Nonfiction book gift list
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All I Can Handle: I’m No Mother Teresa
A Life Raising Three Daughters With Autism
Kim Stagliano
Skyhorse, $24.95
This inspiring story offers plenty of lighter, humorous moments as the author describes her life since veering off “Suburban Mommy Street and onto the Autism Autobahn.” Autism, she explains, has a way of “keeping you on your toes, much like hot coals or ballet shoes … “
Apollo’s Angels
A History of Ballet
Jennifer Homans
Random House, $35
Ballet, the author explains in her comprehensive look at this 400-year-old form of dance, possesses “no fixed texts, because it is an oral and physical tradition, a storytelling art passed on, like Homer’s epics, from person to person … “
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith et.al.
University of California Press, $35
A blog for the 21st century by the grand, old man of American letters.
The Big Short
Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton, $27.95
A handful of savvy investors made money on the subprime mortgage mess. Lewis tells us how they did it.
Bob Dylan in America
Sean Wilentz
Doubleday, $28.95
Sean Wilentz’s examination of the songwriter’s early years and influence upon American culture has resulted in a book, our reviewer said, that is “an extraordinary, resonant intersection of subject and biographer.”
Children of Fire
A History of African Americans
Thomas C. Holt
Hill and Wang, $30
An interpretation of the African American experience across generations as told through the lives of historical figures from slavery to the White House.
Cleopatra
A Life
Stacy Schiff
Little, Brown, $29.99
Schiff captures the broad sweep of Cleopatra’s life.
Colossus
Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
Michael Hiltzik
Free -Press, $30
An accounting of one of the great construction feats of the 20th century and its legacy.
Common as Air
Revolution, Art and Ownership.
Lewis Hyde
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26
The history of intellectual property ownership, presented in a stimulating and troubling book.
Decision Points
George W. Bush
Crown, $35
The 43rd president presents an appealing chronicle of the key decisions of his White House years.
Don’t Sing at the Table
Life Lessons from My Grandmothers
Adriana Trigiani
Harper, $22.99
The novelist collects the wisdom of her spirited Italian grandmothers, delivered with plenty of maternal insight and moxie.
Empire of Dreams
The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille
Scott Eyman
Simon & Schuster, $35
Lights, camera, Cecil: An expansive, remarkable accounting of the life and career of an iconic filmmaker who always worked on a grand scale.
Fab
An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney
Howard Sounes
Da Capo, $29.95
Ambitious, ruthless and charming: A Liverpool lad’s journey to music superstardom and icon status. And it’s unauthorized, love.
Frank
The Voice
James Kaplan
Doubleday, $35
Kaplan’s biography “illuminates a serious artist who revolutionized his medium,” tracing Frank Sinatra’s career from his modest beginnings to his triumphant comeback in the 1950s.
Grant Wood
A Life
R. Tripp Evans
Alfred A. Knopf, $37.50
An absorbing look at the life of the Iowa-born creator of “American Gothic” and other paintings and how he struggled to hide his sexual identity from the harsh judgments of homophobic critics.
Hollywood
A Third Memoir
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster, $24
Hollywood has been very good to the author of “Lonesome Dove,” and in this delightfully episodic book, McMurtry describes his long, profitable, rather enjoyable engagement with the movie industry.
A Journey
My Political Life
Tony Blair
Knopf, $35
The author’s disarming frankness in all parts of his career — from his relationships with Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana to his friendships with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — makes this a political biography of unusual interest.
Just Kids
Patti Smith
Ecco, $27
The influential rocker and poet offers a moving portrait of her onetime boyfriend and longtime muse, Robert Mapplethorpe. The recipient of this year’s National Book Award in Nonfiction.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home
A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Random House, $23
An affecting memoir of grief in which the author, the longtime book critic for the Boston Globe, recounts losing a dear friend to cancer in 2002.
Life
Keith Richards
Little Brown, $29
This memoir from the Rolling Stones guitarist riffs on musical influences, life on the stage and the varieties of mischief and trouble Richards has encountered in his rock ‘n’ roll career.
Listen to This
Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27
A music critic and author of a highly acclaimed collection of essays, “The Rest Is Noise,” returns with another eclectic collection of criticism including Mozart and Brahms, Radiohead and Bjork.
The Lost Peace
Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953
Robert Dallek
Harper, $28.99
The destructiveness of World War II should’ve pushed the leaders of nations toward creating a better world — Dallek (author of books on JFK, LBJ and more) shows us why they didn’t.
Love Brought Me Back
A Journey of Loss and Gain
Natalie Cole with David Ritz
Simon & Schuster, $23
In her second memoir, the singer and daughter of Nat King Cole discusses a lifesaving kidney transplant and the tragic deaths of close family members.
Mad as Hell
How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System
Scott Rasmssen and Douglas Schoen
Harper, $27.99
The authors map the contours of the American political landscape and the feelings of desperation fueling the rise of the Tea Party movement.
The Match
Complete Strangers, a Miracle Face Transplant, Two Lives Transformed
Susan Whitman Helfgot with William Novak
Simon & Schuster, $26
A Czech surgeon seeking a better life, the son of Holocaust survivors and a Vietnam vet — their lives intersect in a transforming face transplant.
