Here are our reading groups’ favorite nonfiction books of 2020 based on our survey results.
999
Heather Dune Macadam
From Heather Dune Macadam, the untold story of the 999 young, unmarried Jewish women who were tricked on March 25, 1942 into boarding the train that became the first official transport to Auschwitz. Timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and drawing on extensive interviews…
BECOMING
Michelle Obama
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African…
YALE NEEDS WOMEN
Anne Gardiner Perkins
In the summer of 1969, Yale University, the Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating “one thousand male leaders” each year finally decided to open its doors to the nation’s top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women’s equality in education. Or was it? The experience…
MOTHERHOOD SO WHITE
Nefertiti Austin
When Nefertiti Austin, a single African American woman, decided she wanted to adopt a Black baby boy out of the foster-care system, she was unprepared for the fact that there is no place for Black women in the “mommy wars.” Austin set off on her path without the ability to…
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.…
THE HELLO GIRLS
Elizabeth Cobbs
In 1918, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France at General Pershing’s explicit request. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. While suffragettes picketed the White House and President Wilson struggled to persuade a segregationist Congress to give women of all races the vote,…
THINGS WE DIDN'T TALK ABOUT WHEN I WAS A GIRL
Jeannie Vanasco
Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. She startles awake, saying his name. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides―after fourteen years of silence―to reach…
GOODBYE, MY HAVANA
Anna Veltfort
Set against a backdrop of world-changing events during the headiest years of the Cuban Revolution, Goodbye, My Havana follows Anna Veltfort’s young alter ego Connie as her once relatively privileged life among a community of anti-imperialist expatriates turns to progressive disillusionment and heartbreak. The consolidation of Castro's position brings violence, cruelty,…
HERE WE ARE
Aarti Namdev Shahani
A heartfelt memoir about the immigrant experience from NPR correspondent Aarti Shahani, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at one of Manhattan's most elite prep schools, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug…
HIGH ACHIEVER
Tiffany Jenkins
An up-close portrait of the mind of an addict and a life unraveled by narcotics—a memoir of captivating urgency and surprising humor that puts a human face on the opioid crisis. When word got out that Tiffany Jenkins was withdrawing from opiates on the floor of a jail cell, people in…