Nonfiction Books with Buzz

As the daughter of a second-wave feminist icon, Molly Jong-Fast grew up often yearning for a deeper connection with a mother that always seemed to have more important things going on. After her mother was diagnosed with dementia and her husband with a rare cancer, Jong-Fast's life was turned upside down. This memoir follows the transformative impact of these diagnoses and explores the complex relationship between Jong-Fast and her mother.

In The Dry Season, Melissa Febos documents the year of abstinence she took in the wake of the tumultous end to a long-term relationship. Having for so long defined herself by the relationships she constantly cycled through, she was determined to finally spend time alone. The result was a year of utter transformation which reshaped her friendships, spirtuality, creativity, and her relationship with herself.

"Fraser is determined to make the reader see the worst of the killers’ actions, in vivid but unsensationalistic detail, to underscore the ever-escalating crises that mining and smelting businesses tried to underplay, pay off, or ignore. By the ’90s, as bans on leaded gasoline took effect, smelters closed, and the EPA set stricter pollution standards, the number of serial killers dissipated. Fraser’s book is an engrossing and disturbing portrait of decades of carnage that required decades to confront... A true-crime story written with compassion, fury, and scientific sense." – Kirkus Reviews

"Perhaps the most moving and beautiful part of his book comes in the interludes between visits to faraway rivers in which Macfarlane tells the history of a small spring near his home ... If we’re lucky, we do not have to go far to find a stream or river to sit by. The revelations in this passionate book will make that quiet, common experience even more life-giving." – Pamela Miller, The Minnesota Star Tribune

"Across both sections of the book, Lacey offers meditations on faith, violence, friendship, and dislocation. With scalpellike precision, she teases out connections between her childhood experiences with loving and losing God and losing her faith in love as an adult. There are no easy endings in this doubled book, just an infinity loop of questions and possibilities, a twinned bank of pay phones ringing in the night, waiting for someone to answer. A literary haunting that will burrow under your skin." – Kirkus Reviews

"A captivating portrait of the artist as a young man and an insightful snapshot of postwar Britain... Dyer’s most absorbing recollections are those concerning his foray into books. But his most satisfying depictions are of his humble, private, and resolutely unbookish parents... A vibrant trip down memory lane. There might be little in the way of tension or drama in the form of growing pains or teenage angst, but there is no shortage of candid and beguiling recollections of scrapes, shenanigans, success, and self-discoveries." – Malcolm Forbes, The Boston Globe

"In 10 nimbly reported essays, Osnos investigates the privileges and pretensions — and often, the crimes — of the outrageously affluent... this is about as good as a work of this sort could be. Osnos’s essays fit unusually well together, his reporting is sharp, and his prose is charming... The book is a repository of noxious have-yachts and envious haves who fret about their comparatively small boats... Osnos’s emphasis is understandable: The bizarre spectacles and amoral contortions of what he calls our “new aristocracy” matter more than ever." – Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

"Colorful, comprehensive... The narrative flows briskly: Tanenhaus streamlines decades of research and interviews... Tanenhaus is fair to this complicated pundit — more than fair — and the payoff is worth it. Buckley is a milestone contribution to our understanding of the American Century." – Hamilton Cain, The Boston Globe

"Givhan, known for her incisive writing on race, power, and aesthetics, approaches Abloh's story with clarity and urgency. She does not merely retell the narrative of a man who became the first Black artistic director at Louis Vuitton in its 164-year history. She interrogates the system he cracked open... Givhan's prose is elegant and cutting. [She] has written the definitive portrait of Virgil Abloh... a story about the future of fashion, and who deserves to shape it." – Katarina Doric, DSCENE

In 2019, Karen Hao, a reporter with the MIT Technology Review was given rare access to a niche technology company that few outside of the world of AI reserach had heard of. Six years later, OpenAI, and its CEO Sam Altamn, have become one of the most powerful forces and best known companies in the world. This is the inside story of OpenAI's rapid rise which has been met with fierce hostility from the company itself.