Here are our reading groups’ favorite nonfiction books of 2017 based on our survey results.
HILLBILLY ELEGY
J.D. Vance
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly…
CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT?
Roz Chast
Through words and illustrations, with evident pain and remarkable humor, Roz Chast revisits the struggle she went through with her aging parents as their physical and mental abilities gradually declined and they eventually became unable to care for themselves.
THE RADIUM GIRLS
Kate Moore
The incredible true story of the women who fought America’s undark danger. The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright…
THE BOYS IN THE BOAT
Daniel James Brown
The #1 New York Times–bestselling story about American Olympic triumph in Nazi Germany For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from…
BEING MORTAL
Atul Gawande
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should. Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own…
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
David Grann
At the end of the 19th century, the Osage Indians were driven onto a presumed worthless expanse of land in northeastern Oklahoma. But their territory turned out to be atop one of the largest oil deposits in the United States; to obtain that oil, prospectors were required to pay the…
EVICTED
Matthew Desmond
Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction In Evicted, Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of…
THE GLASS CASTLE
Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when…
SHADOW WARRIORS OF WORLD WAR II
Gordon Thomas
“I hate wars and violence, but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave a proud good-bye and then knit them balaclavas.” —Nancy Wake, SOE agent “I discovered how easy it was to make highly trained, professionally closemouthed patriots give away their secrets in bed.”…
LAB GIRL
Hope Jahren
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil.…