Here are our reading groups’ favorite nonfiction books of 2018 based on our survey results.
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…
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…
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…
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…
FLY GIRLS
Keith O'Brien
The untold story of five women who fought to compete against men in the high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s—and won Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. While male pilots were lauded as heroes, the few women who…
THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS
Michael Finkel
A National Geographic Best Book of the Year National Bestseller Many people dream of escaping modern life. Most will never act on it—but in 1986, twenty-year-old Christopher Knight did just that when he left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods. He would not have a conversation…
I FOUND MY TRIBE
Ruth Fitzmaurice
Ruth’s tribe are her lively children and her filmmaker and author husband Simon Fitzmaurice who has ALS and can only communicate with his eyes. Ruth’s other "tribe" are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and regularly throw themselves into the freezing cold water, just for…
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…
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…
EVERYTHING IS HORRIBLE AND WONDERFUL
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
As Seen on Late Night with Seth Meyers One phone call. That’s all it took to change Stephanie Wittels Wachs’s life forever… Her younger brother, Harris, a star in the comedy world known for his work on shows like Parks and Recreation, had died of a heroin overdose. How do…