Beyond Bestsellers - Nonfiction

July - September 2014 Issue

See also:

• Featured Review: One Kick by Chelsea Cain
• Fiction Recommendations
• Previous Issues

Austerlitz, Saul.  Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community. 

Bair, Julene.  The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning.
Beam, Alex.  American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church.  
Becker, Jo.  Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality.
Bennett, Jeffrey.  What Is Relativity? An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein’s Ideas, and Why They Matter. 
Bird, Kai.  The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. 
Blaser, Martin, M.D.  Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues. 
Blum, Howard.  Dark Invasion: 1915; Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America. 
Booth, Michael and Jennifer Brown.  Eating Dangerously: Why the Government Can’t Keep Your Food Safe...and How You Can. 
Boyd, Danah.  It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.  Buckley, Christopher.  But Enough About You: Essays. 

Cheever, Susan.  E. E. Cummings. 
Cheney, Lynne.  James Madison: A Life Reconsidered. 
Churchwell, Sarah.  Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of “The Great Gatsby”. 
Cohan, William D.  The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities. 

Davis, Seth.  Wooden: A Coach’s Life. 
De Courcy, Anne.  The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj. 
de Queiroz, Alan.  The Monkey’s Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life. 
Dokoupil, Tony.  The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana. 
Duberman, Martin.  Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS. 

Ehrenreich, Barbara.  Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything. 
Ellenberg, Jordan.  How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. 

Fermor, Patrick Leigh.  The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos. 
Fong, Kevin.  Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century. 
French, Howard W.  China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa. 

Gibb, Lorna.  The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West. 
Giridharadas, Anand.  The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas. 
Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger.  Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. 
Goldstone, Lawrence.  Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies. 
Grandin, Greg.  The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World. 
Guha, Ramachandra.  Gandhi Before India. 

Handler, Chelsea.  Uganda Be Kidding Me. 
Heacox, Kim.  John Muir and the Ice that Started a Fire: How a Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America. 
Hirsch, Edward.  A Poet’s Glossary.
Hoffman, Carl.  Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art. 
Hofler, Robert.  Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange - How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos. 
Hotta: Eri.  Japan  1941: Countdown to Infamy. 
Huang, Quanyu.  The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids.

Itzkoff, Dave.  Mad As Hell: The Making of “Network” and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies.

Jamison, Leslie.  The Empathy Exams: Essays. 
Jones, Daniel.  Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (With the Help of 50,000 Strangers).

Kaplan, Fred.  John Quincy Adams: American Visionary. 
Kashatus, William C.  Jackie and Campy: The Untold Story of Their Rocky Relationship and the Breaking of Baseball’s Color Line.
Kennan, George F.  The Kennan Diaries. 

Lippard, Lucy.  Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West. 

McGraw, Peter.  The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. 
MacLean, David Stuart.  The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia.
Mettler, Suzanne.  Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. 
Miller, Donald L.  Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America. 
Miodownik, Mark.  Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World. 

Oakes, James.  The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War. 

Paabo, Svante.  Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. 
Parissien, Steven.  The Life of the Automobile: The Complete History of the Motor Car. 
Pawel, Miriam.  The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography. 
Pettegree, Andrew.  The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself. 
Pilling, David.  Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of  Survival. 
Purdum, Todd S.  An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Robbins, Tom.  Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. 
Rosolie, Paul.  Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon. 

Schama, Simon.  The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD. 
Schulte, Brigid.  Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. 
Solomon, Alisa.  Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof. 
Stibbe, Nina.  Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home. 
Strycker, Noah.  The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal about Being Human. 
Sutton, Tina.  The Making of Markova: Diaghilev’s Baby Ballerina to Groundbreaking Icon. 

Taibbi, Matt.  The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. 
Taylor, Astra.  The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. 

Warren, Elizabeth.  A Fighting Chance. 
Washington, Mary Helen.  The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1960’s. 
Waters, John.  Carsick: Hitchhikes Across America. 
Weisman, Alan.  Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth.
White, Edward. The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America.
Whitehead, Colson.  The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death. 
Williams, Joan C. and Rachel Dempsey.  What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know. 
Wolf, Alison.  The XX Factor: How the Rise of the Working Woman Has Created a Far Less Equal World.