Here are our reading groups’ favorite nonfiction books of 2023 based on our survey results.
REMEMBER
Lisa Genova
A fascinating exploration of the intricacies of how we remember, why we forget, and what we can do to protect our memories, from the Harvard-trained neuroscientist and bestselling author of Still Alice. In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve…
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…
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…
84, CHARING CROSS ROAD
Helene Hanff
This charming classic love story, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff—at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City—and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they…
THIS TIME NEXT YEAR WE'LL BE LAUGHING
Jacqueline Winspear
The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series offers a deeply personal memoir of her Kentish childhood and her family’s resilience in the face of war and privation. After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys…
A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE
Irvin D. Yalom
A year-long journey by the renowned psychiatrist and his writer wife after her terminal diagnosis, as they reflect on how to love and live without regret. Internationally acclaimed psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom devoted his career to counseling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the…
AFTER THE ECLIPSE
Sarah Perry
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home…
ALL ABOUT LOVE
bell hooks
The acclaimed first volume in her "love song to the nation" “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet . . . we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she…
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…
CASTE
Isabel Wilkerson
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight…
EDUCATED
Tara Westover
One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she…
THE KISSING BUG
Daisy Hernández
Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases. Even into her thirties, she only knew…
THE TALK
Darrin Bell
Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Bell…
THREE ORDINARY GIRLS
Tim Brady
Told for the very first time, the astonishing true story of three fearless female resisters during WWII whose youth and innocence belied their extraordinary daring in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. It also made them the underground's most invaluable commodity. Recruited as teenagers, Hannie Schaft, and Dutch sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen…
WALK THROUGH FIRE
Yasmine S. Ali
The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 – the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to the formation of FEMA. Coinciding with the 45th anniversary of the event, WALK THROUGH FIRE is a tribute to the first responders, as well as an…
WILD
Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from…