Literary Nonfiction
The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami
Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert
981.1/Kopenawa
Literary Nonfiction, Nature, Political
The shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami tribe of the Brazilian Amazon describes the culture conflicts his people have faced in Western industrial society and global politics, issuing a plea for the native peoples of the Amazon.
Why we read : on bookworms, libraries and just one more page before lights out
Shannon Reed
028.9 /Reed
Literary Nonfiction
In this uproarious exploration of the joys of reading, a long-time teacher, lifelong reader and The New Yorker contributor shares surprising stories from her life and the poignant ways in which books have impacted her students and shows us how literature can transform us for the better.
This was a joyful tribute to the reader and reader life, with funny academic life anecdotes from the author and an extensive reading list in the back of all the works mentioned. It's light reading, easy to pick up and put down, and a warm and fuzzy read on reading. -Amanda
SPLINTERS.
LESLIE JAMISON
ON ORDER BOOK
Nonfiction, Biographies, Literary Nonfiction
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review Bestseller Jamison (The Empathy Exams) chronicles in this exquisite memoir the dramatic shift her life took following the birth of her daughter and the end of her marriage. After giving birth three weeks before her due date in an emergency C-section, Jamison felt overwhelmingly grateful her daughter survived, even as she struggled with difficulties breastfeeding and other challenges of caring for a newborn. Then the real pain started: just over a year after her daughter was born, Jamison's marriage to her husband, "C," disintegrated as his anger grew more intense, and she began divorce proceedings. Two post-divorce boyfriends--"the tumbleweed" and "the ex-philosopher"--entered the picture, then exited. Throughout, Jamison is brutally honest about the obstacles to balancing creative fulfillment, parenting, dating, and sobriety, utilizing her beguiling command of language to spotlight feelings often obscured in other accounts of motherhood ("Sometimes motherhood tricked me into feeling virtuous because I was always taking care of someone. But it didn't make me virtuous at all. It made me feral and ruthless"). Her soul-searching is sure to inspire readers seeking to find the sweet spot between living for their children and living for themselves. By turns funny, poignant, harrowing, and joyful, this standout personal history isn't easily forgotten.
To be honest, this book wasn't at the top of my TBR list, but it is now! I was lucky enough to catch Leslie reading and in conversation with Kaveh Akbar at Prairie Lights last night, and within a minute of hearing Ms. Jamison read, I knew that I would be diving into this book ASAP. So much has already been said about her meticulous attention to detail and conjuring scene and emotion with just the right words, and it's all true. For me, though, it was her actual reading of her own words that hooked me so quickly--a cadence somewhere between prose and poetry that illuminated the beauty of the sentences and let their meaning come through at the same time. And if you're worried that a book about being a writer or a divorcée or a mother won't appeal to you if you aren't any of those things, rest assured that there's so much more to the work. As the subtitle says, it's a different kind of love story, and I think there is something in this book that everyone can relate to. -Candice
Above ground : poems
Clint Smith
811.6 /Smith
Black Lives Matter, Black History, Nonfiction, Poetry, Literary Nonfiction
Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith's lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children's lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up--through the changing world of which we are all a part.
A beautiful and healing collection of poems from Clint Smith (author of "How the Word Is Passed"), reflecting on the ups and downs of parenthood, how it has changed him and other epiphanies that come with it. Sprinkled with both the small happy memories and the bursts of grief that can come with the vicissitudes of life, loss and trauma. -Annie
The Wager : a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder
David Grann
910.9164 /Grann
Literary Nonfiction, Nonfiction, History
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z, a mesmerizing story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death-for whomever the court found guilty could hang. The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound. Most powerfully, he unearths the deeper meaning of the events, showing that it was not only the Wager's captain and crew who were on trial - it was the very idea of empire"--
I actually bought my own copy of this book because I just couldn't wait...it was worth the splurge! It's no secret that I'm already a fan of David Grann's writing, so it should come as no surprise that I'm loving this book. It's not even like seafaring and wrecks are my thing, but the way he writes about it, they might as well be. The story comes alive, through the details of the souls on board the ships and everything they went through, their dreams, emotions, fears, and actions. The ships and the environments even become characters of a sort in the story, as they have their own powers over the fates of everyone on board and waiting at home. Thrilling history here! -Candice
Seen and unseen : what Toyo Miyatake, Dorothea Lange, and Ansel Adams' photographs reveal about the Japanese American incarceration
Elizabeth Partridge
j940.547273 Partridge
Nonfiction, Literary Nonfiction, Picture Books, History, Art / Art History
"Legendary photographers Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams all photographed the Japanese American incarceration, but with different approaches and different results. This nonfiction picture book for middle-grade readers examines the Japanese-American incarceration and the complexity of documenting it through the work of these three photographers"--
Seen and Unseen is a must-read. An incredible marriage of photography, literary nonfiction, scrapbooking, illustration, survivor stories, and US History, Partridge and Tamaki use various media to bring Japanese American incarceration to light. This is suggested reading for all families, middle-graders, young adults, and adults, especially those interested in or affected by WWII. Seen and Unseen would be a great gift as well! -Casey
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
Lindsey Fitzharris
OverDrive Audiobook
Literary Nonfiction, History, Biographies
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. .
