ICPL Top Staff Picks for 2016: Nonfiction

Nonfiction books run the gamut from history and science to cooking and travel. The titles nominated for our Best of the Best list are certainly eclectic, as is our staff!

ICPL's BEST NONFICTION OF 2016

• Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
• American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes by Anne Byrn
• The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson
• The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll
• Their Great Gift: Courage, Sacrifice and Hope in a New Land by John Coy
• Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve by Tom Bissell
• Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide by Charles Foster
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
• Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill
• Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford by Clint Hill
• Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
• American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
• Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
• Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Love and Ruin: Tales of Obsession, Danger, and Heartbreak from the Atavist Magazine by Evan Ratliff
• Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach
• The Year of Living Danishly:  Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country by Helen Russell
• The Sting of the Wild by Justin O. Schmidt
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
• The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy by Jean Kennedy Smith
• American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin
• Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs by Julia Turshen
• Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye
• No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII by Robert Weintraub
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong