Tremendous Non-fiction (2003)
Explore tremendous non-fiction books from 2003! Discover insightful reads and expand your knowledge. Read these books today.
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Black Hawk Down
by Mark Bowden
Chronicles the experiences of ninety-nine American soldiers who were trapped in the city of Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993.
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Nickel and Dimed
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.
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Paula
by Isabel Allende
An autobiography of the life and family of Chilean author, Isabel Allende.
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Paris to the Moon
by Adam Gopnik
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠âThe finest book on France in recent years.ââAlain de Botton, The New York Times Book Review In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of Paris. In the grand tradition of Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Liebling, Gopnik set out to enjoy the storied existence of an American in Parisâwalks down the paths of the Tuileries, philosophical discussions in cafĂŠs, and afternoon jaunts to the MusĂŠe dâOrsay. But as readers of Gopnikâs beloved and award-winning âParis Journalâ in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with la vie quotidienneâthe daily, slightly less fabled life. As Gopnik discovers in this tender account, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilarâboth promise new routines, new languages, and a new set of rules by which each day is to be lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik manages to weave the magical with the mundane in this wholly delightful book that Entertainment Weekly deemed âmagisterial.â
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Amazing Grace
by Jonathan Kozol
The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDs, life-consuming fires and gang rivalries take a high toll. Several children die during the year in which this narrative takes place. A gently written work, Amazing Grace asks questions that are at once political and theological. What is the value of a child's life? What exactly do we plan to do with those whom we appear to have defined as economically and humanly superfluous? How cold -- how cruel, how tough -- do we dare be?
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Thinking Out Loud
by Anna Quindlen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠From Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author Anna Quindlen comes âa splendid collectionâ of short essays that are âeloquent, powerful, compassionate, and drollâ (The Cleveland Plain Dealer) âQuindlen writes with rare insight, intelligence, and wit. Most of all she writes from the heart.ââThe Buffalo News Thinking out loud is what Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen does best in this collection of her hugely popular New York Times columns. With her finger on the pulse of modern life, and her heart in a place we all recognize, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere: âSome people go nuts when their children learn to pick out the âMoonlight Sonataâ on the piano. The day I realized my eldest child could read was one of the happiest days of my life.â âDiscussions about the homeless always remind me of a woman who told me that she was damned if her tax dollars were going to pay for birth control for the poor. The question is not whether we will pay. It is what we want to pay for, and what works.â On subjects close to home and far away, Anna Quindlen remains a uniquely clear and incisive voice.
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Living Out Loud
by Anna Quindlen
Each week in her syndicated New York Times column, Anna Quindlen talked about growing up, having children, running into old boy/girlfriends, dealing with aging parents and growing older herself. Living Out Loud is a collection sure to collect hordes of baby boomer fans.
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Wild Swans
by Jung Chang
Tells the story of three women--Jung Chang, her mother, and her grandmother--whose lives and fortunes mirror the tumultuous twentieth century in China.
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Personal History
by Katharine Graham
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠PULTIZER PRIZE WINNER ⢠The captivating inside story of the woman who helmed the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media: the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her storyâone that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husbandâa confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnsonâplunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressmanâs union as she entered the profane boysâ club of the newspaper business. As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, discovering her own strength and sense of self as she confrontedâand masteredâthe personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.