Nonfiction

Review: THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE: AN OPTIMIST’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN THE AGE OF ACCELERATIONS by Thomas Friedman
|

Review: THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE: AN OPTIMIST’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN THE AGE OF ACCELERATIONS by Thomas Friedman

In Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Thomas L. Friedman’s title hints at a need for what we’re losing in today’s world. Namely, all the imperfections that make us human. After all, being late and being wrong is what being alive is all about.

Julia Child's Kitchen
|

Communists and Cassoulet: Julia Child on Dried Herbs, Dull Knives and Joseph McCarthy

If Julia Child and Avis deVoto were here today, they’d be great Facebook friends. Julia and Avis bonded over food—buying it, cooking it and eating it. But since they were without technology, they wrote letters, which Joan Reardon collected into a book titled As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto.

The Beauty of Self-deprecation in Andrew Miller’s IF ONLY THE NAMES WERE CHANGED
|

The Beauty of Self-deprecation in Andrew Miller’s IF ONLY THE NAMES WERE CHANGED

Fasten your seat belts. Andrew Miller’s alternative lit style is about to take you on a bumpy ride. His memoir in essays, IF ONLY THE NAMES WERE CHANGED, vacillates between hyper-masculine and tender in terrain that traverses parental concerns about raising a daughter, drug and alcohol abuse, and how much of a jerk he is.

Review: THE IRRESISTIBLE INTROVERT: HARNESS THE POWER OF QUIET CHARISMA IN A LOUD WORLD by Michael Chung
|

Review: THE IRRESISTIBLE INTROVERT: HARNESS THE POWER OF QUIET CHARISMA IN A LOUD WORLD by Michael Chung

Throughout her book, Chung reiterates the differences between extroverts and introverts, but eschews any claims of advantageousness. One person exults in a bar with his riotous friends while another broods in a library without anyone interrupting her. They’ll use different taps to distill pleasure from our world, but at the end of the night both find contentment.

We Are Hungry, Michele Morano, for More
|

We Are Hungry, Michele Morano, for More

You have probably come across Michele Morano’s essay collection, Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain, at nonfiction conferences with presenters hailing it as an exemplary form of nonfiction. One of its essays, “The Queimada,” has been published in many anthologies. This contemporary classic illustrates the heights of the travel memoir genre.

Review: ATLAS OBSCURA: AN EXPLORER’S GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S HIDDEN WONDERS Ed. by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton
|

Review: ATLAS OBSCURA: AN EXPLORER’S GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S HIDDEN WONDERS Ed. by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders Ed. by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton Workman, Sept.2016 480 pp; $35 Buy: hardcover | eBook Reviewed by Aaron Sommers If you’re like me, then you associate atlases with maps. Maybe it’s part of the larger, more detailed, colorful variety, but an atlas…

In Bookstores Near You: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race ed. by Jesmyn Ward
|

In Bookstores Near You: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race ed. by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward introduces The Fire This Time, an anthology of essays and poems of witness and dissent, by expressing her own commingled dismay and hope regarding race relations in America. This book, she says, gathers “the great thinkers and extraordinary voices” of her generation to consider racism, both subtle and egregious.