Monk Eastman
The Gangster Who Became a War Hero
Neil Hanson
Alfred A. Knopf, $29.95
How a late-19th century thug rose to become a capable, effective crime boss and then, briefly, a hero in World War I before falling back into his dangerous, violent ways.
My Nuclear Family
A Coming-of-Age in America’s 21st Century Military
Christopher Brownfield
Alfred A. Knopf, $26. 95
This memoir recounts life on a nuclear sub, a one-year tour of duty in Baghdad and the ever-present ghost of American mariner John Paul Jones in the author’s life. “I realized,” he writes, looking back on his career, “that instead of joining the navy, the navy had actually adopted me.”
My Spiritual Journey
Dalai Lama with Sofia Stril-Rever
HarperOne, $25.99
Speeches, interviews and personal anecdotes are pieced together to create an intriguing portrait of the Tibetan spiritual leader.
My Teenage Werewolf
A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence
Lauren Kessler
Viking, $25.95
A mother-daughter relationship is examined at a critical moment: as the author’s daughter enters adolescence and wants to make choices on her own.
The Noël Coward Reader
Edited by Barry Day
Alfred A. Knopf, $39.95
A collection of writings — reminiscences, light verse, lyrics and essays — by the English playwright and composer, all delivered with his trademark sophistication and wit.
Obama’s Wars
Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, $30
Exhaustive reporting by Woodward has resulted in another commanding presidential chronicle that provides key insights into the first year of Obama’s presidency.
Possessed
The Life of Joan Crawford
Donald Spoto
William Morrow, $25.99
A portrait of the legendary film star goes behind the “Mommie Dearest” caricature and explores her early years in Texas, her four marriages, battles with the studio system and longtime relationship with Clark Gable.
Present at the Creation
The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider
Amir D. Aczel
Crown, $25.99
The story behind the Large Hadron Collider, one of the most powerful machines ever built — a project of the European Organization for Nuclear Energy to simulate the first moments of creation in a tunnel in the French countryside.
Profiles in Leadership
Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness
Edited by Walter Isaacson
W.W. Norton, $26.95
An acclaimed biographer presents essays by various historians — including Sean Wilentz, Robert Dallek and Frances FitzGerald — on the virtues of George Washington, J.P. Morgan, RFK and more.
The Promise
President Obama, Year One
Jonathan Alter
Simon & Schuster, $28
Alter’s book offers a deeply reported, soberly appraised account of President Obama’s tumultuous early months in office.
A Renegade History of the United States
Thaddeus Russell
Free Press, $27
The author finds examples of American freedom not in the story of traditional icons, like Washington or Jefferson, but in the worlds of brothels, saloons and gambling halls.
Robert Morris
Financier of the American Revolution
Charles Rappleye
Simon & Schuster, $30
Robert Morris has been largely forgotten in American history, writes Charles Rappleye, who shows Morris’ crucial role as a brilliant merchant and banker who financed the early American republic into the 1790s.
The Secret History of MI-6
1909-1949
Keith Jeffery
Penguin Press, $39.95
Thanks to secret documentation employed the author, this authorized history of Britain’s 100-year-old Secret Intelligence Service provides a fuller portrait of its epic struggles and growing relationship with the CIA.
The Sixties
Diaries: 1960-1969
Christopher Isherwood
Harper, $39.99
The latest installment of Isherwood’s diary opens with his 56th birthday, in Southern California sunshine, and traces his devotion to his Indian guru and his intimate relationship with painter Don Bachardy.
Spoken From the Heart
Laura Bush
Scribner, $30
Open and deeply felt, the former First Lady reviews her White House years and gives a genuinely memorable portrait of her marriage to former president George W. Bush.
Steve McQueen
The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon
Marshall Terrill
Triumph, $25.95
The author of a 1993 bestselling Steve McQueen biography returns with a new look at the star’s life that more carefully examines the man behind the McQueen Mystique.
They Call Me Baba Booey
Gary Dell’Abate with Chad Millman
Spiegel & Grau, $25
How a 1970s childhood growing up on Long Island prepared the sidekick-producer of “The Howard Stern Show” for daily on-air humiliations.
Three Armies on the Somme
The First Battle of the Twentieth Century
William Philpott
Alfred A. Knopf, $35
The Battle of the Somme in 1916 was not a futile, pointless battle during World War I, the author argues, but a crucible in which critical lessons were learned about operations, strategies and the legend of German invincibility.
A Ticket to the Circus
Norris Church Mailer
Random House, $26
A memoir-meditation on men and women and what it was like to be married to Norman Mailer. (Church, who had cancer, died in November at the age of 61.)
Unbroken
A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand
Random House, $27
In the life of Louie Zamperini, a World War II bombardier, prisoner of war and Olympian, the bestselling author of “Seabiscuit” has discovered a powerful story of survival and resilience in the face of incredible hardships.
Washington
A Life
Ron Chernow
The Penguin Press, $40
The author displays a phenomenal breadth of knowledge about his subject in this smart, tenaciously researched volume.
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
Random House, $30
A lyrical account of the decades-long exodus of African Americans from the South and the flight’s promises and disillusions.
White House Diary
Jimmy Carter
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30
Carter’s diary of his time in office represents a substantial contribution to an understanding of his one-term presidency.
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