2023 NYT Notable Books - Nonfiction


Showing 1 - 20 of 22  There are a total of 51 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Battle of ink and ice"
Star rating for Battle of ink and ice
Description:
"A sixty-year saga of frostbite and fake news that follows the no-holds-barred battle between two legendary explorers to reach the North Pole, and the newspapers which stopped at nothing to get--and sell--the story. In the fall of 1909, a pair of bitter contests captured the world's attention. The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have discovered the North Pole, sparking a vicious feud that was unprecedented in international...
Book cover for "The best minds"
Star rating for The best minds
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
An acclaimed author investigates the forces that led his closest childhood friend, a paranoid schizophrenic with brilliant promise who defied the odds and graduated from Yale Law School, to kill the woman he loved, in this exploration of the ways in which we understand--and fail to understand--mental illness.
Book cover for "Bottoms up and the devil laughs"
Star rating for Bottoms up and the devil laughs
Description:
"Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections--a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the indelible. Howley's subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures. A soap opera...
Book cover for "Cobalt red"
Star rating for Cobalt red
Description:
"An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation-and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposae of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory...
Book cover for "Crossings"
Star rating for Crossings
Description:
"An eye-opening and witty account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from an award-winning author. Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, but we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. In Crossings, Ben Goldfarb delves into the new science of road ecology to explore how roads have transformed our world. Millions of animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, and roads fragment...
Book cover for "Daughter of the dragon"
Star rating for Daughter of the dragon
Author:
Description:
The story of Anna May Wong, who fought virulent anti-Chinese xenophobia, unabashed sexism, cinematic exploitation and ageism that defined American culture in the 20th century to became Hollywood's first Chinese American film star.
Book cover for "The great escape"
Star rating for The great escape
Description:
"In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000...
Book cover for "How to say Babylon"
Star rating for How to say Babylon
Description:
This stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her strict Rastafarian upbringing ruled by a father whose rigid beliefs, rage and paranoia led to violence shows how found her own power and provides a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we know little about.
Book cover for "King"
Star rating for King
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times"--
Book cover for "Lives of the wives"
Star rating for Lives of the wives
Description:
"A witty look at the complex and fascinating but tumultuous marriages of five well-known figures in the literary world, including British theater critic Kenneth Tynan, and authors Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis."-- The history of wives is largely one of silence, resilience, and forbearance. Toss in celebrity, male privilege, ruthless ambition, narcissism, and a few more factors, and it's easy to understand why the marriages of many famous writers have...
Book cover for "A living remedy"
Star rating for A living remedy
Description:
"From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief-a daughter's search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship...
Book cover for "Master slave husband wife"
Star rating for Master slave husband wife
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring determination and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as "his" slave. In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband...
Book cover for "My name is Barbra"
Star rating for My name is Barbra
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the...
Book cover for "Oscar wars"
Star rating for Oscar wars
Description:
Chronicling the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas that have played out on the stage and off camera, this entertaining exploration of the Oscars features a star-studded cast of some of the most powerful Hollywood players of today and yesterday.
Book cover for "Our migrant souls"
Star rating for Our migrant souls
Description:
"A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity"--
Book cover for "Pageboy"
Star rating for Pageboy
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his truth. "Can I kiss you?" It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans...
Book cover for "Poverty, by America"
Star rating for Poverty, by America
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...
Book cover for "The rediscovery of America"
Star rating for The rediscovery of America
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.00Ned Blackhawk...
Book cover for "Schoenberg"
Star rating for Schoenberg
Description:
"In his time, the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an international icon. His twelve-tone system was considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. With this interpretative account, the acclaimed biographer of Toscanini finally restores Schoenberg to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the twentieth...
Book cover for "The Slip"
Star rating for The Slip
Description:
"A group portrait of artists Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, Jack Youngerman, and the street they all called home, Coenties Slip in the 1950s and 1960s"--