2023 NYT Notable Books - Nonfiction

"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...

3.7 stars

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...

3 stars

"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...

Told through a series of 248 notes, this volume explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake of it, touching upon such themes as language, beauty, memory, history and literature.

"A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity"--

5 stars

"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...

"A monumental and riveting account of how a poet, a physicist, and a philosopher pursued truth to the very limits of human apprehension and revealed the fundamental nature of our place in the universe Spiraling in the wreckage of a failed love affair, Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges channeled his devastation into his work, reassessing the slippery nature of our own identities and the way we perceive reality, ultimately securing his place in the literary...

4 stars

"Stranded in a volatile, ever-shifting family, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests...

"'My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.' Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman...

"From the award-winning author comes a gripping account of one of the most scandalous murdesr in modern Irish history, at once a propulsive work of true crime and an act of literary subversion. Malcolm MacArthur was a well-known Dublin socialite and heir.Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate...