NYT Notable Books 2021 - Nonfiction


Showing 1 - 20 of 47  There are a total of 47 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for All the frequent troubles of our days.
Description:
Part biography, part political thriller, part scholarly detective story that draws on letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, and other documents, this true story chronicles the life and brutal death of Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany.
Book cover for America and Iran.
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"A history of the relationship between Iran and America from the 1700s through the current day"--
Book cover for America on fire.
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" 'If you want to understand the massive antiracist protests of 2020, put down the navel-gazing books about racial healing and read America on Fire.' -Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Library Journal "Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021" From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and "riots" that shatters our understanding of the post-civil rights era. What began in spring...
Book cover for American baby.
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"The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other-- As Baby Boomers became teenagers in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old...
Book cover for The American war in Afghanistan.
Description:
"The American War in Afghanistan is a full history of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2020. It covers political, cultural, strategic, and tactical aspects of the war and details the actions and decision-making of the United States, Afghan government, and Taliban. The work follows a narrative format to go through the 2001 US invasion, the state-building of 2002-2005, the Taliban offensive of 2006, the US surge of 2009-2011, the subsequent drawdown,...
Book cover for Beautiful country.
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"Beautiful Country is the real deal. Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you."--Gish Jen, author of The Resisters Ba Ba told me this and I in turn carried it in my heart: so long as we didn't stake claim to what wasn't ours--the things, our rooms, America, this beautiful country--we would be okay. An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's five...
Book cover for Better to have gone.
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"A spellbinding story about love, faith, the search for utopia -- and the often devastating cost of idealism. It's the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world -- Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong,...
Book cover for Between two kingdoms.
Description:
A few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, Jaouad received a diagnosis of leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for 'The New York Times'. After countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant she learned that a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it's where it begins. How could she...
Book cover for Catching the wind.
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"The epic, definitive biography of Ted Kennedy--an immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality. Edward M. Kennedy was never expected to succeed. The youngest of nine, he lacked his brothers' natural gifts and easy grace. Yet after winning election to the Senate at the tender age of thirty, he became the most consequential legislator of his lifetime,...
Book cover for The chancellor.
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"The definitive biography of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, detailing the remarkable rise and political brilliance of the most powerful--and elusive--woman in the world. The Chancellor is at once a riveting political biography and an intimate human story of a complete outsider--a research chemist and pastor's daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany--who rose to become the unofficial leader of the West. Acclaimed biographer Kati Marton...
Book cover for Churchill's shadow.
Description:
"A major reassessment of Winston Churchill that examines his lasting influence in politics and culture. Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, if not the greatest of all, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in the face of German bombing of England, his political prowess, his deft aphorisms, and his memorable speeches. He became the savior of his country, as prime minister during...
Book cover for The contrarian.
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"A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business, and politics Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s,no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel....
Book cover for The Copenhagen trilogy.
Description:
"Called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing. Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969–71) is her acknowledged masterpiece...remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family...
Book cover for Crying in H Mart.
Description:
"From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the...
Book cover for Dirty work.
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""Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of the United States' most violent and abusive prisons. In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society's most ethically troubling jobs." --
Book cover for Doomed romance.
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"A study of sexual politics in 19th century New England through the life of one woman"--
Book cover for Empire of pain.
Description:
Presents a portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, who built their fortune on the sale of Valium and later sponsored the creation and marketing of one of the most commonly prescribed and addictive painkillers of the opioid crisis.
Book cover for Everything I have is yours.
Description:
"A turbulent romance meets harrowing medical mystery: the true story of the author's twenty-year marriage defined by her husband's chronic illness-and a testament to the endurance of love. Eleanor met Aaron when she was just a teenager and he was working at a local record store-older, cool, experienced, and with an electric personality. Escaping the cliches of fleeting young love, their summer romance bloomed into a relationship that survived college...
Book cover for The extended mind.
Description:
"A bold new book that proves our bodies and surroundings know more than our brains do"--
Book cover for The family Roe.
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Reports on the Supreme Court's most divisive case, Roe v. Wade, and the unknown lives at its heart.