This book is devastating and hopeful at the same time. It is a story that starts out harrowing, but after hard work and ingenuity by a few individuals, things change for the better. The Facemaker, a history of World War I facial reconstruction, sets the scene: how World War I was fought in new and horrific ways. It was industrial. There were a lot of advancements in weapons of war. (And of course, for what?) Lindsey Fitzharris describes this moment in time very well. Then there are the people put in the trenches and at sea and in the air, not to mention the civilians, facing this new weaponry. Fitzharris makes these stories personal and individual, the pain experienced both inside and out. She picks a number of individuals that came home with significant facial injuries and how they viewed their lives as over. Enter Harold Gillies, an ears, nose, and throat doctor, who is about to become the leading expert in facial reconstruction. If you love compelling histories of war or medicine, I recommend this book. As an aside, the audio version was excellently narrated. -Anne M
Hell's half-acre : the untold story of the Benders, a serial killer family on the American frontier
Susan Jonusas
364.1523 /Jonusas
Nonfiction, True Crime, History, Literary Nonfiction
"In 1873 the people of Labette County in Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried on a homestead seven miles south of the town of Cherryvale, in a bloodied cellar and under frost-covered soil, were countless bodies in varying states of decay. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for over two decades, and the land on which the crimes took place became known as 'Hells Half-Acre.' When it emerged that a family of four known as the Benders had been accused of the slayings, the case was catapulted to infamy."
Sometimes, when summer comes, you just want a good, historical true crime book to get lost in. This book does the trick. The author does a good job of telling the eerie story of the Benders and their crimes, while giving context through the descriptions of burgeoning frontier towns, the hardworking people who populated them, the political schemes of the day, and the lawlessness that pervaded an environment that was created by taking the land from one people and giving it to another. A great mix of crime and solid history. -Candice
Plunder : a memoir of family property and Nazi treasure
Menachem Kaiser
940.5318 /Kaiser
Nonfiction, Literary Nonfiction, History, Religion, Political
When Kaiser takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland, he finds himself on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery-- that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex-- leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Here Kaiser questions: What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? -- adapted from jacket
First, this book is beautifully written. Menachem Kaiser's grasp of language to tell a story, illustrate situations, and convey thoughts and emotions is so fluid and engaging. Second, this book is important in many ways, but also very interesting--a real nonfiction win-win. It's a slightly winding story, starting out with particular goals and desired outcomes, but as so often happens when researching and interacting history, the modern world and reality intervene, and make things a lot harder to get hold of and follow. Menachem goes where the story leads him, and the results are so strange, interesting, and profound that you couldn't have imagined some of it. This story is also full of love and learning and respect--for self, for others, for history, and for the stories that survive. -Candice
Sea state : a memoir
Tabitha Lasley
BIOGRAPHY Lasley, Tabitha
Literary Nonfiction, Nonfiction, Memoir, Adventure
"A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around. In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, competition, and the deepest friendships imaginable. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men--and her. Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: "offshore" is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay--class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security. Sea State is on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare"--
This book is in my selection area, and I found my interest piqued each time I came across a review for it. It's one of those "under the radar" reads--worthy of "best of" rankings but not explosively viral like Educated or Atomic Habits. The author's narrative writing style allows a reader to (sea) breeze through the book. Read it if you're in the mood for a true story about living a life in search of something more. -Melody
With so little of the world affected by commercialization, this is such an important message to hear. Excited to see the film that was inspired by this important book. Here's some information about the 2024 film: In collaboration with Brazil’s indigenous Yanomami people, this documentary follows leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa as he fights to return the world to balance in closely observed rituals and trenchant comments on the ruthless logic of a materialistic outside culture. Based on the shaman's book of the same name, the film tackles illegal logging, gold mining, and the deadly mix of epidemics these intrusions spread that threaten the existence of the Yanomami. With an acute understanding of geopolitical forces, Davi Kopenawa holds up a mirror to capitalist societies of “the merchandise people” and the unsustainable lifestyle of the so-called “developed countries” that threatens the survival of humanity as a whole. -Katie