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Walkable City
How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Brimming with keen observations and real-world examples, a city planner and architectural designer who advocates for smart growth and sustainable design presents a practical, necessary and achievable plan for making American cities work.
News and Reviews
Elsewhere
A Memoir
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls presents an upbeat personal account of his youth, his parents and the 1950s upstate New York town they struggled to escape. He recounts the encroaching poverty and illness that challenged everyday life and the dreams his mother instilled that inspired his career.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
African American Faces of the Civil War
An Album
Uses archival photographs to introduce African American men who fought in the Civil War, whose roles ranged from servants and laborers to junior officers, and includes details on each man's life through military records and personal files.
News and Reviews
In The Garden Of Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
The best-selling author of Devil in the White City documents the efforts of William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to Hitler's Germany, to acclimate to a residence in an increasingly violent city where he is forced to associate with the Nazis while his daughter pursues a relationship with Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels. NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Swerve
How the World Became Modern
A humanities professor describes the impact of the translation of the last remaining manuscript of On the Nature of Things by Roman philosopher Lucretius, which fueled the Renaissance and inspired artists, great thinkers and scientists.NPR Bestseller, Literary Award Winner
News and Reviews
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
The writer and actor best known for her role on The Office shares observations on everything from favorite male archetypes and her hatred of dieting to her relationship with her mother and the haphazard creative process of The Office's writers' room.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Bossypants
The breakout star of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock gives a humorous account of her life, as well as behind-the-scenes stories from her hit shows.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Team Of Rivals
The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
An analysis of Abraham Lincoln's political talents identifies the strengths and abilities that enabled his election and describes how he used those same abilities to rally former opponents to win the Civil War.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Catherine The Great
Portrait Of A Woman
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Peter the Great presents a reconstruction of the 18th century empress's life that covers such topics as her efforts to engage Russia in the cultural life of Europe, her creation of the Hermitage art collection and her numerous scandal-free romantic affairs.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling numerous medical and scientific discoveries.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
I Could Pee On This
And Other Poems By Cats
Francesco Marciuliano, author of the comic strip Sally Forth, gives voice to the thoughts and feelings of cats in this collection of poems attributed to felines.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Signal And The Noise
Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don't
The founder of FiveThirtyEight.com challenges myths about predictions in subjects ranging from the financial market and weather to sports and politics, profiling the world of prediction to explain how to distinguish true signals from hype.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Hallucinations
An investigation into the types, physiological sources and cultural resonances of hallucinations traces everything from the disorientations of sleep and intoxication to the manifestations of injury and illness.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Wild
From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington state — and she would do it alone.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
The award-winning blogger for Smitten Kitchen presents a long-awaited first cookbook of 100 new and favorite recipes — from Mushroom Bourguignon and Pancetta to Buttered Popcorn Cookies and Chocolate Hazelnut Layer Cake — in a volume that features adapted options for busy home cooks.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Waging Heavy Peace
A Hippie Dream
Two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Neil Young presents the story of his career against a backdrop of 40 years of history. He discusses such topics as his collaborations with fellow artists, his creative process and his activist work with Farm Aid and The Bridge School.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
America Again
Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't
The political satirist, comedian and host of The Colbert Report puts his signature humorous spin on health care, the economy and food, promising that this book will single-handedly fix an America that is broken and has lost its way.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Killing Lincoln
The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and writer Martin Dugard focus on the life, death and legacy of the 16th president in their book Killing Lincoln. The authors reconstruct the final days of Lincoln's life and examine the plot against the president at the end of the Civil War in April 1865.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Unbroken
A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Unbroken tells the gripping true story of a U.S. airman who was the sole survivor when his bomber crashed into the sea during World War II. He faced thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and an even greater trial. NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
When God Talks Back
Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God
Draws on anthropological and psychological perspectives to analyze the American evangelical experience, drawing on intimate interviews with members of the Vineyard church while explaining the scientific aspects of intensely practiced prayer and collective supernatural experiences.
News and Reviews
Behind The Beautiful Forevers
Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
A profile of everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother and a young scrap-metal thief, illuminating the way their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religion, caste and economic tensions.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Brain On Fire
My Month of Madness
An account of the author's struggle with a rare brain-attacking autoimmune disease traces how she woke up in a hospital with no memory of her baffling psychotic symptoms, and describes the last-minute intervention by a doctor who identified the source of her illness.
News and Reviews
Iron Curtain
The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
Anne Applebaum discusses the creation of the Communist regimes that took hold in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and describes what daily life was like in these countries.
News and Reviews
The Passage Of Power
The Years Of Lyndon Johnson
Robert Caro has spent decades researching Lyndon Johnson's life; previous books in his massive biography of Johnson told the story of Johnson's rise to national prominence. In this fourth volume, Caro takes up Johnson's dismal years as vice president and his sudden presidency, which he used to shepherd the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress.
NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Boy Kings of Texas
Presents a memoir of growing up in 1980s Brownsville, Texas, describing intense relationships in a family surrounded by violence and poverty and caught between the conflicting values of two cultures.
News and Reviews
House Of Stone
A Memoir Of Home, Family, And A Lost Middle East
After reporter Anthony Shadid was seized and beaten in Libya during the country's revolution, he returned to his great-grandfather's estate in Lebanon and began rebuilding. His memoir documents the shifting landscape of the Middle East and reflects on war, exile, rebirth and the universal yearning for home.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Antidote
Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
News and Reviews
Life After Life
The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death
Reports on and draws careful conclusions from the out-of-the-body experiences of people who, revived from clinical death or near-death, regained consciousness.
News and Reviews
Heaven's Coast
A Memoir
A poet who won the National Book Critic's Circle Award shares the story of his relationship with lover Wally Roberts, who died of AIDS in 1993, recounting the effect the disease had on their lives and the aftermath of Wally's death
News and Reviews
Dog Years
A Memoir
Offers a memoir of the author's relationship with a pair of beloved canine companions, their life-changing impact on him and his family, and their role in how he came to understand loss and grief.
News and Reviews
How to Live
Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
More than 400 years after his death, the words of writer and philosopher Michel Eyquem de Montaigne still ring true. In this engaging biography, Sarah Blakewell profiles the man known to many as the "first truly modern individual."NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Mrs. Nixon
A Novelist Imagines a Life
A literary assessment of the former First Lady from the perspective of a short story master draws on a wealth of sources to reconstruct her worldview, covering her early experiences as a community theater actress and her marriage to the 37th president.
News and Reviews
Portlandia
A Guide for Visitors
In a travel guide format similar to those by Fodor's or Lonely Planet, this companion to the quirky hit comedy show on IFC describes the humorous stores, restaurants and other landmarks as well as the unique residents who populate the city.
News and Reviews
Marbles
Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me
An artist describes her bipolar disorder diagnosis and her struggles with mental stability while discussing other artists and creative people throughout history who were also labeled as "crazy" — including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe and Sylvia Plath.
