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"If a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading more than once. Suspense is the lowest of excitants, designed to take your breath away when the brain and heart crave to linger in nobler enjoyment. Suspense drags you on; appreciation causes you to linger."
— William Gerhardie
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Browsing all posts tagged 'non-fiction'
Title: Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
By: David Grann
Many of the Osage would rush to see a gusher when it erupted, scrambling for the best view, making sure not to cause a spark, their eyes following the oil as it shot fifty, sixty, sometimes a hundred feet in the air. With its great black wings of spray, arcing ... [Read more]
Posted by April on Oct. 30, 2017
Tags: non-fiction, history
0 Comments
Title: The year of reading dangerously : how fifty great books (and two not-so-great ones) saved my life
By: Andy Miller
I, too, dislike "Year of Reading This, Year of Reading That" memoirs. This one is actually good. It's hard to resist a literary tour guide who pits Moby-Dick against The Da Vinci Code (in the chapter "Whale vs. Grail"). Also, one has to like an author who includes the titles ... [Read more]
Posted by mcgrewg on March 13, 2017
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
Title: A tyranny of pettitcoats: 15 stories of belles, bank robbers & other badass girls
By: Jennifer Spottswood (ed.)
A tour through history narrated by fifteen young women give us a glimpse of what their lives were like during important moments in American history. From pirates in the British colonies, the Yukon Territory, Deadwood South Dakota, and finally to 1968 Chicago, these stories show readers that girls can be ... [Read more]
Posted by pughc on Aug. 28, 2016
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Dark souls II: collector's edition guide
By: Bruce C. Byrne
Do you know where you stand on perhaps the most urgent question of our troubled modern age: "Are video games art"? (Remember that movies were first regarded as mere popular entertainment, and novels once dismissed as a woman's leisure activity.) This lavishly illustrated volume can help. Video games, at their ... [Read more]
Posted by mcgrewg on June 9, 2016
Tags: non-fiction, fantasy
0 Comments
Title: How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking
By: Jordan Ellenberg
While the subtitle of this book is "the power of mathematical thinking," the “how not to be wrong” part is how to frame the question so that you use the correct mathematical formula to determine the answer—as well as how to maintain a healthy skepticism as to what that answer ... [Read more]
Posted by Gigi on March 30, 2015
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Being Mortal
By: Atul Gawande
"The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all . . . Medical professionals ... [Read more]
Posted by April on Jan. 22, 2015
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: The World until Yesterday: what can we learn from traditional societies?
By: Jared Diamond
A schoolboy crosses a street in front of a delivery van in Papua New Guinea and is run over. The driver is at risk of being lynched by bystanders, so he drives to a police station for his own safety. He ends up living with his tribe for several months ... [Read more]
Posted by Xenon on Jan. 7, 2015
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Pawn Structure Chess
By: Andy Soltis
In 1749, Philidor called pawns "the soul of chess." Andy Soltis heeded this wisdom and organized his book not around the bewildering variety of openings, but around the handful of pawn structures that the openings reach at the mid-game. Here are archetypal positions to suit many temperaments: pugilist, assassin, architect, ... [Read more]
Posted by mcgrewg on Aug. 11, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: One summer: America, 1927
By: Bill Bryson
Bryson has done it again; a masterpiece of research and fun. One Summer: America 1927 doesn't have the belly laughs of A Walk in the Woods, but with his wry communication of the delightfully absurd, nonsensical, or totally awesome, he brings four months in our history under the microscope and ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on Aug. 10, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Stuff Matters: exploring the marvelous materials that shape our man-made world
By: Mark Miodownik
Materialism’s redeemed in this polished tour de stuff. For Miodownik, remembrance of things past isn’t evoked by food or scent, but by the steel of a mugger’s knife. Why did the steel blade cut the way it did? What is steel, anyway? Why doesn’t a stainless steel spoon retain the ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on July 21, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: The Love-charm of Bombs: restless lives in the Second World War
By: Lara Feigel
Lara Feigel investigates the lives of five writers based in and out of London during WW II: Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, Rose Macauley, Hilde Spiel, and Henry Yorke (writing as Henry Green). She begins with a bombing raid in London on September 1940 and continues through the war to postwar ... [Read more]
Posted by April on June 9, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking
By: Susan Cain
It is intriguing to read about one’s own traits in a book, especially when the author finds positive value in those traits we find difficult to accept in ourselves. Yet I can’t help thinking that all of us have "introvert" sensitivities and tendencies at least some of the time during ... [Read more]
Posted by April on June 5, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: The best American science and nature writing 2013
By: Siddartha Mukherjee (ed.)
