Overbooked: A Resource for Readers

Nonfiction Stars - 2007

Nonfiction Stars of 2007 - A selected list of titles.

This reading list is based on personal preferences. It reflects interests history, science, nature, travel, food, biography, memoirs and a few assorted odd topics. An emphasis is placed on nonfiction that reads like good fiction. Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.

December

The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
Author: Childs, Craig
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316066327 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 10.31.07
A View of the Ocean
Author: De Hartog, Jan
Publisher: Pantheon $ 17.95 ISBN: 9780375424700 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
The internationally bestselling Dutch novelist, Tony Award-winning playwright, and author of 21 books, including Holland's Glorie and The Peaceable Kingdom, moves and inspires readers with this simple, elegant story of his mother's life, death, and courage.
Updated 10.2.07
The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Author: Lycett, Andrew
Publisher: Free $ 30 ISBN: 9780743275231 Date: 2007
Booklist
Updated 11.19.07
Copernicus' Secret
Author: Repcheck, Jack
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 97808743289511 Date: 2007
Booklist
Updated 11.19.07
Touch and Go: A Memoir
Author: Turkel, Studs
Publisher: New $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781595580436 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus PW Booklist
At nearly 95, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Terkel offers his long-awaited memoir that embodies the spirit of the man himself--youthful, vivacious, and enormously fun.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.27.07

November

The Star Machine
Author: Basinger, Jeanine
Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 9781400041305 Date: 2007
Kirkus
A leading film authority presents a rich, penetrating, amusing plum pudding of a book about the golden age of movies, full of Hollywood lore, anecdotes, and analysis.
Updated 8.27.07
Children of Jihad
Author: Cohen, Jared
Publisher: Gotham $ 25 ISBN: 9781592403240 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Defying foreign government orders and interviewing terrorists face to face, a young American tours hostile lands to learn about Middle Eastern youth--and uncovers a subculture that defies every stereotype.
Updated 8.27.07
Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Foods
Author: Colquhoun, Kate
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 34.95 ISBN: 9781596914100 Date: 2007
PW
A fascinating history of how Britain learned to cook, from prehistory to the modern age. Written with a storyteller's flair and packed with astonishing facts, Taste is a sumptuous social history of Britain told through the development of its cooking. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.27.07
Classics for Pleasure
Author: Dirda, Michael
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 9780151012510 Date: 2007
PW
In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize-winner Dirda introduces nearly 90 of the worlds most entertaining books. Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, and childrens literature.
Updated 10.2.07
Life, in Pictures: Autobiographical Stories
Author: Eisner, Will
Publisher: Norton $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780393061079 Date: 2007
Kirkus
In what will be the closest thing Eisner fan's will see to an autobiography, the great master and pioneer of American graphic arts presents the most intimate and personal perspective yet on his life as a writer, a professional, and an artist.
Updated 8.27.07
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic
Author: Ellis, Joseph
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307263698 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus Booklist
From the prizewinning author of the bestselling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx comes this masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10.2.07
The Terror Dream
Author: Faludi, Susan
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 9780805086928 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ PW Kirkus
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash comes an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.20.07
Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer
Author: Leake, John
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 9780374148454 Date: 2007
PW
With unprecedented access to Jack Unterweger's diaries and letters, Leake peels back the layers of deception to reveal the life and crimes of this international serial killer. In unnerving detail, Leake exposes the thrilling twists that led to Jack's capture and Austria's trial of the century.
Updated 8.27.07
Arthur Conan Doyle
Author: Lellenbert, Jon L., Daniel Stashower, Chris Foley
Publisher: Penguin $ I37.95 SBN: 9781594201356 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 10.2.07
Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music
Author: Meyer, David
Publisher: Villard $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780375505706 Date: 2007
PW
The sweeping, definitive biography of rock legend Gram Parsons paints an unprecedented portrait of the man who had brought together country music and rock and roll. Photographs throughout plus a complete discography
Updated 8.27.07
Gomorrah
Author: Saviano, Roberto
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 9780374165277 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
A groundbreaking, major bestseller in Italy, Saviano's gripping nonfiction account chronicles the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal.
Updated 9.10.07
My Life With George
Author: Summers, Judith
Publisher: Voice $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781401322441 Date: 2007
LJ
This is the hilarious and moving account of the impossible but adorable King Charles Spaniel George, of his adventures and misdemeanors, and of the wonderful way in which he filled a huge void in the lives of Summers and her son while driving them absolutely barking mad along the way.
Suggested Reading: Dog Stars
Updated 10.2.07
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
Author: Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 40 ISBN: 9780307266408 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updike's sixth collection of essays and literary criticism opens with a skeptical overview of literary biographies, proceeds to five essays on topics ranging from China and small change to faith and late works, and takes up, under the heading General Considerations, books, poker, cars, and the American libido.
Updated 8.27.07

October

The Zookeeper's Wife
Author: Ackerman, Diane
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393061727 Date: 2007
PW Booklist LJ
When Germany invaded Poland, bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski smuggled Jews through the empty cages, saving hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
Suggested Reading: Zoos | WWII | All Stars
Updated 8.20.07
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
Author: Atkinson, Rick
Publisher: Holt $ 35 ISBN: 9780805062892 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ PW
In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy.
Suggested Reading: WWII | All Stars
Updated 8.27.07
One Drop: A True Story of Family, Race and Secrets
Author: Broyard, Bliss
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316163507 Date: 2007
Booklist
A father's stunning secret sparks a life-transforming journey, in this story of race, identity, and the American dream. Broyard tries to make sense of her father's choices and the impact of his revelation on her own life
Updated 8.20.07
I Am America (And So Can You!)
Author: Colbert, Stephen
Publisher: Grand Central $ 26.99 ISBN: 9780446580502 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 10.2.07
Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker
Author: Cordery, Stacy A.
Publisher: Viking $ 32.95 ISBN: 9780670018338 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
Updated 10.2.07
How Starbucks Saved My Life
Author: Gill, Michael Gates
Publisher: Gotham $ 23 ISBN: 9781592402861 Date: 2007
Booklist
Gill had all the trappings of success--money, possessions, a prestigious job--and then lost it all. This story of how he is finally redeemed by his new job at Starbucks focuses on the lessons learned, and the value of hard work.
Updated 7.11.07
The New Kings of Nonfiction
Author: Glass, Ira
Publisher: Riverhead $ 15 ISBN: 9781594482670 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Designed to mesmerize and inspire, this anthology of the best new masters of nonfiction storytelling has been personally chosen and introduced by Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program, "This American Life."
Updated 8.27.07
The Florist's Daughter
Author: Hempl, Patrica
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 9780151012572 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
A tribute to the ardor of supposedly ordinary people, this memoirs concerns reach beyond a single life to achieve a historic testament to mid-century middle America, in Hampl's most intimate, yet most universal, work to date.
The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell
Author: Herz, Rachel
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780060825379 Date: 2007
LJ
Discover the importance of smell in our lives, from food to sex to friendship, with this first book on the subject by the worlds leading scientific expert on this vital sense.
Updated 10.2.07
Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places
Author: Hodgson, Barbara
Publisher: Greystone $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781553651994 Date: 2007
LJ
Those who wish to understand a city's history visit museums, but Barbara Hodgson prefers a different approach. She explores the streets, bookstores, and markets, where a city reveals its most private self, displaying the contents of its attics and trash bins. Back alleys, obscure cemeteries, and hidden courtyards also offer up surprising finds and capture the essence of the city. Covering a wide cultural and physical geography from Brussels to Marrakech and Damascus to Portland, Trading in Memories follows Barbara Hodgson's travels through markets and other repositories of material culture around the world. The book looks deep into history through such objects as chandeliers left by French expatriates fleeing Shanghai in 1937 and glass lantern slides and stereoscope cards from around the world that attest to the human impulse for wanderlust, free or forced. This sumptuous book presents a wonderful visual and textual record of the true life and character of a place.
Updated 10.2.07
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
A Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literarally As Possible
Author: Jacobs, A. J.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 9780743291477 Date: 2007

The author of The Know-It-All follows up his "New York Times" bestselling account of reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" with another improbable adventure--a year spent living, as literally as possible, by the rules of the Bible.
Updated 8.27.07
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
Author: Jones, Judith
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307264954 Date: 2007
PW
From a legendary editor who has helped to shape modern cookbook publishing--the force behind the publication of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking--comes an evocative and inspiring memoir that includes more than 50 recipes.
Updated 7.9.07
The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic
Author: Kolbert, Elizabeth (edt)
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 29.95 ISBN: 9781596914438 Date: 2007
LJ
Published to commemorate the International Polar Year, this literary anthology features first-person narratives, cultural histories, nature and science writing, and fiction from such legendary polar explorers and writers as Jon Krakauer, Jack London, Diane Ackerman, Barry Lopez, and Ursula K. LeGuin.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 10.2.07
House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe
Author: Lamb, Christina
Publisher: Lawrence Hill $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781556527357 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Once considered an idyllic place to live, the beautiful land of Eastern Zimbabwe turned into a bloody battleground and center of a violent campaign in August 2002. One morning, white farmer Nigel Hough came face-to-face with a crowd of black war veterans at his gates, who demanded that he hand over his homestead or he would be killed. To his shock, he saw that the leader of this mob was his family’s much-loved nanny, Aqui, who told him, “There is no place for whites in this country.” The intertwined voices of Nigel and Aqui bring immediacy and emotion to the history of the brutal civil war and independence. In riveting interviews, readers learn about two people on opposing sides who were born within a few miles of each other—Nigel, who played cricket and piloted his own plane, and Aqui, who grew up in a mud hut and was often hungry. The personal accounts document the terrible trajectory of the last British colony to become independent, as well as the descent into madness of Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s most respected nationalist leaders. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 9.10.07
The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century
Author: Miles, Jonathan
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 9780871139597 Date: 2007
LJ
This spellbinding account of the most famous shipwreck before the "Titanic" draws on published accounts and journals of survivors. Historian Miles brilliantly reconstructs the ill-fated voyage and the events that inspired Theodore Gericaults painting "The Raft of the Medusa."
Updated 6.4.07
Young Stalin
Author: Montefiore, Simon Sebeg
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 9781400044658 Date: 2007
Kirkus
The companion to the acclaimed Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar delivers the revelatory account that finally unveils the shadowy journey from obscurity to power of the man who, along with Hitler, personifies evil.
Updated 8.27.07
Boone
Author: Morgan, Robert
Publisher: Algonquin $ 29.95 ISBN: 9781565124554 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
From "New York Times" bestselling author Morgan comes this commanding biography of Daniel Boone, whose story mirrors that of America and its ideals, promise, romance, and destiny.
Updated 7.11.07
The Slave Ship
Author: Rediker, Marcus
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780670018239 Date: 2007
PW LJ
Much is known of the American slave trade, but little of the ships that made it all possible. Award-winning historian Rediker draws on 30 years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks.
Updated 10.2.07
Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger's
Author: Robison, John Elder
Publisher: Crown $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307395986 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Aspergers at a time when the diagnosis simply didn't exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes readers inside the head of a boy who teachers and other adults regarded as defective. Its a strange, sly, indelible account; sometimes alien yet always deeply human.
Updated 9.10.07
The Devil's Gentleman: Manhattan's Bon Vivant Poisoner and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century
Author: Schechter, Harold
Publisher: Ballantine $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780345476791 Date: 2007
PW
This gripping story of an aristocratic serial killer who terrorized New York City at the turn of the 20th century offers a stunning nonfiction narrative by one of Americas foremost historians of true crime.
Updated 10.2.07
Crossing the Yard: Thirty Years As a Prison Volunteer
Author: Shelton, Richard
Publisher: Univ of AZ $ 35 ISBN: 978016525942 Date: 2007
LJ Kirkus
Ever since he was asked to critique the poetry of a convicted murderer, he has lived in two worlds. Richard Shelton was a young English professor in 1970 when a convict named Charles Schmid--a serial killer dubbed the "Pied Piper of Tucson" in national magazines--shared his brooding verse. But for Shelton, the novelty of meeting a death-row monster became a thirty-year commitment to helping prisoners express themselves. Shelton began organizing creative writing workshops behind bars, and in this gritty memoir he offers up a chronicle of reaching out to forgotten men and women--and of creativity blossoming in a repressive environment. He tells of published students such as Paul Ashley, Greg Forker, Ken Lamberton, and Jimmy Santiago Baca who have made names for themselves through their writing instead of their crimes. Shelton also recounts the bittersweet triumph of seeing work published by men who later met with agonizing deaths, and the despair of seeing the creative strides of inmates broken by politically motivated transfers to private prisons. And his memoir bristles with hard-edged experiences, ranging from inside knowledge of prison breaks to a workshop conducted while a riot raged outside a barricaded door. Reflecting on his decision to tutor Schmid, Shelton sees that the choice "has led me through bloody tragedies and terrible disappointments to a better understanding of what it means to be human." Crossing the Yard is a rare story of professional fulfillment--and a testament to the transformative power of writing. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.2.07
A Walk With Jane: Following Austen, Finding Grace
Author: Smith, Lori
Publisher: Waterbrook $ 13.99 ISBN: 9781400073702Date: 2007
PW
Updated 8.27.07
Shelley and the Maiden: The Death of Fanny Wollstonecraft
Author: Todd, Janet
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 9781582433394 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 8.27.07
The Fox and the Flies: The Secret Life of a Grotesque Master Criminal
Author: Van Onselen, Charles
Publisher: Walker $ 34.95 ISBN: 9780802716415 Date: 2007
LJ
This masterwork of historical reconstruction recounts the life and times of Joseph Silver, an arch criminal who may well have been Jack the Ripper. A meticulous researcher, Van Onselen offers an account as rich in history as it is in the detail and drama of Silver's career.
Updated 10.2.07
Running the Table
Author: Wertheim, L. Jon
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 9780618664740 Date: 2007
PW
From a popular senior writer for "Sports Illustrated" comes this high-stakes, boys-on-the-road story about the most unlikely of phenoms--a heavyset, bipolar, and endlessly charming pool hustler named Kid Delicious.
Updated 8.27.07
Victory for Us Is to See You Suffer
Author: Winslow, Philip C.
Publisher: Beacon $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780807069066 Date: 2007
PW
Winslow--a former U.N. relief worker--captures the human aspects of the conflict during the years of suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals in the West Bank; the daily struggles, fear, and anger of Palestinian farmers and teachers; and the hostility of Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Updated 8.27.07
Cavalier: A Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Household
Author: Worsley, Lucy
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 29.95 ISBN: 9781596913585 Date: 2007
LJ
From the Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces in England, a vivid portrait of a seventeenth-century nobleman, his household, and the dramatic decades surrounding the English Civil War. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.20.07

