August 30, 2011 | SuzyQ
Time Magazine has just revealed their list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books. The list is comprised of their choices of the most influential nonfiction books written in English since 1923 (when Time Magazine first published), and are taken from all categories, including biorgraphy, history, politcs, health, business, sports and culture. While lists like these are always subject to debate, it is certainly a starting point for some great reading. Although the Library doesn't own every title, a majority can be found throughout our various collections:
Autobiography / Memoir
The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Black boy: (American hunger): a record of childhood and youth by Richard Wright; with a forward by Edward P. Jones
Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance by Barack Obama
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers
I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
Manchild in the promised land by Claude Brown
Maus: a survivor's tale. Vol. 1. My father bleeds history by Art Spiegelman
A moveable feast by Ernest Hemingway
Notes of a native son by Baldwin, James, 1924-
On writing: a memoir of the craft by Stephen King
Speak, memory: an autobiography revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
A walk in the woods: rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Biography
The autobiography of Malcolm X by with the assistance of Alex Haley; introduction by M.S. Handler; epilogue by Alex Haley; afterword by Ossie Davis
The last lion, Winston Spencer Churchill. [Vol. 2.] Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester
The power broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
Business
Fast food nation: the dark side of the all-American meal by Eric Schlosser
The general theory of employment, interest, and money by John Maynard Keynes
How to win friends & influence people by Dale Carnegie; editorial consultant, Dorothy Carnegie; editorial assistance, Arthur R. Pell
No logo: no space, no choice, no jobs by Naomi Klein
What color is your parachute? 2012: a practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers by Richard N. Bolles
Culture
The story of art by E.H. Gombrich
Essays
A room of one's own by Virginia Woolf; foreword by Mary Gordon
A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again: essays and arguments by David Foster Wallace
Food Writing
Mastering the art of French cooking. Volume 1 by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck; illustrations by Sidonie Coryn
The omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals by Michael Pollan
Health
Baby and child care by Benjamin Spock and Michael B. Rothenberg; consultants, Lawrence R. Berger, Kathryn A. Mikesell; illustrations by Dorothea Fox
The joy of sex by Alex Comfort
Sexual behavior in the human male by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin
Sexual behavior in the human female by Kinsey, Alfred C. (Alfred Charles), 1894-1956
Our bodies, ourselves: a new edition for a new era by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective
History
The best and the brightest by David Halberstam
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian history of the American West by Dee Brown
Carry me home: Birmingham, Alabama: the climactic battle of the civil rights revolution by Diane McWhorter
The fatal shore by Robert Hughes
The gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
A people's history of the United States: 1492-present by Howard Zinn
The rise and fall of the Third Reich: a history of Nazi Germany by y William L. Shirer
Ideas
The closing of the American mind: how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students by Allan Bloom
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
The hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell
Orientalism by Edward W. Said
A theory of justice by John Rawls
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Nonfiction Novels
The electric kool-aid acid test by Tom Wolfe
The executioner's song by Norman Mailer
In cold blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences by Truman Capote
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Politics
All the President's men [by] Carl Bernstein [and] Bob Woodward by Bernstein, Carl, 1944-
The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order by Samuel P. Huntington
The making of the president, 1960 by Theodore H. White
The origins of totalitarianism by Arendt, Hannah
The paranoid style in American politics, and other essays by Richard Hofstadter; foreword by Sean Wilentz
What it takes: the way to the White House by Richard Ben Cramer
Science
A brief history of time: from the big bang to black holes by Stephen W. Hawking; introduction by Carl Sagan; illustrations by Ron Miller
Coming of age in Samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation by Margaret Mead
The double helix: a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA by James D. Watson; [introduction by Sylvia Nasar]
The emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The lives of a cell; notes of a biology watcher by Thomas, Lewis, 1913-
The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins
Silent spring by Rachel Carson; introduction by Linda Lear; afterword by Edward O. Wilson; [drawings by Lois and Louis Darling]
The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
Self-Help / Instructional
The elements of style by William Strunk, Jr.; with revisions, an introd., and a chapter on writing by E. B. White
Social History
The American way of death revisited by Jessica Mitford
Animal liberation by Peter Singer
The beauty myth: how images of beauty are used against women by Naomi Wolf
The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan; introduction by Anna Quindlen
Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond
Nickel and dimed: on (not) getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
The other America: poverty in the United States by Michael Harrington; with a new introduction by Irving Howe
Why we can't wait by Martin Luther King, Jr.; with an afterword by Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
Working by Studs Terkel
Sports
Ball four: the final pitch by Jim Bouton
War
The Civil War, a narrative by Shelby Foote
Dispatches by Michael Herr
Hiroshima by John Hersey
The looming tower: Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright