Favorite Non-Fiction Novels
Explore our curated list of favorite non-fiction novels, featuring must-read books that inspire, educate, and captivate. Discover your next great read today!
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Warnings
by Michael Smith
From the heart of tornado alley, Smith takes us into the eye of America's most devastating storms and behind the scenes of some of the world's most renowned scientific institutions to uncover the relationship between mankind and the weather.
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The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman
A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence
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A Life of Picasso
by John Richardson
A comprehensive biography of Spanish painter and sculptor, Pablo Picasso, that chronicles his life and works from the time he left Paris in 1917 to 1932, the artist's fiftieth birthday.
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The Informant
by James Grippando
FBI agent Victoria Santos and Miami reporter Mike Posten find their own lives in danger as they hunt for two men, a serial killer and an informant with a suspicious ability to predict the killer's next move.
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Born Standing Up
by Steve Martin
The riveting, mega-bestselling, beloved and highly acclaimed memoir of a man, a vocation, and an era named one of the ten best nonfiction titles of the year by Time and Entertainment Weekly. In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of “why I did stand-up and why I walked away.” Emmy and Grammy Award–winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written. At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes. Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times—the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies. Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Up is a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.
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The Nine
by Jeffrey Toobin
Acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin takes us into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, revealing the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land. An institution at a moment of transition, the Court now stands at a crucial point, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, and church-state relations. Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and with a keen sense of the Court’s history and the trajectory of its future, Jeffrey Toobin creates in The Nine a riveting story of one of the most important forces in American life today.
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Conspiracy of Fools
by Kurt Eichenwald
From an award-winning New York Times reporter comes the full, mind-boggling true story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the Enron scandal that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. It was the corporate collapse that appeared to come out of nowhere. In late 2001, the Enron Corporation—a darling of the financial world, a company whose executives were friends of presidents and the powerful—imploded virtually overnight, leaving vast wreckage in its wake and sparking a criminal investigation that would last for years. Kurt Eichenwald transforms the unbelievable story of the Enron scandal into a rip-roaring narrative of epic proportions, taking readers behind every closed door—from the Oval Office to the executive suites, from the highest reaches of the Justice Department to the homes and bedrooms of the top officers. It is a tale of global reach—from Houston to Washington, from Bombay to London, from Munich to Sao Paolo—laying out the unbelievable scenes that twisted together to create this shocking true story. Eichenwald reveals never-disclosed details of a story that features a cast including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul O’Neill, Harvey Pitt, Colin Powell, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alan Greenspan, Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. With its you-are-there glimpse into the secretive worlds of corporate power, Conspiracy of Fools is an all-true financial and political thriller of cinematic proportions.
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
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The Pacific
by Hugh Ambrose
In this companion to the HBO miniseries--executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman--Ambrose reveals the intertwined odysseys of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot during World War II.
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Cut
by Cathy Glass
Dawn was the first girl Cathy Glass ever fostered. Sweet and seemingly well balanced girl, Dawn?s outward appearance masked a traumatic childhood so awful, that even she could not remember it.
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House of Secrets
by Lowell Cauffiel
An ex-con by the name of Eddie told his daughter Pixie to silence her crying baby. The young mother smothered her helpless infant, stuffed its tiny corpse into a gym bag and then buried it in a shallow grave.
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Game Change
by John Heilemann
OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS; MCCAIN AND PLAIN, AND THE RACE OF A LIFETIME.
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Street Kid
by Judy Westwater
Judy Westwater discusses her childhood and the abuse that she suffered.
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A Man Named Dave
by Dave Pelzer
'I don't blame others for my problems. I stand on my own. And one day, youÂżll see, IÂżm going to make something of myself.' These words were eighteen-year-old Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, a woman who had abused him with shocking brutality. But even years after he was rescued, his life remained a continual struggle. Dave felt rootless and awkward, an outcast haunted by memories of his years as the bruised, cowering 'It' locked in his motherÂżs basement. DaveÂżs dramatic reunion with his dying father and the shocking confrontation with his mother led to his ultimate calling: mentor to others struggling with personal hardships. From a difficult marriage to the birth of his son, from an unfulfilling career to an enduring friendship, Dave was finally able to break the chains of his past, learning to trust, to love, and to live.
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The War Within
by Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward once again pulls back the curtain on Washington to reveal the inner workings of a government at war. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust, and determina- tion within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies, and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. This is the inside story of how Bush governed.
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Weather Whys
by Paul Yeager
The myths, history, wives-tales, oddities, and wonders of a subject that comes up every day: the weather. Weather enthusiasts (or just the weather-curious) will discover surprising facts, myths, and oddities in this fascinating book of useful (and sometimes useless) information. With his expertise as a meteorologist and editor, Paul Yeager takes readers on a journey through the curious world of weather, revealing myths and misconceptions, sharing weird phenomena, and explaining how weather has affected history. Readers will discover a host of fascinating weather facts, including: ?Which city is actually the windiest ?How the temperature affects tire pressure ?Why humidity makes hair go limp or frizzy ?Why a coming storm causes sore joints ?Why watering a garden after it rains is a good idea