September

(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions
Author: Almond, Steve
Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 9781400066193 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the iconoclastic author of the "New York Times" bestseller Candyfreak comes this collection of essays that explore the truly urgent moral dilemmas of our age, such as the consumption of ham for Chanukah.
Updated 7.11.07
Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy
Author: Bazzana, Kevin
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 27.99 ISBN: 9780786720880 Date: 2007
Kirkus
The award-winning author of Wondrous Strange, the critically acclaimed biography of Glenn Gould, explores the bizarre, untold life of another brilliant and eccentric musician. Lost Genius, the product of ten years’ research, is the first biography of Nyiregyhá zi, whose story is among the most fascinating — and bizarre — in twentieth-century music. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.27.07
Brother, I'm Dying
Author: Danticat, Edwidge
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400041152 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ PW
From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker comes a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart--her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 7.11.07
The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrell, and Their Dariing Quest to Live Forever
Author: Friedman, David M.
Publisher: Ecco $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780060528157 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Friedman tells the fascinating story of the friendship and extraordinary scientific collaboration of two prodigious men: Charles Lindbergh, once the most famous person in the world; and Dr. Alexis Carrel, the Nobel Prize-winning researcher who pioneered biotechnology.
Updated 6.27.07
The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?
Author: Goldman, Francisco
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 9780802118288 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Acclaimed novelist Goldman tells the story of the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, Guatemalas leading human rights activist, who had been bludgeoned to death in 1998, after releasing a church-sponsored report implicating the military in the murders and disappearances of some 200,000 civilians.
Updated 7.11.07
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
Author: Halberstam, David
Publisher: Hyperion $ 35 ISBN: 9781401300524 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
Halberstam uses his unrivaled research and formidable journalistic skills to shed light on another dark corner in history: the Korean War. He provides a masterful narrative of the political decisions and miscalculation on both sides, culminating with the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu, which catches Douglas MacArthur's forces by surprise.
Updated 7.11.07
The Best American Science Writing 2007
Author: Kolata, Gina (edt)
Publisher: Perennial $ 14.95 ISBN: 9780061345777 Date: 2007
PW
The latest edition of the popular annual series dedicated to collecting the best, most relevant, and most thought-provoking science writing of the year features articles from a wide variety of publications and covers provocative and engaging topics.
Updated 8.20.07
Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
Author: Palin, Michael
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780312369354 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the success and cult status brought by "Monty Python," Palin shares stories from their world tours, their stay at hotels recently trashed by Led Zeppelin, their battles over censorship, and how individually the Pythons have gone their separate ways.
Updated 6.27.07
Other Colors: Essays and a Story
Author: Pamuk, Orhan
Publisher: Knopf $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780307266750 Date: 2007
LJ
Pamuk's first book since winning the Nobel Prize is a dazzling collection of essays, written over the last three decades, on his lifelong obsessions, his own work, and the work of others. Illustrated with photographs, paintings, and the authors own sketches.
Updated 10.2.07
Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories
Author: Pollitt, Katha
Publisher: Random $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781400063321 Date: 2007
Booklist
This collection of personal stories from one of Americas best-known and most respected political commentators has the perspective, humor, and literary excellence of Pollitt's poetry, and puts a new and even more human face on this gifted observer of culture.
Updated 10.2.07
Americano: Fighting for Freedom in Castro's Cuba, an Untold Story
Author: Shetterly, Ann
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781565124585 Date: 2007
PW
At age twenty-nine, William Morgan left Toledo, Ohio, and traveled to Cuba to fight alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the revolution that would expel the corrupt president Batista from the Cuban government. At first, the Cubans were distrustful of el Americano, but Morgan's dedication and passion, his military skill and charisma, led him to become a chief comandante of the Revolution, the only foreigner to hold such a rank with the exception of Che.
After working at first for Castro, and then perhaps against him when it became clear that Castro had no intention of setting up a democracy, Morgan was executed by firing squad at the dictator's hands. To this day, Morgan is considered a traitor by some Cubans, a hero by others.
By interviewing Morgan's friends and family and former Cuban Rebels, and examining FBI documents, what Aran Shetterly found were stories from an era when democracy could have flourished in Cuba and the true tale of how a young man who never fit in finally found his place in the world by fighting another country's war. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.27.07
Who Named the Knife: A Book of Murder and Memory
Author: Spalding, Linda
Publisher: Pantheon $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780375424762 Date: 2007
PW
Like the work of John Ruskin, Spalding's writing brilliantly combines autobiography with the examination of a sensational murder case, and, in doing so, offers readers profound insights into the vagaries of the human heart.
Updated 6.4.07
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Author: Toobin, Jeffrey
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780385516402 Date: 2007
LJ
Based on exclusive interviews with the Supreme Court Justices themselves and other insiders, "The Nine "is a timely and provocative state of the union about Americas most elite legal institution. As a CNN senior legal analyst, "New Yorker" staff writer, and bestselling author, no one is more superbly qualified on this topic than Jeffrey Toobin.
Updated 10.2.07
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
Author: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 9781400041596 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ Booklist
In this engrossing volume, Ulrich explores what it means to make history. She shows how the feminist wave of the 1970s has created a generation that challenged traditional accounts of both mens and womens histories, and which stimulated better-documented accounts of the past.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9.10.07

August

Here If You Need Me: A Memoir
Author: Braestrup, Kate
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780316066303 Date: 2007
PW
Braestrup's remarkable journey from grief to faith to happiness is a dramatic, funny, deeply moving, and simply unforgettable story. She shares her uplifting account of finding God through helping others, and reminds readers of the small miracles that occur every day when life and love are restored.
Updated 6.27.07
Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America
Author: Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400062812 Date: 2007
PW Booklist Kirkus
A groundbreaking biography of the man who gave his name to America, Amerigo is delivered by one of the worlds most exciting historians who spins a grand narrative full of character and story.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.15.07
Fox of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama
Author: Fox, Stephen
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 9781400044290 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Entertaining and highly informative, this book is at once an account of the overlooked naval side of the Civil War, an intimate portrait of life at sea, and an overdue appreciation of Raphael Semmes, a great naval commander.
Updated 5.21.07
Letters to a Young Teacher
Author: Kozol, Jonathan
Publisher: Crown $ 19.95 ISBN: 9780307393715 Date: 2007
PW
This exhilarating new work from award-winning author Kozol takes the form of warm and friendly letters to a young classroom teacher, offering advice, encouragement, remembrances, and a lively indignation at the bureaucratic absurdities most teachers face.
Updated 6.27.07
In Europe: A Journey Through the Twentieth Century
Author: Mak, Geert
Publisher: Pantheon $ 35 ISBN: 9780375424953 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Already a bestseller throughout Europe, Dutch journalist and historian Mak writes a rich and intimate work of modern history. The author chronicles key events and weaves them through individual experiences in order to provide readers with an eyewitness perspective on the past.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.28.07
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
Author: Matteson, John
Publisher: Norton $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780393059649 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus
Matteson looks at the personal life behind the beloved author of Little Women in this story that highlights the tense yet loving bond between Louisa May Alcott and her father, Bronson, and that relationships impact on her life and work.
Updated 6.28.07
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster and the Water We Drink
Author: Morris, Robert
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780060730895 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
Combining the fast-paced narrative of The Hot Zone with the impressive scope of The Great Influenza, a world-renowned expert presents the fascinating history and uncertain future of drinking water and the deadly diseases that hide in a single drop.
Updated 7.11.07
Beautiful Boy: A Fathers Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction
Author: Sheff, David
Publisher: Houghton $ 26 ISBN: 9780618683352 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
Sheffs story tells of his teenage sons addiction to meth in this real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the familys gradual emergence into hope.
Updated 5.21.07
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
Author: Thomas, Dana
Publisher: Penguin $ 27.95 ISBN: 9781594201295 Date: 2007
Booklist
Updated 6.28.07
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
Author: Von Tunzelmann, Alex
Publisher: Holt $ 30 ISBN: 9780805080735 Date: 2007
PW
An extraordinary story of romance, history, and divided loyalties— set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century The stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, liberated 400 million people from the British Empire. With the loss of India, its greatest colony, Britain ceased to be a superpower, and its king ceased to sign himself Rex Imperator. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.27.07
Sovereign Ladies: The Six Reigning Queens of England
Author: Waller, Maureen
Publisher: St Martins $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780312338015 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
In this fascinating narrative history, Waller combines drama with biographical insight as she delves into the lives of the six women who have ruled England.
Updated 6.28.07
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Author: Weiner, Tim
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780385514453 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
Covering the Central Intelligence Agencys less-than-stellar reputation over its 60-year existence, this work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans.
Updated 6.27.07