I have a lot of trouble reading articles in magazines even though there are so many good ones. Fortunately, Best American Science and Nature Writing is annually, and 2013 is an especially good year. Editor Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee (author of Emperor of All Maladies) prefaces the selections with a beautifully ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on May 21, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
2 Comments
Title: The Universe, the Gods, and Men: Ancient Greek Myths
By: Jean-Pierre Vernant
Vernant, a Classics professor, used to tell his grandson Greek legends as bedtime stories—and he'd really tell them, not read them. He also told some of the same stories, in the same fashion, to friends who forced him to promise to write down what he'd told them. To Vernant, the ... [Read more]
Posted by Xenon on May 15, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: What it is like to go to war
By: Karl Marlantes
A work of courage and intelligence that challenges us to consider issues most of us would rather avoid. Karl Marlantes has thought deeply about the psychological impacts and lifelong burdens of killing in war, based on his experiences in Viet Nam and subsequent self-examination. He bravely exposes his own feelings ... [Read more]
Posted by April on March 23, 2014
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
Title: River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the technological wild west
By: Rebecca Solnit
Instead of utilizing the traditional biographical format, Rebecca Solnit has chosen to delineate this remarkable man through his many self-taught accomplishments and innovations. British born in 1830, he left his homeland early on to set off to America to explore his interests and opportunities, working on the docks of New ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on March 17, 2014
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
Title: Mauve: how one man invented a color that changed the world
By: Simon Garfield
Has anyone heard of William Perkin and mauve? We have heard of tulipmania, but what of color mania? In 1858, Empress Eugenie, the single most influential woman in the world of fashion, decided that mauve was a color that matched her eyes.The extent of mauve mania was documented well in ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on Jan. 2, 2014
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Wave
By: Sonali Deraniyagala
Estragon: I can't go on like this. Vladimir: That's what you think. --Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book. I wasn't sure whether I'd review it. I didn't trust myself to "judge" it. I was right to read it. It deals with a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Jan. 2, 2014
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
In the name of science and self-glory
Title: The Brother Gardeners: botany, empire, and the birth of an obsession
By: Andrea Wulf
The 18th century was an inquisitive and busy time in the world’s history. Darwin was discovering how we evolve, and an egomaniacal Linneaus was making sense of the botanical world with his classification system as well as enraging his fellow botanists and his Holiness the Pope. Explorers like Captain Cook ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on Dec. 1, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Green thoughts: a writer in the garden
By: Eleanor Perényi
"Read this." "I'm not a gardener." "Read it anyway." "Read this." "I’m a California gardener, and she lived in Connecticut." "Read it anyway." "Read this." "Why?” “Because it's delightful!" Witty, elegant, earthy; pragmatic, romantic, fantastic: Perényi runs the gamut. Keep this by your bedside for a nightly nip, or gulp ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Sept. 1, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: A Romantic in Spain
By: Théophile Gautier
Awww, Spain…I remember 1975, waking up early a.m. in the night train from Paris to Madrid, realizing I was now in the land of poor befuddled Don Quixote and the exquisite Alhambra, and feeling an amorphous affinity for the country and its people. And here in this book in the ... [Read more]
Posted by libwolf on July 16, 2013
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: Heads in Beds: a reckless memoir of hotels, hustles, and so-called hospitality
By: Jacob Tomsky
Living in our beautiful town, we have all been affected (infected?) by the tourism industry, voluntarily or involuntarily, for better or for worse. Maybe you've given a lost soul directions to the Boardwalk one too many times, or been late for work because you forgot about the Beach Train. Enter ... [Read more]
Posted by aufdermaurm on July 15, 2013
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: A Calendar of Wisdom: daily thoughts to nourish the soul
By: Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy spent 15 years researching and “collecting the wisdom of the centuries” to create his Calendar of Wisdom, which was first published in 1904. He enjoyed reading it every day until the end of his life in 1910. After the Russian Revolution, publication of the book was forbidden because ... [Read more]
Posted by Lamb on June 6, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: My Invented Country
By: Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende’s moving memoir about the country she loved and left is read so perfectly by Cristine McMurdo-Wallis that I almost want to say: Don’t read this book; you must listen to it! The many voices of Allende’s writing -- irony, tenderness, humor and harshly honest journalistic modes -- are ... [Read more]
Posted by April on May 2, 2013
Tags: non-fiction, biography, audiobook
0 Comments
Title: Tartine Bread
By: Chad Robertson
A visually pleasing cookbook, and collection of recipes focusing on bread, especially of Tartine Bakery in San Fransisco. Fun to read, inspiring and tasty! [Read more]
Posted by JB Reader on April 1, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
1 Comment
Title: My Life in France
By: Julia Child
Part autobiography, part cookbook, that reads like a fiction novel, which is both inspiring and very funny. [Read more]
Posted by JB Reader on March 20, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Silk Road: a new history
By: Valerie Hansen
History compiled from back-of-the envelope scribbles? Hansen snares one's attention immediately by noting that much of what we surmise about the Silk Road has been pieced together from writing on recycled scraps of paper. She organizes what might have been confusingly episodic material around six key sites, creating a coherent ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Feb. 11, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Tubes: a journey to the center of the Internet
By: Andrew Blum
2012 was a good year for offbeat travelogues. (See the review of Andrew Blackwell’s "Visit Sunny Chernobyl" elsewhere in our staff picks.) Tubes is a delightful surprise. Blum begins by tripping over a router cable at home, and ends up, after international gallivanting, with an enlightened perspective on domestic digital ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Jan. 11, 2013
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Visit Sunny Chernobyl: and other adventures in the world's most polluted places
By: Andrew Blackwell
"Visit Sunny Chernobyl" sounds like an invitation you'd happily refuse. Amazingly, Blackwell manages to make this travelogue of the gruesome darkly entertaining. He neither trivializes horror nor wallows in it. He makes it bearable to consider these sites, and, in so doing, discourages despair. It's a fine fury that drives ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Dec. 26, 2012
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Farmer's Market Will Never Look the Same After
Title: Blithe Tomato
By: Mike Marshall
Digs below the trendy, glossy surface of contemporary small scale farming, uncovering rich soil beneath. Unlikely ever to enjoy wide distribution, but remarkably insightful and delightfully well written. Set in California's Central Valley, will amply reward serendipitous discovery in library stacks. [Read more]
Posted by Tirantes on May 1, 2012
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
Title: All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin
By: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Popular knitting blogger Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has released another charming collection of essays. Her simple but amusing tales range from addictive properties of yarn to the unfortunate demise of household appliances and family battles over closet space. While her stories focus largely on knitting, her humor can be appreciated by almost ... [Read more]
Posted by Ginger L. on March 8, 2012
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: London Under
By: Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd's "votive offering to the gods who lie beneath London" is also an artifice -- or should that be an edifice? -- of eccentric pedagogy. Like the ever-so-slightly unsettling vicars of period British mysteries whose obsessively detailed leaflets are strewn about churchyards where murder lurks, Ackroyd's no man to ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Feb. 13, 2012
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Just My Type
By: Simon Garfield
Delectable. For those who relish font variety but cringe at typographic promiscuity, here's a tonic. Garfield has a gift for pedagogy without pedantry; his book conveys a great deal of information without bogging down. The book's design supports his text admirably. The illustrations are crisp, and detailed discussions of a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Jan. 23, 2012
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: A Bittersweet Season
By: Jane Gross
My father, in his 90s, lives on the opposite coast. I worry about his health, his safety, his security -- and my own. Over the past few years, searching for advice, I’ve tossed out countless newspaper and magazine articles and returned piles of library books half-read. I hesitated before checking ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Sept. 28, 2011
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1.
By: Harriet Elinor Smith, Editor.
Dear Mr. Clemens, So nice to hear from you! As always, I enjoyed reading your recollections of work as a cub pilot on the Mississippi, and the amusing stories of life on the never ending lecture circuit. I’m so sorry about your daughter Suzy passing away; she sounds like such ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Sept. 14, 2011
Tags: fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: The Art of Happiness at Work
By: Dalai Lama XIV
The Art of Happiness at Work (2003) is the second collaboration by His Holiness Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, an American psychiatrist, following their The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living (1988). It focuses on finding happiness at work, a topic touching the lives of the majority ... [Read more]
Posted by Hui-Lan on Aug. 29, 2011
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life
By: Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D.
I found the book fascinating! The authors discuss language development in children beginning before birth. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a particular age range and within each chapter various language studies are discussed. They talk about how the studies were conducted, what was learned, and they also ... [Read more]
Posted by cockerillj on Aug. 22, 2011
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture.
By: John Leighton Chase
There's definitely a lot of "here" here in Santa Cruz. With its easy to read maps and charming photographs, "The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture" has been satisfying the curiosity of thousands of gawkers and walkers since first published in 1975. The 3rd edition (published in 2005) is edited ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on July 7, 2011
Tags: non-fiction, history, photography, travel
0 Comments
Title: The Family Dinner: Great ways to connect with your kids, one meal at a time
By: Laurie David
This book is full of great ideas for family togetherness at mealtime, including kid friendly preparation ideas, conversation topics, fun place settings, and even some great recipes. Featured along the way are tidbits of advice from Nora Ephron, Maya Angelou, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Jonathan Safran Foer, and many others. ... [Read more]
Posted by Abbey on June 30, 2011
Tags: non-fiction
1 Comment
Title: The anthropology of turquoise: reflections on desert, sea, stone, and sky
By: Ellen Meloy
Warning: when you discover that Ellen Meloy died suddenly in 2004, you may feel bereft. "I was just getting to know her; how could she disappear?" The consolation is her books. Call them naturalist's memoirs or personalized landscapes or eco-history or (as she did) anthropology, they add up to a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on April 28, 2011
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: Just Kids
By: Patti Smith
What do artists mean when they refer to having “a breakthrough” and from that point, go on to create their own unique style of expression? This autobiography describes the working conditions of the poet and punk rock star Patti Smith, and her friend, the late avant garde photographer Robert Mapplethorpe ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Jan. 26, 2011
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography, poetry, photography, art
0 Comments
From a newsman's point of view
Title: Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City
By: Jed Horne
Like Goya's signature remark "Yo lo vi, I saw it…," Jed Horne, the metro editor of New Orleans' own excellent newspaper, 'The Times-Picayune', tells it like it really was, firsthand. He and his fellow news staff continued to report the news and serve the city residents in the middle of ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Dec. 9, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history
0 Comments
Title: Summit Fever
By: Andrew Greig
Most mountaineering writers are mountaineers first. Poet and novelist Andrew Greig did it the opposite way: he joined an attempt on the “unclimbable” Mustagh Tower as expedition scribe, and emerged a mountaineer. His account of that expedition is an idiosyncratic classic. Greig may have driven his companions crazy with his ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Nov. 18, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
1 Comment
Title: Strength in What Remains
By: Tracy Kidder
At once heartwarming and tearjerking, Kidder tells the story of Deo who arrives in New York City with $200 in his pocket after a harrowing escape from civil war and genocide in Burundi. This is a story of hope and survival in the face of man’s inhumanity to man. Deo’s ... [Read more]
Posted by ogradyj on Nov. 11, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, biography
0 Comments
How a special cat helps people at the end of their lives
Title: Making rounds with Oscar
By: David Dosa
This is a remarkable book about a very ordinary, yet extraordinary cat. The story is set in the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, an Alzheimer’s nursing home facility in Providence, Rhode Island. The cast of characters include the nursing home staff, residents, and six cats. In this tale of ... [Read more]
Posted by downingp on Nov. 3, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
1 Comment
The Making of Modern Paris, or, the demolition of prime real estate?
Title: Haussmann, His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris
By: Michel Carmona
This is a critical biography of the ultimate urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann. A re-evaluation of the controversial urbanization of Paris, Dr. Carmona (professor of Urban Studies at the Sorbonne) does a fantastic job of laying out the truly hideous public hygiene problem, famously described as "a choleric swamp", and ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Aug. 12, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography, art, travel
0 Comments
Title: Homeowner's Complete Guide to the Chainsaw
By: Brian Ruth
For the weekend lumberjack, details all the common uses of the chainsaw: cutting firewood, felling, limbing downed trees, even turning logs to lumber with chainsaw milling attachments. A chapter on splitting and stacking firewood is a bonus. Every procedure is amply illustrated, step by step – everything is there in ... [Read more]
Posted by Tirantes on July 22, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: What it feels like to be a building
By: Forrest Wilson
What does it feel like to be a load-bearing wall? A pitched roof? A door? Forrest Wilson's figures hunch (I am compacted; I am strong), stretch (be careful what you dump on top of that skinny guy), twist (ouch! torque hurts), and cluster (it takes a village to keep a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on July 8, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
1 Comment
Title: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen
By: Christopher McDougall
McDougall shares his journey in tracking down and meeting some of the greatest ultrarunners in the world, the Tarahumara Indians. The Tarahumara live in the rugged Copper Canyons of Mexico and keep themselves isolated from the rest of the world. They can run incredible distances with nothing but strips of ... [Read more]
Posted by cockerillj on June 15, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history
2 Comments
The cookbook classic: Why it is still the best reference.
Title: Mastering The Art of French Cooking:
By: Julia Child
Do we only consult this book when faced with a special occasion? Or can we read it, un-rushed, for sheer pleasure? I highly recommend adding to your nightstand, the classic cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Written with her co-authors, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, Volume One was first ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on June 3, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history
1 Comment
Title: Planting the natural garden
By: Piet Oudolf
Piet Oudolf is the genius behind extraordinary gardens at Chicago’s Millenium Park & New York’s Battery and just-opened (2009) High Line parks. His characteristic swathes of grasses and indigenous perennials are a perfect fit for “natural” landscape designs, including so-called green roofs. This is the rare gardening/landscape design book that ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on April 29, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
I can't wait to visit a salt mine!
Title: Salt: A World History.
By: Mark Kurlansky
Thanks to Mark Kurlansky, who always makes history come alive - I learned that simple salt has not always been simple, in fact, man's need for salt and its manufacturing process helped shape civilization. He writes about how salt influenced trade routes, dynasties, and empires, from ancient Egypt, to China, ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on April 22, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history
0 Comments
Title: Why things bite back: technology and the revenge of unintended consequences
By: Edward Tenner
If the words “we’re upgrading our phone system” make you go “uh-oh,” you’re ready for this book. Tenner is no technophobe. But his scientific bent leads him to wonder whether the claims made for various time- and labor-saving gizmos are accurate. Do devices free us, or complicate our lives? Do ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on April 15, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
"Trust me, this is an interesting place"
Title: In a Sunburned Country
By: Bill Bryson
Australia has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. This fact has stuck with me ever since I read In a Sunburned Country several years ago. "Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures – the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed ... [Read more]
Posted by deejas on April 1, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, travel
1 Comment
Title: Pain-Free for Life: The 6-Week Cure for Chronic Pain- Without Surgery or Drugs
By: Scott Brady
Scott Brady, M.D. is the founder and director of the Brady Institute of Health in Florida. He discusses, in great detail, a program for ending chronic pain such as migraine headaches, back pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and sciatica. The author suffered from headaches, back pain, and irritable bowel syndrome himself ... [Read more]
Posted by cockerillj on March 25, 2010
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
Title: Davenport Cement Centennial
By: Alverda Orlando & Robert Piwarzyk
Librarian Alverda Orlando has been an authoritative historian on Davenport, California for decades. This is the first time she has collaborated with Robert Piwarzyk, a limestone expert/engineer, to compile a complete history of Davenport Cement Plant, one of the few cement plants existing in California. It will be of even ... [Read more]
Posted by Hui-Lan on March 1, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history
0 Comments
Title: Into the heart of Borneo
By: Redmond O'Hanlon
Possibly the funniest travel memoir ever written, as well as an unexpected gold mine of accurate scientific information. When O'Hanlon invited his Borneo travel companion, the poet James Fenton, on a succeeding journey, the answer was an earbreaking NO! Would most readers want to accompany O'Hanlon? Probably not. But a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Jan. 30, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
2 Comments
Title: The Girls from Ames
By: Jeffrey Zaslow
Imagine a group of friends that you have known literally all your life. You grew up in the same small town, knew each others' families, attended the same schools, went to the same parties, went off to different colleges and jobs, moved to different parts of the country, married, had ... [Read more]
Posted by ogradyj on Dec. 17, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, audiobook
0 Comments
Title: A unit of water, a unit of time: Joel White's last boat
By: Douglas Whynott
You’re not likely to stumble upon this gem unless you’re given to browsing technical tomes on boat construction. But oh, how lucky you’d be! This engrossing portrait of a cranky, brilliant craftsman racing against terminal illness is also a family saga: master wooden boat builder Joel White was the son ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Nov. 30, 2009
Tags: non-fiction
0 Comments
It's A Long Drive Down Interstate 5, or that's a lot of cotton!
Title: The King of California, J.G. Boswell and The Making of A Secret American Empire.
By: Mark Arax
This book dovetails perfectly if you happen to be reading John Steinbeck, or studying the photographs of Dorothea Lange. A biography which examines the life of a very powerful farmer (at one point owning over 200,000 acres of rich farmland) used to driving bargains across bar stools and shaking down ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Oct. 20, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography
0 Comments
Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
Title: A Year in the World
By: Frances Mayes
Mayes' most well-known work Under the Tuscan Sun and its offshoots never appealed to me so I was surprised and delighted when I discovered her more recent memoir, A Year in the World. In her day job Mayes was a writing instructor, and here she shows her craft in top ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on Oct. 10, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: Take Big Bites: adventures around the world and across the table
By: Linda Ellerbee
Longtime reporter, producer, TV host, and author, Linda Ellerbee calls herself "a recovering journalist who's traveled and eaten her way around the planet and lived to tell some tales." In Take Big Bites she has written a witty, sassy book about food that's also a blend of autobiography, travelogue and ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on Sept. 15, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
2 Comments
Pathways to Santa Cruz County & Its People
Title: Pathways to the Past: Adventures in Santa Cruz County History
By: Alverda Orlando and 21 others
Pathways to the Past is not the first book on the history of Santa Cruz County. As a matter of fact, at the time of this writing, our library catalog alone shows 135 titles on its history from early ones like Illustrations of Santa Cruz County, California, with historical sketch ... [Read more]
Posted by Hui-Lan on Aug. 29, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography
1 Comment
Reflections from the Land of Fire and Ice
Title: The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland
By: Bill Holm
Perhaps because I have never been there, I have always had a strange fascination with Iceland: the medieval sagas, the stark yet beautiful landscape, those small horses.... So when I heard poet and essayist Bill Holm being interviewed on NPR about this book, I immediately added it to my list. ... [Read more]
Posted by fatorangecat on Aug. 17, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, poetry, travel
0 Comments
Endearing biography of Doris Day
Title: Doris Day: the untold story of the girl next door
By: David Kaufman
Are you a "Dayniac" too? This biography is so much more than just the usual tell-all book about America's sweetheart Doris Day with the superb voice and acting career. This book will give you the real low-down on her smarmy manager/husband, Marty Melcher. Miss Day was one of the biggest ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on July 16, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography
1 Comment
Title: Lime Kiln Legacies
By: Frank A. Perry, and others
Lime Kiln Legacies is the first complete history of the lime industry in Santa Cruz County. The rise and fall of the lime industry in Santa Cruz County coincides with the developing history of California. In the first half of the 1800s, only small amounts of lime began to be ... [Read more]
Posted by Hui-Lan on July 1, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history
3 Comments
The Happiest Places in the World
Title: The Geography of Bliss: One grump's search for the happiest places in the world
By: Eric Weiner
Part travelogue, part memoir, part twisted self-help guide, this humorous ramble takes the reader around the world in search of the happiest places to live. NPR correspondent Eric Weiner discovers some surprises as he blends travel, psychology, science, and humor to ask not what happiness is, but where it is. ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on June 20, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, travel
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Title: Principles of Uncertainty
By: Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman is a wonderful whimsical artist who has drawn many colorful covers for the New Yorker and has written several slightly wacky delightful children's books including Ooh-La-La (Max in Love), Smartypants, and Fireboat, an excellent 9-11 children's book. You don't have to have seen her art or read her ... [Read more]
Posted by Ruby Boggs on May 26, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, biography
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Title: Color: A Natural History of the Palette
By: Victoria Finlay
Doesn't this sound like something that would be assigned in a dry history class? If you think so, you'd be wrong! Victoria Finlay, an excellent writer, has given us a history of the development of color in paint that is actually a page-turner. Extensively researched, we learn that each hue ... [Read more]
Posted by Ruby Boggs on May 2, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography, art
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French wine makers in WWII: an inspiring story!
Title: Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure.
By: Don and Petrie Kladstrup
The authors interviewed several members of five prominent wine making families in France. Very interesting stories of how they personally hid Jewish refugees in wine caves and smuggled members of the Resistance in wine barrels! We read of grape harvests ruined because of the shortage of horses, sulfur dust and ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on March 19, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history
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Title: M.F.K. Fisher and Me: A memoir of Food and Friendship
By: Jeannette Ferrary
If only it were my kitchen! I would prove to both Jeannette and Mary Frances that when I scramble eggs, or sear a pork chop, it was their advice that helped me make them turn out so "right." What serendipity! Jeannette is a cookbook writer and writes M.F.K. a fan ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Feb. 26, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography
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Title: The Great Bridge
By: David McCullough
Part biography, part engineering study, and part political history, The Great Bridge tells the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Popular historian David McCullough brings history to life in this book, which has all of the interest, characters and plot of a good novel. Even those (like myself) ... [Read more]
Posted by fatorangecat on Nov. 4, 2008
Tags: non-fiction, history
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Book Kits
To help your book discussion group, we've gathered a collection of popular paperback titles and sorted them into kits which can be sent to you upon request.
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