NYT Notable Books 2020 - Nonfiction

 

Showing 1 - 8 of 8  There are a total of 48 valid entries on the list.

1. The beauty in breaking: a memoir

Book cover for "The beauty in breaking"
Star rating for The beauty in breaking
Author:
Harper, Michele
Average Rating:
2.3 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
"A series of connected personal stories drawn from the author's life and work as an ER doctor that explores how we are all broken--physically, emotionally, and psychically--and what we can do to heal ourselves as we try to heal others"-- Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met...

2. Caste: the origins of our discontents

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Star rating for Caste
Author:
Wilkerson, Isabel
Average Rating:
4 stars
Formats:
Book, CD Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
""As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories...

3. The dead are arising: the life of Malcolm X

Book cover for "The dead are arising"
Star rating for The dead are arising
Author:
Payne, Les, 1941-2018
Average Rating:
5 stars
Formats:
Book, CD Audiobook, Hoopla eAudiobook
Description:
"An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative. Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X-all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures,...

4. Hidden Valley Road: inside the mind of an American family

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Author:
Kolker, Robert
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a...

5. Memorial Drive: a daughter's memoir

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Author:
Trethewey, Natasha D., 1966-
Average Rating:
5 stars
Formats:
Book, CD Audiobook
Description:
At nineteen, Trethewey's world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma. Here she explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. Moving through her mother's history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a 'child of miscegenation' in Mississippi,...

6. Overground railroad: the Green Book and the roots of Black travel in America

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Author:
Taylor, Candacy A.
Average Rating:
5 stars
Formats:
Book, Hoopla eAudiobook
Description:
"Overground Railroad chronicles the history of the Green Book, which was published from 1936 to 1966 and was the "Black travel guide to America." For years, it was dangerous for African Americans to travel in the United States. Because of segregation, Black travelers couldn't eat, sleep, or even get gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, department stores, gas stations, recreational destinations, and other businesses...

7. A promised land

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Author:
Obama, Barack
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Formats:
Book, CD Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young...

8. The splendid and the vile: a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the Blitz

Book cover for "The splendid and the vile"
Star rating for The splendid and the vile
Author:
Larson, Erik, 1954-
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Formats:
Book, CD Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000...