July

Inside the Read Mansion: On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man
Author: August, Oliver
Publisher: Houghton $ 26 ISBN: 9780618714988 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
August stumbles onto the hunt for Chinas most wanted man, Lai Changxing. In this tale of rise and fall, August sets out to find the self-made billionaire, in the hope that if he can understand how Lai reinvented himself, he will also understand the forces transforming modern China.
Updated 6.28.07
Nine Ways to Cross a River: Midsteam Reflections on Swimming and Getting There from Here
Author: Busch, Akiko
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 19.95 ISBN: 9781596910454 Date: 2007
PW LJ
After a transformative swim across the Hudson just before September 11, Busch undertook to explore eight of America’ s great waterways: the Hudson (twice), the Delaware, the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Monongahela, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Current. She observes each river’ s goings-on and reflects on its history (human and natural) and possible futures. Some of the rivers have rebounded from past industrial misuse; others still struggle with pollution and waste. The swims are also opportunities to muse on the ordinary passages faced by most of us— the death of a parent, raising children, becoming older— and the ways in which the rhythms and patterns of the natural world can offer reassurance, ballast and inspiration. A deeply moving exploration of the themes of renewal and reclamation at midlife, Nine Ways to Cross a River is a book to be treasured and given to friends. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.27.07
Hearts Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone
Author: Clarke, Joshua
Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 9781416537632 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Clark brings a first-person literary account to the horror of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath as he takes readers on a heart-rending journey through this atrocious national disaster.
Updated 7.11.07
King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousings Who Led the World to War
Author: Clay, Catrine
Publisher: Walker $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780802716231 Date: 2007
LJ PW
The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.28.07
Inner Workings: Literary Essays 200-2005
Author: Coetzee, J.M.
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780670038657 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Coetzee explores the work of twentieth century German literature's greatest writers, an essay on Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and on the short fiction of Samuel Beckett. American literature is also strongly represented and Coetzee rounds off the collection with essays on three fellow Nobel laureates.
Updated 6.27.07
Heart in the Right Place
Author: Jourdan, Carolyn
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781565124875 Date: 2007
PW
Moving from her career as a successful Washington attorney back to her native Tennessee, Jourdan recognizes her father to be more heroic and devoted than any politician shed ever met. Told with tremendous heart, this is the story of how, sometimes, you can--and should--go home again.
Updated 6.27.07
Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm
Author: Katz, Jon
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400064045 Date: 2007
Booklist
In five memorable books, readers have followed Katzs transformation from a suburban New Jersey dog owner to squire of Bedlam Farm. In his latest book, Katz chronicles the experience of life with animals--what they teach us, and what they bring out in us.
Suggested Reading: Dog Stars
Updated 6.28.07
Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
Author: Kerasote, Ted
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 9780151012701 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
While on a camping trip, Ted Kerasote met a dog— a Labrador mix— who was living on his own in the wild. They became attached to each other, and Kerasote decided to name the dog Merle and bring him home. There, he realized that Merle’ s native intelligence would be diminished by living exclusively in the human world. He put a dog door in his house so Merle could live both outside and in. A deeply touching portrait of a remarkable dog and his relationship with the author, Merle’ s Door explores the issues that all animals and their human companions face as their lives intertwine, bringing to bear the latest research into animal consciousness and behavior as well as insights into the origins and evolution of the human-dog partnership. Merle showed Kerasote how dogs might live if they were allowed to make more of their own decisions, and Kerasote suggests how these lessons can be applied universally. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Dog Stars
Updated 7.11.07
Relative Stranger: A Sister's Story
Author: Loudon, Mary
Publisher: Canongate $ 23 ISBN: 9781841957845 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Recalling A Glass Castle, Relative Stranger is an emotionally honest, gripping memoir of one woman’ s attempt to piece together a humane portrait of her dead sister and the struggle of mental illness. After learning that her older sister Catherine, who had vanished long ago, had been “ inhabiting the identity” of a man called “ Stevie, ” Mary Loudon plunges into a kind of post-mortem investigation to understand who her sister was. Interviewing doctors, nurses, social services representatives, nuns, cafe owners, grocers and ministers, Loudon paints an explicit, clear account of how schizophrenia affected a promising young life while exploring the assumptions people make about mental illness. Relative Stranger stands as an honest and uncompromising challenge to the ways in which we think about one another and what it means to love, to lose, to die and above all to belong.
Updated 5.21.07
The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir
Author: Lum, Lucy
Publisher: Public Affairs $ 24 ISBN: 9781586484361 Date: 2007
Kirkus
With a fresh and powerful voice, Lum breaks the long silence of the Singaporean Chinese who, during the 1940s, lived under the specter of the invading Japanese. Heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant, it speaks of the softly-spoken, redemptive love between a father and daughter.
Updated 3.2.07
Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff
Author: Mahoney, Rosemary
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780316107457 Date: 2007
PW
Mahoney was determined to take a solo trip down the Egyptian Nile, even though civil unrest and vexing local traditions conspired to create obstacles every step of the way. Despite the extreme conditions, her informed curiosity about the world, her glorious prose, and her wit never fail to captivate.
Updated 6.27.07
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit; My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
Author: Matalon Lagnado, Lucette
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780060822125 Date: 2007
Booklist
This poignant and breathtaking memoir from an award-winning "Wall Street Journal" reporter recounts the exile of her family from Egypt and her fathers heroic and tragic struggle to survive his riches to rags trajectory.
Updated 5.21.07
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming
Author: Mooney, Chris
Publisher: Harcourt $ 26 ISBN: 9780151012879 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus
One of the leading science journalists and commentators working today, Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming.
Updated 5.1.07
The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
Author: Ronald, Susan
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780060820664 Date: 2007
Booklist
Historian Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, focusing on her uncanny instinct for financial survival and her superior intellect that propelled and sustained her rise, including her use of piracy to transform her realm into the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
Updated 6.28.07
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939
Author: Roiphe, Katie
Publisher: Dial $ 26 ISBN: 9780385339377 Date: 2007
Booklist PW
In this astute and engrossing examination of seven artsy marriages from 20th-century England, Roiphe couples her penchant for social criticism with her training in English literature and reexamines the institution of marriage.
Updated 6.28.07
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
Author: Saks, Elyn
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781401301385 Date: 2007
PW
Elyn Saks managed to achieve both professional and personal success in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis. In this memoir, she frankly and movingly discusses the disease, and the treatments that helped her to cope and thrive.
Updated 5.21.07
Shadow of the Silk Road
Author: Thubron, Colin
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780061231728 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ
To be travelling the Silk Road is to be travelling the history of the world: tracing the passage not just of trade and armies, but also of ideas, religions and inventions. Thubron's chosen route passes through China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. It is a brilliant account of an ancient world in modern ferment. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.1.07
The World Without Us
Author: Weisman, Alan
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312347291 Date: 2007
PW LJ Booklist
Weisman, an award-winning journalist, offers readers a penetrating--and sometimes terrifying--take on how the planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.28.07
Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
Author: Zamoyski, Adam
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780060775186 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Internationally bestselling author Adam Zamoyski draws on a wide range of original sources, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, to reveal the steamy atmosphere of greed and lust in which the new Europe was forged. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, and featuring a cast of some of the most influential and powerful figures in history, including Tsar Alexander, Metternich, Talleyrand, and the Dukeof Wellington, Rites of Peace tells the story of these extraordinary events and their profound historical consequences. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.21.07

