of the growth of a mind.
B/TAMMET
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Brother I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat
The author of The Dew Breaker recalls her childhood in explosive Haiti as framed by her beloved uncle's ill-fated attempt to immigrate to the U.S. in 2004. (Also available as an eAudiobook.)
B/DANTICAT
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Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
Jonathan Gould
Long on history, short on gossip, Gould examines the cultural and historical stages on both sides of the Atlantic onto which the world’s most admired rock band emerged. This is music writing at its best.
782.42166/GOU
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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
David Halberstam
The late Halberstam’s commanding and evocative final work displays his signature style: a combination of deep-drilling interviewing with thorough research, a detached awareness of historical trends, and “a respect for the nobility of ordinary people".
951.9042/HAL
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The Collected Poems, 1956-1998
Zbigniew Herbert
Finally, the work of this powerful master of 20th-century literature is all in one place.
891.851/HER
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Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See
Robert Kurson
After a technologically advanced surgery, a blind man can see. Mike May's real-life story is fraught with emotion.
B/MAY
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Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Clive James
An erudite and intrepid critic, James presents more than 100 electrifying biographical essays of seminal 20th-century figures. This is a lively and unpredictable work of cultural history and preservation.
909.09821/JAM
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The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
Milan Kundera
This great novelist offers a remarkably concise history of the novel, arguing that we must tear away “the curtain of pre-interpretation” to experience a work's truth.
801.3/KUN
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The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
Rick Atkinson
Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson continues his epic tale of what happened when Europe was liberated in World War II. Anyone would be intrigued by this book -not just war buffs.
940.54215/ATK
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The Discovery of France: A Historical Biography from the Revolution to the First World War
Graham Robb
Robb penetrates so skillfully into the murky, often misunderstood history of France that we would be tempted to think he had somehow secured a time machine; the result is a staggering wealth of fascinating revelations.
944/ROB
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Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
John Updike
Updike’s first nonfiction collection in eight years displays breathtaking scope as well as the author’s seeming inability to write badly.
814.54/UPD
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Edith Wharton
Hermione Lee
Lee’s tremendous biography of one of the most important American writers achieves landmark status; the formidable Mrs. Wharton is given great humanity here.
B/WHARTON
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Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson
With rare clarity and drama, Isaacson delves into Einstein’s private failings, valiant advocacy for peace and human rights, and deep resistance to his own scientific discoveries. Also available on CD & as an eAudiobook
B/EINSTEIN
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Embryo Culture: Making Babies in the Twenty-First Century
Beth Kohl
Winnetka author Beth Kohl winningly discusses her all-consuming years of infertility and in-vitro fertilization.
618.179/KOH
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The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
Tom Bissell
A devastating and powerful memoir in which a man probes how the war shaped his father's life and thus his family.
959.7043/BIS
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FDR
Jean Edward Smith
The author investigates how an aristocratic son of great inheritance became the voice of the nation's common man. This fleshed-out biography adds great depth to what we already know of our Depression-era president.
B/ROOSEVELT
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The Florist's Daughter
Patricia Hampl
Memoirist Patricia Hampl weaves an ordinary Minnesota life into majestic prose.
B/HAMPL
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Foreskin’s Lament: a Memoir
Shalom Auslander
With scathing humor and bitter irony, Auslander wrestles with his Jewish Orthodox roots.
B/AUSLANDER
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Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters
Anne Kreamer
Anne Kreamer stopped dying her hair at 49. This unassuming act made her reassess everything she thought she once knew about growing old gracefully.
305.244/KRE
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Head and Heart: American Christianities
Garry Wills
The struggle within American Christianity, Garry Wills argues, now and throughout our country's history, is between the head and the heart, between reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelicalism. Why has this been so? Wills, Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University, gives us his answers.
227.3/WIL
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How Doctors Think
Jerome Groopman
This could be the most important book on medicine you will ever read, analyzing why doctors misdiagnose—and how to help them get it right.
610/GRO
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How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
James Kugel
Kugel's tour de force of biblical scholarship juxtaposes ancient biblical interpretations with modern historical-critical approaches.
221.6/KUG
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In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage
Joseph Epstein
Evanston essayist Joseph Epstein grows older and sharper in this collection of essays ranging from memoir to cultural observation to literary criticism.
813.54/EPS
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In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth Century
Geert Mak
Sweeping in scope, brimming with luxurious detail, electric in prose style, and deeply comprehending of the subject, this Dutch writer’s magnum opus is a record of his year-long travel through Europe, drawing meaningful parallels between past and present. (Translated by Sam Garrett.)
940.5/MAK
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Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
Alex Von Tunzelmann
On August 15, 1947, Britain liberated 400 million people in what would become India and Pakistan. Alex Von Tunzelmann zeroes in on the leaders on all sides who essentially brought about the end of the British Empire.
954.03/VON
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The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer
Based on their controversial 2006 article that appeared in the London Review of Books, the authors argue that America should rethink its alignment with Israel. John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. (Additional author Stephen M. Walt.)
327.73054/MEA
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Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America
Andrew Ferguson
Impersonators, Disneyesque animation and "Abephobes": Don your top hat and whiskers and settle in for a hilarious compilation of all things Lincoln.
973.7092/FER
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The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.
William D. Cohan
Who knew reading the history of an investment banking firm could be so engaging?
332.66/COH
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Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Tim Weiner
Weiner's comprehensive survey is a damning indictment of American intelligence policy that identifies the persistent problems that plague the CIA.
327.1273/WEI
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A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932
John Richardson
The third, penultimate installment in Richardson’s biography spans a dauntingly complicated time in Picasso’s life and in European history.
B/PICASSO v. 3
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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah
This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war surpasses the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Also available as an eAudiobook
966.404/BEA
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Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger's
John Elder Robison
Writer Augusten Burroughs's older brother shines in this sometimes-funny, sometimes-poignant memoir about what it's like to be unable to process the social cues of the world.
616.8588/ROB
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Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu
Laurence Bergreen
An impressively researched and deftly composed biography of the famous 13th-century Italian explorer, who enjoyed remarkable experiences as a guest in the realm of Kublai Khan. Also available as an eAudiobook
B/POLO
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The Mistress' Daughter
A.M. Homes
Novelist A.M. Homes tells of the emotional tempest that occurred after her birth mother contacted her in 1992. Also available as an eAudiobook.
B/HOMES
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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks
Essays that tackle the neurology of music.
781.11/SAC
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My Father's Secret War
Lucinda Franks
Imagine the author's surprise when she discovered her mysterious late father was a secret agent for the Allies in World War II.
B/FRANKS
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The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why
Jabari Asim
Yes, that word. No, it's not ever acceptable, and Jabari Asim will explain why.
305.896/ASI
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Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945
Saul Friedlander
This volume continues the author's earlier work, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. Together, the books should become the standard work on the steps leading to the Holocaust.
940.5318/FRI v.2
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Next Life
Rae Armantrout
Armantrout’s poetry should be read out loud, so that the dissonance that is her genius can make its meaning heard.
811.54/ARM
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The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Jeffrey Toobin
Toga parties! Boozing! Silly handshakes! Well, not that kind of secret world, but intriguing nonetheless.
347.7326/TOO
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Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
Robert Dallek
Historian Robert Dallek provides an intriguing glimpse into the Oval Office at a time when two of the nation's most formidable figures were in secret sessions there.
973.924/DAL
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Nureyev: the Life
Julie Kabanagh
"Drawing on previously undisclosed letters, diaries, home-movie footage, interviews with Nureyev's inner circle, and her own dance background. Julie Kavanagh gives us the most intimate, revealing, and dramatic picture we have ever had of this dazzling, complex figure."
B/NUREYEV
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Once Upon a Quinceanera
Julia Alvarez
In the Latino community, a girl's 15th birthday is a big coming-of-age celebration. Alvarez provides a vibrant study of this rite of passage.
395.24/ALV
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One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets
Bliss Broyard
Anatole Broyard, longtime book critic for the New York Times, died without revealing his black heritage to his children, leading daughter Bliss to conduct an in-depth inquiry into Creole culture, African American history, and the psychology of race.
B/BROYARD
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Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
Shannon Brownlee
The reason for what amounts to a national delusion that more care is better care is rooted, Brownlee argues, in a build-it-and-they-will-come paradigm that rewards doctors and hospitals for how much care they deliver rather than how effective it is.
362.1/BRO
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Poincaré’s Prize: The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math’s Greatest Puzzles
George S. Szpiro
Szpiro’s remarkable book recounts the story of how a geometrical puzzle worthy of the most voracious sphinx finally yielded to an eccentric Russian genius who has since refused the honors proffered by an astonished world. Never has mathematics provided more fascinating human drama.
510.9/SZP
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The Reagan Diaries
Ronald Reagan
Unlike any other 20th-century president, Ronald Reagan kept a daily diary in which he wrote about his work. Nothing scandalous here, but it is an interesting account of how a president spent his days. (Edited by Douglas Brinkley.)
B/REAGAN
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Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
Stephen Prothero
Prothero diagnoses the problem of religious illiteracy and ignorance in the United States, then outlines controversial steps to address the deficiency.
200.71/PRO
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The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Alex Ross
In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.
780.9/ROS
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Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919
Ann Hagedorn
Adding a vivid human drama to the greater historical narrative, Savage Peace brings 1919 alive through the people who played a major role in making the year so remarkable.
973.913/HAG
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Schulz and Peanuts: a Biography
David Michaelis
This engaging biography enraged Charles Schulz's family, upset by the author’s portrayal of this country's late favorite cartoonist as a melancholy and cold man.
B/Shulz
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Selected Poems
Derek Walcott
The Nobel Prize winner Walcott, who was born on St. Lucia, is a long-serving poet of exile, caught between two races and two worlds.
811.54/WAL
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Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter
Phoebe Damrosch
Kitchen Confidential meets Sex and the City in this delicious, behind-the-scenes memoir from the first female captain at one of New York City’s most prestigious restaurants.
647.95/DAM
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Shadow of the Silk Road
Colin Thubron
In his latest absorbing travel epic, Thubron follows the course of the ancient network of trade routes that connected central China with the Mediterranean coast.
915.8/THU
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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein
The economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—of the “Chicago School” and Milton Friedman are catastrophic, argues this vigorous polemic that demonstrates how free-market ideologues both welcome and provoke the collapse of other people's economies.
330.122/KLE
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Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price
Jonathan Cohn
A riveting, often petrifying account of what's going on with our nation's withering health-care system.
362.1/COH
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Stealing Buddha's Dinner
Bich Minh Nguyen
A woman recalls how her family made the bewildering transition from South Vietnam to Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1975.
B/NGUYEN
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The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West
Mark Lilla
In one of the best-ever books on religion and politics, Lilla dissects the dangers of fundamentalism on the one hand and the failings of liberal theology on the other.
201.72/LIL
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Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming
Chris Mooney
Having witnessed Katrina's devastation of his mother's New Orleans house, science writer Mooney explores “whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes in general.”
363.73874/MOO
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The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
Judith Jones
In her entertaining, wondrously informative remembrance of her rich life, this important cookbook editor (discoverer of Julia Child) recounts experiences that food and book lovers will admire and envy.
B/JONES
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The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
Susan Faludi
Faludi explores how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 infected our culture, from anthrax antidotes to Victorian-style clothes to new national slogans. She is particularly masterful when debunking the media.
973.931/FAL
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Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade
Linda Perlstein
This examination of the devastating effects of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is sure to raise the ire of any taxpayer, parent or not.
379.158/PER
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Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005
Robert Hass
Hass, poet laureate between 1995 and 1997, shows the reader his rare skill with long sentences, a light touch, a wish to make claims not just on our ears but on our hearts, and a willingness to wait—few poets wait longer, it seems—for just the right word.
811.54/HAS
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Touch and Go: a memoir
Studs Terkel
The legendary storyteller, who is almost 95, writes of his Chicago youth and electrifying career in radio and beyond.
B/TERKEL
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Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War
Michael J. Neufeld
In the most comprehensively researched and judicious biography of von Braun yet published, Neufeld argues that von Braun’s great strengths were his abilities to spot talent, motivate, and persuade.
B/Von Braun
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Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven
Susan Richards Shreve
The author describes the two years she spent as a child at a former spa in Georgia that was turned into a polio hospital. This coming-of-age story highlights a part of 1950s America that many have forgotten.
B/SHREVE
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What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
Chandra Manning
Letters written by hundreds of soldiers from the North and the South provide compelling views of the ordinary men who fought in the Civil War.
973.3/MAN
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Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of 'On the Road' (They're Not What You Think)
John Leland
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's most famous publication, John Leland gives it a fresh read.
813.54 LEL
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Why Marines Fight
James Brady
Ex-jarhead Brady establishes beyond doubt that the U.S. Marines can find and bring out the warrior in any man who has it in him, and that undergoing that transformation creates a lasting bond among marines.
359.96/BRA
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The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
A.J. Jacobs
This hilarious, quixotic rumination on the perils of biblical literalism chronicles one New Yorker's mission to live the Bible's commandments for a full year.
220/JAC
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The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story
Diane Ackerman
Ackerman’s fascination with the bond between humankind and animals led her to the dramatic story of how Antonina Zabinski and her husband, Jan, director of the Warsaw Zoo, saved the lives of several hundred imperiled Jews during the Nazi occupation.
940.5318/ACK
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