June

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Author: Bageant, Joe
Publisher: Crown $ 25 ISBN: 9780307339362 Date: 2007
Booklist
Web columnist Bageant takes readers on a raucous tour through the taverns, churches, and double-wide trailers of the invisible working class--the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory--offering a vivid and sobering snapshot of a nation on the brink of catastrophe.
Updated 5.21.07
Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World
Author: Doerr, Anthony
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 9781416540014 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the award-winning author of The Shell Collector and About Grace comes an evocative memoir of the timeless beauty of Rome and the day-to-day wonderment of living, writing, and raising twin boys in a foreign city.
Updated 5.21.07
Travels With Herodotus
Author: Kapuscinski, Ryszard
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 9781400043385 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Just out of university in 1955, Kapuscinski told his editor that he’ d like to go abroad. Dreaming no farther than Czechoslovakia, the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wide-eyed and captivated, he would discover in those days his life’ s work— to understand and describe the world in its remotest reaches, in all its multiplicity. From the rituals of sunrise at Persepolis to the incongruity of Louis Armstrong performing before a stone-faced crowd in Khartoum, Kapuscinski gives us the non-Western world as he first saw it, through still-virginal Western eyes. The companion on his travels: a volume of Herodotus, a gift from his first boss. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 3.30.07
Machiavelli: Philospher of Power
Author: King, Ross
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 21.95 ISBN: 9780060817176 Date: 2007
PW
In this latest addition to the Eminent Lives series, the "New York Times" bestselling author of Brunelleschis Dome offers a striking portrait of the brilliant and revolutionary political philosopher and the age he embodied.
Updated 5.1.07
The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity
Author: Linklater, Andro
Publisher: Walker $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780802715333 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ
Updated 5.21.07
Buffalo in the House: The True Story of About a Man, an Animal and the American West
Author: Rosen, R.D.
Publisher: New $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781595581655 Date: 2007
PW
Marley and Me meets All Creatures Great and Small, as an ailing but lovable orphan buffalo joins a Santa Fe household.
Updated 3.15.07
Shoot the Widow: Adventurers of a Biographer
Author: Secrest, Meryle
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307264831 Date: 2007
Booklist
A fascinating account of a life spent in sometimes arduous, sometimes comical, always exciting pursuit of the truth about other lives. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.21.07
The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of Fifty
Author: Sheed, Wilfred
Publisher: Random $ 29.95 ISBN: 9781400061051 Date: 2007
PW
Sheed's history is a unique celebration of America's most prominent and dazzling songwriters during the Golden Age of popular music. Each story is told from an intensely personal viewpoint, producing an in-depth look that is as ingratiating as it is authoritative.
Updated 5.21.07
The Long March: The True History of China's Founding Myth
Author: Shuyun, Sun
Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 9780385520249 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus
The Long March is Communist Chinas founding myth, the heroic tale that every Chinese child learns in school. Seventy years after the historical march took place, Shuyun set out to retrace the Marchers steps and unexpectedly discovered the true history behind the legend.
Updated 5.21.07
Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick
Author: Uglow, Jenny
Publisher: FSG $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780374112363 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
In this superb biography, Uglow tells the story of the farmers son who influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild--a journey to the beginning of a lasting obsession with the natural world.
Updated 6.28.07
Pentagon: The Untold Story Behind the Creation of the Symbol of American Might
Author: Vogel, Steve
Publisher: Random $ 32.95 ISBN: 9781400063031 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
The creation of the Pentagon in seventeen whirlwind months during World War II is one of the great construction feats in American history, involving a tremendous mobilization of manpower, resources, and minds. In astonishingly short order, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell conceived and built an institution that ranks with the White House, the Vatican, and a handful of other structures as symbols recognized around the world. Now veteran military reporter Steve Vogel reveals for the first time the remarkable story of the Pentagon’ s construction, from it’ s dramatic birth to its rebuilding after the September 11 attack. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.21.07
Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth at Summer Camp
Author: Wolk, Josh
Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781401302603 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
A hilarious and insightful look at the tenacious power of nostalgia, the glory of childhood, and the nervous excitement of taking a leap to the next unknown stage in life, Wolk has written a book for anyone who wishes to be young again but knows deep down it probably isnt a good idea.
Updated 5.21.07

May

Thick as Theives: A Brother, a Sister - A True Story of Two Turbulent Lives
Author: Geng, Steve
Publisher: Holt $ 24 ISBN: 9780805080568 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus
A memoir about two siblings who loved each other (sometimes), the thrill of the shoplift, the power of the written word, the agony of addiction, and the joy of someone who understands and still stays true through it all.
Updated 1.27.07
The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology
Author: Heinrich, Bernd
Publisher: Ecco $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780060742157 Date: 2007
LJ
From the bestselling author of Winter World comes the remarkable story of his father's life, his familys past, and how the forces of history and nature shaped his own life.
Updated 5.21.07
I Am a Strange Loop
Author: Hofstadter, Douglas R.
Publisher: Basic $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780465030781 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Douglas Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Godel, Escher Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.31.07
The Atomic Bazaar
Author: Langewiesche, William
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 9780374106782 Date: 2007
Kirkus
In his shocking and revelatory new work, a celebrated journalist investigates the burgeoning global threat of nuclear weapons production. From Hiroshima to the present day, Langewiesche describes a reality of urgent consequence to all.
Updated 3.2.07
Am I Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation
Author: Latus, Janine
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 9780743296533 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus
Based on an award-winning article published in "O, The Oprah Magazine," Latus has crafted a heart wrenching yet beautifully crafted memoir about two intelligent, attractive sisters--one of whom escaped years of abuse by men--and one who did not.
Updated 3.5.07
City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa
Author: Lebor, Adam
Publisher: Norton $ 14.95 ISBN: 9780393329841 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus
This profoundly human take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen through the eyes of six families, three Arab and three Jewish.
Updated 3.15.07
The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm
Author: Nicholson, Juliet
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 9780802118462 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Topping the best-seller charts in Britain, The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.5.07
Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America
Author: Rico, Johnny
Publisher: Presidio $ 14.95 ISBN: 9780891418979 Date: 2007
PW
In this fresh and funny Afghanistan War memoir, a highly liberal, highly educated army misfit chronicles his time in the war with a healthy dose of skepticism and razor sharp wit.
Updated 3.5.07
Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe
Author: Rosen, William
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780670038558 Date: 2007
Kirkus
This sweeping narrative explores history's first pandemic--a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, and opened the way for the armies of Islam.
Updated 3.2.07
Senior Year: A Father, A Son, and High School Baseball
Author: Shaughnessy, Dan
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $24 ISBN: 9780618729050 Date: 2007
LJ
With gleaming insight, wicked humor, and, at times, the searching soul of an unsure father, Shaughnessy illuminates how sports connect generations and how they can help parents grow up--and let go.
Updated 8.20.07
Not by a Longshot: A Season at a Hard Luck Horse Track
Author: Thornton, T.D.
Publisher: Public Affairs $ 26 ISBN: 9781586484491 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
Updated 3.2.07
The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-century England
Author: Tinniswood, Adrian
Publisher: Riverhead $ 35 ISBN: 9781594489488 Date: 2007
Booklist
The remarkable story of one English family during the tumultuous 17th century is revealed through their original letters and documents, which paint an accurate picture of life in England, Europe, and even the American colonies.
Updated 5.21.07
The Republic of Pirates: How a Band of Thieves Created an Eighteenth-Centry Democracy
Author: Woodard, Colin
Publisher: Harcourt $ 27 ISBN: 9780151013029 Date: 2007
Kirkus
In this unique and fascinating book, Woodard brings to life the virtually unexplored chapter of the Republic of Pirates--a notorious and enormously powerful cooperative headed by Edward "Blackbeard" Teach and "Black Sam" Bellamy--and its ultimate defeat.
Updated 3.2.07

April

Virgin: The Untouched History
Author: Blank, Hanne
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 27.95 ISBN: 9781596910102 Date: 2007
PW
Blank presents a revolutionary and entertaining survey of the history of virginity. From the simple task of determining what constitutes its loss to why it matters in the first place, Blank tackles the reality--and the perceived reality--surrounding this indefinable state of being.
Updated 1.16.07
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
Author: Boyd, Joe
Publisher: Serpents Tail $ 18 ISBN: 9781852429102bicycle Date: 2007
Kirkus
"This is the best book about music I've read in years, and a gripping piece of social history."-Brian Eno
More than any previous sixties music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.11.07
The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America
Author: Cliff, Nigel
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780345486943 Date: 2007
Kirkus
A rich social and cultural history bases on the notorious Astor Place Riots in New York City in May 1849--the dramatic, tragicomic tale of how a petty feud between the two most celebrated Shakespearean actors of their day exploded into one of the deadliest disturbances in American history.
Updated 3.2.07
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Author: Gawande, Atul
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 9780805082111 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW LJ
The "New York Times" bestselling author examines the complex and risk-filled medical profession and how those involved progress from merely good to great. Gawande provides rare insight and offers an honest firsthand account of his own life as a surgeon.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.5.07
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Author: Godwin, Peter
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316158947 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW Booklist
A brilliant memoir about a son's return to Africa to uncover the secrets of his family and his home. Bearing witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards, Godwin discovers why Africa was his father's sanctuary from another identity and why his family chose to stay amidst the chaos.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.18.07
How Doctors Think
Author: Groopman, Jerome
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 9780618610037 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus
A "New Yorker" staff writer, bestselling author, and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the mystery of how doctors figure out the best treatments--or fail to do so. This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask.
Updated 1.27.07
The Mistress's Daughter
Author: Homes, A.M.
Publisher: Viking $ 26 ISBN: 9780670038381 Date: 2007
Booklist
Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. The Mistress's Daughter is the story of what happened when, 30 years later, her birth parents came looking for her.
Updated 5.1.07
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life
Author: Kingsolver, Barbara
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780060852559 Date: 2007
PW
In her first full-length nonfiction narrative, bestselling author Kingsolver opens readers' eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: you are what you eat. The bestselling author returns with a wise and compelling celebration of family, food, nature, and community.
Updated 8.27.07
Gertrude Bell
Author: Howell, Georgina
Publisher: FSG $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780374161620 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Called the "female Lawrence of Arabia", Gertrude Bell was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire and was the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. This work is a richly compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and times and created a remarkable and enduring legacy.
Updated 2.19.07
Edith Wharton
Author: Lee, Hermoine
Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 9780375400049 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus Booklist
Delving into heretofore untapped sources, the author of the acclaimed masterpiece Virginia Woolf brilliantly interweaves Edith Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age.
Updated 2.19.07
The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic
Author: McGrath, Melanie
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400040476 Date: 2007
Booklist
In 1953, the Canadian government forcibly relocated three dozen Inuit from the east coast of Hudson Bay to the high arctic. There the exiles were left to live on their own with little support and few provisions. McGrath brings this extraordinary tale of mistreatment and deprivation to life.
Updated 3.2.07
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian LIfe
Author: Nusseibeh, Sari
Publisher: Faber & Faber $ 26 ISBN: 9780374299507 Date: 2007
PW
A prominent Palestinian's searching, anguished, and deeply affecting autobiography, in which his life story mimics the recent history of his country.
Updated 1.27.07
Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life
Author: Pite, Ralph
Publisher: Yale $ 35 ISBN: 9780300123371 Date: 2007
Booklist
Updated 3.2.07
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring
Author: Preston, Richard
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 9781400064892 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone comes an amazing account of scientific and spiritual passion for the tallest trees in the world, the startling biosystem of the canopy, and those who are committed to the preservation of this astonishing and largely unknown world.
Updated 1.27.07
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
Author: Rampersad, Arnold
Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 9780375408274 Date: 2007
Kirkus
The first scholar to be given complete access to Ralph Ellison's papers provides a glimpse not only into the events of Ellison's life, but also into the complex inner makeup of the man--a magisterial biography of the writer and his times.
Updated 3.2.07
Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign
Author: Tally, Stephan
Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307236609 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Awash with bloody battles, political intrigue, and an incredible epoch-ending natural disaster, this is the real-life story of Henry Morgan, the legendary pirate of the Caribbean, who in the 17th century challenged the greatest military power on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades and brought it to its knees.
Updated 1.27.07
Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed
Author: Trynka, Paul
Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780767923194 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus LJ
Iggy Pop transcended life in Michigan to become the "Godfather of Punk." Although his struggles with drug addiction, mental illness, and his problematic question of commercial success were well known, his groundbreaking style profoundly influenced the genres of punk, glam, and New Wave.
Suggested Reading: Music-Nonfiction | All Stars
Updated 5.11.07
A Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America
Author: Woolley, Benjamin
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780060090562 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first American colony, A Savage Kingdom presents the bold, even reckless, political adventure driven by a sense of imperial destiny and dogged by official hostility.
Suggested Reading: Jamestown
Updated 2.12.07

March

Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo
Author: Anthony, Lawrence & Graham Spence
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312358327 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
The amazing story of the soldiers, conservationists, and ordinary Iraqis who united to save the animals of the Baghdad Zoo.
Updated 1.31.07
A Weekend with Warren Bufffett: And Other Shareholder Meeting Adventures
Author: Cepuch, Randy
Publisher: Thunders Mouth $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781560259541 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 1.16.07
House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest
Author: Childs, Craig Leland
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316608176 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Childs investigates the greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest. The Anasazi, the native peoples who by the 11th century converged on Chaco Canyon (now New Mexico), built a flourishing cultural center. By the 13th century, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. What happened?
Updated 12.28.06
The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic Gilgamesh
Author: Damrosch, David
Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 9780805080292 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW Booklist
The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum's collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and--after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations--finally found. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.19.07
Dog Years
Author: Doty, Mark
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780061171000 Date: 2007
LJ Kirkus PW
Both moving and entertaining, Dog Years is the story of two beloved retrievers and is a pointed, perceptive meditation on life, death, and the nature of companionship.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Dog Stars
Updated 3.15.07
Havana: Autobiography of a City
Author: Estrada, Alfredo
Publisher: Palgrave $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781403975096 Date: 2007
LJ
Updated 2.1.07
Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics
Author: Frater, Alexander
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780679408710 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 1.27.07
Royal Nonesuch
Author: Glasgow, Phillips
Publisher: Grove $ 14 ISBN: 9780802170286 Date: 2007
PW
The Royal Nonesuch is the story of Phillips's rollercoaster ride through the twisted world of underground Hollywood and the funhouse of the Internet during the boom.
Updated 12.6.06
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Author: James, Clive
Publisher: Norton $ 35 ISBN: 9780393061161 Date: 2007
PW Booklist Kirkus
Containing more than 100 original essays organized by quotations, James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the 20th century.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.2.07
Findings
Author: Jamie, Kathleen
Publisher: Graywolf $ 14 ISBN: 978155974459 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 12.28.06
Too Far from Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
Author: Jones, Chris
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780385514651 Date: 2007
LJ
In the 37 years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, space travel has seemed more and more a routine enterprise--at least until the shuttle "Columbia" blew up, and the "Challenger" before it. Now, this true-life adventure vividly captures the dangerous realities of space travel.
Updated 2.1.07
The Jamestown Project
Author: Kupperman, Karen Ordahl
Publisher: Belknap $29.95 ISBN: 9780674024748 Date: 2007
LJ
Capturing England's intoxication with a wider world through ballads, plays, and paintings; the stark reality of Jamestown, through the words of its inhabitants; and with archeological and environmental evidence, Kupperman re-creates Jamestown's formative years with astonishing detail.
Suggested Reading: Jamestown
Updated 3.30.07
Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons
Author: Thomas, Cullen
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780670038275 Date: 2007
Booklist
With its gritty descriptions of life behind the concrete walls, colorful depictions of his fellow inmates, and acute insights about Korean society, Brother One Cell is part gritty prison story, part cautionary tale, and part insightful travelogue into the places most people never see.
Updated 3.15.07
Dark at the Roots: A Memoir
Author: Thyre, Sarah
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781582433592 Date: 2007
Booklist
Given the Nickname "Family Liar" by her father around the time she started talking, Sarah Thyre was the second of five children to be born into a southern family of Roman Catholics. Confused by this endearment, but eager to live up to it, Sarah quickly managed to get herself into precarious situations. Whether it is small Sarah accidentally going "poddy" in the garage during a game of hide-and-seek, medium-sized Sarah surviving a fishing trip with her volatile father, or full-sized Sarah unwittingly stealing a car from her boyfriend's employer, grown-up Sarah shares each story with self-effacing sincerity and a seemingly invincible sense of humor. The ability to turn pain into punch lines is a skill that Sarah honed by necessity: Her father was unpredictably moody and routinely lashed out at his young family until eventually Sarah's mother moved her four girls and newborn son out of the "comfort" of marriage and into the uncertainty of single parenting. The regular meals and the indoor heating were soon drained from their middle-class lifestyle. Still, Sarah boldly tried to maintain a facade of wealth--fooling no one but herself. This memoir flees from Sarah's childhood with the high-wire urgency of improv comedy and the ever-teetering forward momentum of a runaway toddler while holding tight to the bits that made her the wry, deeply funny person she is today. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.15.07
Poor People
Author: Vollmann, William T.
Publisher: Ecco $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780060878825 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist LJ
A National Book Award-winning author travels the globe and meets with impoverished individuals where they live to document firsthand the causes and effects of poverty.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.5.07
The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team
Author: Weinreb, Michael
Publisher: Gotham $ 26 ISBN: 9781592402618 Date: 2007
PW
At Brooklyn's prestigious Edward R. Murrow High School, the closest thing to jocks are found on the powerhouse chess team. Weinreb follows the members of the team through an entire season, capturing their eclectic differences as they prepare for the national championship.
Updated 8.27.07
The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino
Author: Wilkinson, Alec
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400065431 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
Critically acclaimed "New Yorker" contributor Wilkinson spent several years following the erratic trail of vagabond Poppa Neutrino--street musician, beatnik, raft man--for this disturbing and profound look at one man's life outside the boundaries of what most consider normality.
Updated 12.29.06

February

On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance
Author: Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 9781416534884 Date: 2007
Booklist
Soon to be released as a major documentary produced by Spike Lee, this autobiography explores Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's personal journey to become the man he is today--a basketball superstar, jazz enthusiast, historian, and African-American icon.
Suggested Reading: Black History Stars
Updated 1.31.07
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author: Beah, Ishmael
Publisher: Faber & Faber $ 22 ISBN: 9780374105235 Date: 2007
PW LJ
In the more than 50 conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. In a rare and mesmerizing account, Beah tells of his experience as a child fighting a war in Sierra Leone.
Suggested Reading: Child Soldiers
Updated 3.5.07
The Lady in the Palazzo
Author: De Blasi, Marlena
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781565124738 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Touching and humorous, Marlena de Blasi's account of moving with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, the largest city in Italy's Umbria, is a story that will appeal to anyone who delights in travel and shares the fantasy of beginning a new life in a very different place.
Updated 12.28.06
Paper Trails: True Stories of Confusion, Mindless Violence, and Forbidden Desires, a Surprising Number of Which Are Not About Marriage
Author: Dexter, Pete & Fleder, Rob (edt)
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780061189357 Date: 2007
PW
Filled with humor and wisdom, the brilliant first collection of Dexter's finest nonfiction chronicles his life and times.
Updated 12.6.06
The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe
Author: Frayn, Michael
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 32.50 ISBN: 9780805081480 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus Booklist
With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls "the oldest mystery": the world is what we make of it.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 12.29.06
My Life Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir
Author: Gartenstein-Ross, Daveed
Publisher: Tarcher $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781585425518 Date: 2007
Booklist
Raised by parents who were Jewish by birth but dismissive of strict dogma, the author reveals his experience of converting to Islam and recounts a story of how a good faith can be distorted and a decent soul can be seduced away from its principles.
Updated 8.20.07
Infidel
Author: Hiris Ali, Ayaan
Publisher: Free $ 26 ISBN: 9780743289689 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands to her life under armed guard in the West.
Updated 12.28.06
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
Author: Kundera, Milan
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 22.95 ISBN: 9780060841867 Date: 2007
PW LJ
In this entertaining and stimulating essay, Kundera deftly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization.
Updated 1.16.07
The Last Forest: The Future of the Amazon in the Age of Globalization
Author: London, Mark
Publisher:Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780679643050 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ
The Last Forest is a masterpiece of contemporary reporting. A complex, vibrant portrait of the Amazonian region on the edge of crisis, this is also a seductive journey and a searing account of political, environmental, and social tumult.
Updated 12.28.06
Family Romance: A Love Story
Author: Lanchester, John
Publisher: Putnam $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780399153006 Date: 2007
PW
Although his family may have been atypical, the dynamics of family life and their patterns are instantly recognizable in this memoir by acclaimed novelist Lanchester. Part detective work, part remarkable evocation of character, this is, above all, compelling storytelling.
Updated 12.6.06
Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World
Author: MacMillan, Margaret
Publisher: Random $ 27.95 ISBN: 9781400061273 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
MacMillan makes history come to life in one of the most important subjects today: the relationship between the United States and China and the historic meeting of Richard Nixon and Mao Tse-tung in 1972 that ultimately laid the groundwork for the relationship between the two nations.
Updated 12.28.06
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power
Author: Rounding, Virginia
Publisher: St Martins $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780312328870 Date: 2007
PW
"A great thumping triumph of a book" ("London Telegraph"), this is the first comprehensive modern biography of Catherine the Great to explore her both as a woman and empress.
Updated 12.6.06
Stacked: A 32ddd Report from the Front
Author: Seligson, Susan
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781596911178 Date: 2007
PW
An intrepid 32-DDD writer takes readers on a journey through a culture where breasts have come to stand for all that is woman. Seligson writes throughout with the wisdom and humor of a woman who knows what it is to wield body parts so powerful they can make men crash cars.
Updated 10.31.06
Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Liife
Author: Shawn, Allen
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780670038428 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
In this memoir of enormous bravery, a member of one of New York's premier literary families delivers a droll, inquisitive, and poignant examination of his life with agoraphobia.
Updated 1.16.07
I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad
Author: Smardz-Frost, Karolyn
Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 9780374164812 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus
As his bride was about to be sold to the slave markets of New Orleans, Thornton Blackburn planned a daring daylight escape from Louisville, Kentucky. Caught in Michigan and slated to return to Kentucky in chains until the black community rallied to their cause, the couple was spirited to Canada. Their case was the first serious legal dispute between Canada and the United States regarding the Underground Railroad.
Suggested Reading: Black History Stars
Updated 1.31.07
The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama, and the First British Expedition to Tibet
Author: Teltscher, Kate
Publisher: Faber & Faber $ 25 ISBN: 9780374217006 Date: 2007
Kirkus
In this narrative, Teltscher traces two extraordinary journeys across some of the harshest and highest terrain in the world: the first British mission to Tibet and the Panchen Lama's state visit to China to mark the emperor's 70th birthday.
Updated 12.28.06
Back to the Badlands: Crime Writing in the USA
Author: Williams, John
Publisher: Serpents Tail $ 14.95 ISBN: 9781852429218 Date: 2007
Booklist
In the summer of 1989 John Williams donned a baseball cap and took off for the States to search out the mythical America of modern crime fiction-to find James Ellroy's Los Angeles, Elmore Leonard's sleazy South Beach of Miami, Sara Paretsky's Chicago, and many others on a tour of the American underbelly. The result was Into the Badlands, a riveting collection of interviews.
In 2005 Williams returned to discover that much had changed in the intervening years, both in crime writing and in America as a whole. As Williams crosses America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he finds himself in a profoundly uneasy country. Whether their territory is inner-city DC, like George Pelecanos, or the rural white poverty of the Ozark Hills, like Daniel Woodrell, the best crime writers today are sending dispatches from the edge. John Williams brings their visions together to construct a powerful, personal portrait of America today.
Includes interviews with James Lee Burke, James Ellroy, James Crumley, Sara Paretsky, Eugene Izzi, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Vicki Hendricks, Kem Nunn, Kinky Friedman, Daniel Woodrell, and George P. Pelecanos. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.31.07

January

The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival
Author: Alpert, Stanley
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780399154027 Date: 2007
Kirkus
On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan by a car full of gun-toting "gangsta" thugs. Here he offers a remarkable account of his kidnapping and the psychological duel and investigation that followed.
Updated 10.25.06
A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age
Author: Doyle, John
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 15.95 ISBN: 9780786718146 Date: 2007
PW
Funny, insightful, and always engaging, this illuminating story of a boy and a country transformed by television is indeed a "great feast of light." - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.23.06
The Children in Room E4
Author: Eaton, Susan E.
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781565124882 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
In this groundbreaking account, Eaton goes inside the classroom and the courtroom to disclose the unsettling truths about an education system that is leaving millions of children behind.
Updated 11.13.06
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 26 ISBN: 9780805057232 Date: 2007
PW
From a bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes a fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.
Updated 10.31.06
In My Skin: A Memoir
Author: Holden, Kate
Publisher: Arcade $ 25 ISBN: 9781559708302 Date: 2007
Booklist
Holden presents a frank, harrowing account of her descent into heroin addiction and prostitution, and the long, arduous struggle to redeem her life that made her stronger.
Updated 12.28.06
African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus
Author: Holmes, Rachel
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400061365 Date: 2007
Booklist
Saartjie Baartman was twenty-one years old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, the striking African beauty was the talk of the social season of 1810– hailed as “ the Hottentot Venus” for her exquisite physique and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. In African Queen, Rachel Holmes recounts the luminous, heartbreaking story of one woman’ s journey from slavery to stardom. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Black History Stars
Updated 12.28.06
Streams of Consciousness; Hip-Deep Dispatches from the River of Life
Author: Hull, Jeff
Publisher: Lyons $ 19.95 ISBN: 9781592289882 Date: 2007
PW
The next great voice in the Lyons Press pantheon of immortal fishing writers.
Updated 12.6.06
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Author: Lear, Linda J.
Publisher: St Martins $ 30 ISBN: 9780312369347 Date: 2007
Booklist
With never-before-seen illustrations and intimate detail, Lear goes beyond the perennial fascination with Beatrix Potter as a writer and illustrator of children's books, and delves deeply into the life of a most unusual and gifted woman.
Updated 12.28.06
George Gershwin: His Life and Work
Author: Pollack, Howard
Publisher: Univ of Cal $ 39.95 ISBN: 9780520248649 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist PW
"Filled with new and revelatory information, Howard Pollack's fascinating and meticulous book is the closest anyone has come to capturing the essence of Gershwin's life and work"--Michael Feinstein, Grammy Nominated Singer-Songwriter - Publisher Marketing
Updated 12.28.06
Poster Child
Author: Rapp, Emily
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1596912561 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Born with a congenital condition that led to the amputation of her left leg, a former March of Dimes poster child offers an unflinching, brutally honest, and often darkly humorous account of wrestling with the tyranny of self-image and ultimately coming to terms with her own body.
Updated 8.28.06
Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
Author: Stone, Robert
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780060198169 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
In his first work of nonfiction, award-winning novelist Stone perfectly invokes the magical decade of the Sixties. The powerful memoir provides an insider's perspective of a time many only know about peripherally.
Updated 10.20.06
Love is a Mix Tape: Life, Loss, And What I Listened To
Author: Sheffield, Rob
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781400083022 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW LJ
Sheffield relates the two important love affairs of his life, the first with music and the fine art of the perfect mix tape, and the second with a woman who changes him forever.
Suggested Reading: Music-Nonfiction | All Stars | Love is a Mix Tape
Updated 12.29.06
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant: A Memoir of an Extraordinary Mind
Author: Tammet, Daneil
Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 9781416535072 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
One of the world's 50 living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story and explain how his incredible mind works. While Tammet's brain has amazed scientists for years, everyone will be moved by this remarkable man's story.
Updated 1.16.07
Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis
Author: Todd, Kim
Publisher: Harcourt $ 27 ISBN: 9780151011087 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus LJ
Before Darwin, before Audubon, there was Merian. An artist turned naturalist known for her botanical illustra-tions, she was born just sixteen years after Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun. But at the age of fifty she sailed from Europe to the New World on a solo scientific expedi-tion to study insect metamorphosis--an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less a woman. When she returned she produced a book that secured her reputation, only to have it savaged in the nineteenth century by scientists who disdained the work of "amateurs." Exquisitely written and illustrated, Chrysalis takes us from golden-age Amsterdam to the Surinam tropics to modern laboratories where Merian's insights fuel a new branch of biology. Kim Todd brings to life a seventeenth-century woman whose boldness and vision would still be exceptional today. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1.17.06
Thomas Hardy
Author: Tomalin, Claire
Publisher: Penguin $ 35 ISBN: 9781594201189 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
In this seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles), Whitbread Award winner Tomalin skillfully identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a rich and complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 12.28.06
Leni Riefenstahl: A Life
Author: Trimborn, Jurgen
Publisher: Faber & Faber $ 26 ISBN: 9780374184933 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
Dancer, actress, mountaineer, and director Leni Riefenstahl’ s uncompromising will and audacious talent for self-promotion appeared unmatched— until 1932, when she introduced herself to her future protector and patron: Adolf Hitler. Known internationally for two of the films she made for him, "Triumph of the Will "and "Olympia," Riefenstahl’ s demanding and obsessive style introduced unusual angles, new approaches to tracking shots, and highly symbolic montages. Despite her lifelong claim to be an apolitical artist, Riefenstahl’ s monumental and nationalistic vision of Germany’ s traditions and landscape served to idealize the cause of one of the world’ s most violent and racist regimes.
Riefenstahl ardently cast herself as a passionate young director who caved to the pressure to serve an all-powerful Fü hrer, so focused on reinventing the cinema that she didn’ t recognize the goals of the Third Reich until too late. Jü rgen Trimborn’ s revelatory biography celebrates this charismatic and adventurous woman who lived to 101, while also taking on the myths surrounding her. With refreshing distance and detailed research, Trimborn presents the story of a stubborn and intimidating filmmaker who refused to be held accountable for her role in the Holocaust but continued to inspire countless photographers and filmmakers with her artistry.
Updated 1.16.07
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Author: Washington, Harriet A.
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780385509930 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of the medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Black History Stars | All Stars
Updated 12.28.06

overbooked.com or overbooked.org

Notable Crime Fiction Debuts

Overbooked Links

Overbooked on: