The following is a list of possible books you could read for your independent novel study. Below the title and author is a summary of
the book taken from Amazon.com. You will read the novel and complete various analysis activities for it throughout the semester.
We will also have days dedicated to sharing what you’ve learned from the novel. Select a novel with a topic or concept that interests
you, but if you have a different novel in mind, you can submit a proposal to Ms. Harkness for approval (please see Ms. Harkness after
class for this form). It is your responsibility to find a copy of the novel you select. You can buy the novel or get copies from libraries,
but be sure to keep track of when it needs to be renewed to avoid late fees.
Below, the titles are put into general sections though each text could possibly fall under multiple categories.
Collections of Varied Stories
Freakanomics: A Rogue Economists Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How
much do parents really matter?
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He
studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn
conventional wisdom on its head.
Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and
journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the
Ku Klux Klan, and much more.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get
what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.
SuperFreakanomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner

Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics—the long awaited followup to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies SuperFreakonomics
promises to once again challenge our view of the way the world really works.
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best
and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are
from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the
way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math,
and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more
than a pebble and a sling-and ever since, the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and
giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won.
Or should he?
In DAVID AND GOLIATH, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new
interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, suffer from a disability, lose a parent, attend a mediocre
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
school, or endure any number of other apparent setbacks.
In the tradition of Gladwell's previous bestsellers-The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw-DAVID AND
GOLIATH draws upon history, psychology and powerful story-telling to reshape the way we think of the world around us.
Family Relationships
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Healthy Madness by Pete Earley

Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only
when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally
ill people who break a law.
This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer
confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors" between hospital and jail.
With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better
than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and into that of a father and award-winning
journalist trying to fight for a better way.
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that
haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward
recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and
honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the
streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the
hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a
tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and
refused to give up on Nic.
Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems
beyond help.
School
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol

For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to
Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most
important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf
between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and
understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In
Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the
reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools.
The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts

A reissue of the book that first examined the future of reading and literature in the electronic age, now with a new
introduction and Afterword
In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven
Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the
experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately
shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape or decipher its words in electronic
form on a laptop screen? Can the world created by Henry James exist in an era defined by the work of Bill Gates? Are books
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
as we know them--volumes printed in ink on paper, with pages to be turned as the reading of each page is completed-dead?
At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a bold challenge to the information technologies of today
and tomorrow, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and the future of books.
The Shame of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol

Since the early 1980s, when the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education,
segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot
method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing
takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and
robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.
Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black
community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly
challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic
challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.
Literacy and American Lives by Deborah Brantd

Literacy in American Lives traces the changing conditions of literacy learning over the past century as they were felt in the
lives of ordinary Americans born between 1895 and 1985. The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy
have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have
responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life
histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the
twenty-first century.
Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol

Amazing Grace is Jonathan Kozol’s classic book on life and death in the South Bronx—the poorest urban neighborhood of
the United States. He brings us into overcrowded schools, dysfunctional hospitals, and rat-infested homes where families
have been ravaged by depression and anxiety, drug-related violence, and the spread of AIDS. But he also introduces us to
devoted and unselfish teachers, dedicated ministers, and—at the heart and center of the book—courageous and delightful
children. The children we come to meet through the friendships they have formed with Jonathan defy the stereotypes of
urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous, and often religiously devout, they speak with
eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. Amidst all of the
despair, it is the very young whose luminous capacity for love and transcendent sense of faith in human decency give
reason for hope.
Sports
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in
the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing
establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s
fortunes:
Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became
an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang
breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his
jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury
to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season by Chris Ballard

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on
their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen
emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in modern Illinois history to make the state final, a
distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play a
dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their
lives forever.
In a gripping, cinematic narrative, Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard tells the story of the team and its coach, Lynn
Sweet, a hippie, dreamer and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966, bringing progressive ideas to a town stuck in the
Eisenhower era. Beloved by students but not administration, Sweet reluctantly took over a rag-tag team, intent on teaching
the boys as much about life as baseball. Inspired by Sweet's unconventional methods and led by fiery star Steve Shartzer
and spindly curveball artist John Heneberry, the undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable
postseason run that infuriated rival coaches and buoyed an entire
town.
Beginning with Sweet's arrival, Ballard takes readers on a journey back to the Ironmen's historic season and then on to the
present day, returning to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on their lives' trajectories--and the men
they've become because of it.
Engaging and poignant, One Shot at Forever is a testament to the power of high school sports to shape the lives of those
who play them, and it reminds us that there are few bonds more sacred than that among a
coach, a team, and a town.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

An epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt?
Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of
miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher
McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sunbaked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their
bodies to the limit, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America’s best ultra-runners against the
tribe. McDougall’s incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed
all of us, were born to run.
Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life
general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not
only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written
on business" (Weekly Standard).
"I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional
baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves
into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good
reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the
poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?"
With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's
Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts,
perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits
of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—
collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall
Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.
What these geek numbers show—no, prove—is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally
flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has
been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General
Manager of the Oakland Athletics.
Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book
records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster
ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written
off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why
the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always
supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?
Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

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 the American
West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the
University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great
Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional
heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered selfregard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a
once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable
achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.
Math, Science, and Health
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken
without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio
vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains
virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting
story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter
consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of Great Mathematicians by Amir D. Aczel

From Archimedes' eureka moment to Alexander Grothendieck's seclusion in the Pyrenees, bestselling author Amir Aczel
selects the most compelling stories in the history of mathematics, creating a colorful narrative that explores the quirky
personalities behind some of the most groundbreaking, enduring theorems.
This is not your dry “college textbook” account of mathematical history; it bristles with tales of duels, battlefield heroism,
flamboyant arrogance, pranks, secret societies, imprisonment, feuds, theft, and some very costly errors of judgment.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
(Clearly, genius doesn't guarantee street smarts.) Ultimately, readers will come away entertained, and with a newfound
appreciation of the tenacity, complexity, eccentricity, and brilliance of the mathematical genius.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand
years, cadavers―some willingly, some unwittingly―have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest
undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the
engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
Complications by Atul Gwande

In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an
unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. Complications lays bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is-uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human.
A Nurse’s Story: Life, Death, and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit by Talda Shalof

The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was
known as “Laura’s Line.” They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also caring and incredibly
committed to their jobs. Laura set the tone with her quick remarks. Frances, from Newfoundland, was famous for her
improvised recipes. Justine, the union rep, wore t-shirts emblazoned with defiant slogans, like “Nurses Care But It’s Not in
the Budget.” Shalof was the one who had been to university. The others accused her of being “sooo sensitive.”
They depended upon one another. Working in the ICU was both emotionally grueling and physically exhausting. Many
patients, quite simply, were dying, and the staff strove mightily to prolong their lives. With their skill, dedication, and the
resources of modern science, they sometimes were almost too successful. Doctors and nurses alike wondered if what they
did for terminally-ill patients was not, in some cases, too extreme. A number of patients were admitted when it was too late
even for heroic measures. A boy struck down by a cerebral aneurysm in the middle of a little-league hockey game. A
woman rescued – too late – from a burning house. It all took its toll on the staff.
And yet, on good days, they thrived on what they did. Shalof describes a colleague who is managing a “crashing” patient: “I
looked at her. Nicky was flushed with excitement. She was doing five different things at the same time, planning ahead for
another five. She was totally focused, in her element, in control, completely at home with the chaos. There was a huge
smile on her face. Nurses like to fix things. If they can.”
Shalof, a veteran ICU nurse, reveals what it is really like to work behind the closed hospital curtains. The drama, the
sardonic humour, the grinding workload, the cheerful camaraderie, the big issues and the small, all are brought vividly to
life in this remarkable book.
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates
thought, feeling, and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially lifesaving operation when
it all goes wrong?
In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony.
Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions,
often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.
If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping,
brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of
operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black
humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital.
Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen
to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He
masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that
satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates
how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants,
we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink?• Why will sighted
people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on
ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why
can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the
moment we join it? In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the
foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our
satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and
behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the
future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and
sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to
become.
History
Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great
untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and
western cities, in search of a better life.
Sundown Town: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen

Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial
injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United
States.
In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher
Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American
residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an
unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located
outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian
communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the
history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American
race relations.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond
convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs
and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major
advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came
to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered
by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were
almost no clues.
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers,
he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment,
yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

Erik Larson intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his
victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with
all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
The City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America by Donald Miller

The epic of Chicago is the story of the emergence of modern America. Here, witness Chicago's growth from a desolate furtrading post in the 1830s to one of the world's most explosively alive cities by 1900.
Donald Miller's powerful narrative embraces it all: Chicago's wild beginnings, its reckless growth, its natural calamities
(especially the Great Fire of 1871), its raucous politics, its empire-building businessmen, its world-transforming
architecture, its rich mix of cultures, its community of young writers and journalists, and its staggering engineering
projects—which included the reversal of the Chicago River and raising the entire city from prairie mud to save it from
devastating cholera epidemics. The saga of Chicago's unresolved struggle between order and freedom, growth and control,
capitalism and community, remains instructive for our time, as we seek ways to build and maintain cities that retain their
humanity without losing their energy. City of the Century throbs with the pulse of the great city it brilliantly brings to life.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley

With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the civil rights
movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the 1960s. As voices of
protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one voice sounded more urgently, more passionately,
than the rest. Malcolm X—once called the most dangerous man in America—challenged the world to listen and learn the
truth as he experienced it. And his enduring message is as relevant today as when he first delivered it.
In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand,
and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement to veteran
writer and journalist Alex Haley . In a unique collaboration, Haley worked with Malcolm X for nearly two years, interviewing,
listening to, and understanding the most controversial leader of his time.
Raised in Lansing, Michigan, Malcolm Little journeyed on a road to fame as astonishing as it was unpredictable. Drifting
from childhood poverty to petty crime, Malcolm found himself in jail. It was there that he came into contact with the
teachings of a little-known Black Muslim leader renamed Elijah Muhammad. The newly renamed Malcolm X devoted
himself body and soul to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the world of Islam, becoming the Nation’s foremost
spokesman. When his conscience forced him to break with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm founded the Organization of AfroAmerican Unity to reach African Americans across the country with an inspiring message of pride, power, and selfdetermination.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
The Autobiography of Malcolm X defines American culture and the African American struggle for social and economic
equality that has now become a battle for survival. Malcolm’s fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the
American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives
extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II by Gregory Freeman

In 1944 the OSS set out to recover more than 500 downed airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Classified for
over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is
now being told for the first time.
Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Escape of the Pacific War by John D. Lukacs

On April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convicts executed a daring escape from one of Japan's
most notorious prison camps. Called the "greatest story of the war in the Pacific" by the War Department in 1944, the full
account has never been told until now. A product of years of in-depth research, John D. Lukacs's gripping description of the
escape brings this remarkable tale to life, so a new generation can admire the resourcefulness and patriotism of the men
who fought in the Pacific.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass

Former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the
abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued
his early years, yet through sheer force of character he was able to overcome these obstacles to become a leading
spokesman for his people.
In this, the first and most frequently read of his three autobiographies, Douglass provides graphic descriptions of his
childhood and horrifying experiences as a slave as well as a harrowing record of his dramatic escape to the North and
eventual freedom.
Published in 1845 to quell doubts about his origins — since few slaves of that period could write — the Narrative is admired
today for its extraordinary passion, sensitive and vivid descriptions and storytelling power. It belongs in the library of
anyone interested in African-American history and the life of one of the country's most courageous and influential
champions of civil rights
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

"The Worst Hard Time is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it is also, as Tim Egan has told it, a
riveting tale of bumptious charlatans, conmen, and tricksters, environmental arrogance and hubris, political chicanery, and
a ruinous ignorance of nature's ways. Egan has reached across the generations and brought us the people who played out
the drama in this devastated land, and uses their voices to tell the story as well as it could ever be told." — Marq de Villiers,
author of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen
before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York
Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of
the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp
sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black
blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survived—those who,
now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the grave—Egan tells a story of endurance and heroism
against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
As only great history can, Egan's book captures the very voice of the times: its grit, pathos, and abiding courage. Combining
the human drama of Isaac's Storm with the sweep of The American People in the Great Depression, The Worst Hard Time is
a lasting and important work of American history.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running,
discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete
became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air
Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of
Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial
even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope,
resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire
of his will.
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than
New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not appear on any map. Thousands of civilians, many of them
young women from small towns across the U.S., were recruited to this secret city, enticed by the promise of solid wages
and war-ending work. What were they actually doing there? Very few knew. The purpose of this mysterious government
project was kept a secret from the outside world and from the majority of the residents themselves. Some wondered why,
despite the constant work and round-the-clock activity in this makeshift town, did no tangible product of any kind ever
seem to leave its guarded gates? The women who kept this town running would find out at the end of the war, when Oak
Ridge’s secret was revealed and changed the world forever.
Drawing from the voices and experiences of the women who lived and worked in Oak Ridge, The Girls of Atomic City rescues
a remarkable, forgotten chapter of World War II from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through
these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage. “A phenomenal story,” and Publishers
Weekly called it an “intimate and revealing glimpse into one of the most important scientific developments in history.”
Society and Politics
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Survive or Fail by Jared Diamond

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change,
the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization
Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors
in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel,
Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of
fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing
American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems
face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in
innovative ways. Despite our own society’s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning
signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our
time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?
No Impact Man by Colin Beaven

What does it really take to live eco-effectively? For one year, Colin Beavan swore off plastic and toxins, turned off his
electricity, went organic, became a bicycle nut, and tried to save the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging
his young daughter and his Prada-wearing wife along for the ride. Together they attempted to make zero impact on the
environment while living right in the heart of Manhattan, and this is the sensational, funny, and consciousness-raising story
of how they did it. With No Impact Man, Beavan found that no-impact living is worthwhile--and richer, fuller, and more
satisfying in the bargain.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler

“Nobody who works hard should be poor in America,” writes Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler. Clear-headed, rigorous,
and compassionate, he journeys deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm laborers and
sweat-shop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry
wages. They are known as the working poor.
They perform labor essential to America’s comfort. They are white and black, Latino and Asian--men and women in small
towns and city slums trapped near the poverty line, where the margins are so tight that even minor setbacks can cause
devastating chain reactions. Shipler shows how liberals and conservatives are both partly right–that practically every life
story contains failure by both the society and the individual. Braced by hard fact and personal testimony, he unravels the
forces that confine people in the quagmire of low wages. And unlike most works on poverty, this book also offers
compelling portraits of employers struggling against razor-thin profits and competition from abroad. With pointed
recommendations for change that challenge Republicans and Democrats alike, The Working Poor stands to make a
difference.
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu

The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had
any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past
and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has
been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound
wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.
Just War Against Terror by Jean Bethke Elshtain

Jean Bethke Elshtain advocates "just war" in times of crisis and mounts a reasoned attack against the anti-war contingent in
American intellectual life. Advocating an ethic of responsibility, Elshtain forces us to ask tough questions not only about the
nature of terrorism, but about ourselves. This paperback edition features a new introduction by the author, addressing the
Iraq war and other events in the Middle East.
In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry III

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic for Time magazine comes the tremendously controversial, yet highly
persuasive, argument that our devotion to the largely unexamined myth of egalitarianism lies at the heart of the ongoing
"dumbing of America."
Americans have always stubbornly clung to the myth of egalitarianism, of the supremacy of the individual average man.
But here, at long last, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic William A. Henry III takes on, and debunks, some basic,
fundamentally ingrained ideas: that everyone is pretty much alike (and should be); that self-fulfillment is more important
than objective achievement; that everyone has something significant to contribute; that all cultures offer something
equally worthwhile; that a truly just society would automatically produce equal success results across lines of race, class,
and gender; and that the common man is almost always right. Henry makes clear, in a book full of vivid examples and
unflinching opinions, that while these notions are seductively democratic they are also hopelessly wrong.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social
movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book
directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor,
legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By
targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system
functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the
NAACP, this book is a "call to action."
Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by
Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow,
now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
Coyotes by Ted Conover

The acclaimed author of Rolling Nowhere has taken another adventure, this time on the underground railway the operates
across America's southern border. To discover what becomes of Mexicans who desperately slip into the United States, Ted
Conniver walked across deserts, hid in orange orchards, waded through the Rio Grande, and cut life-threatening deals with
tough-guy traffickers in human sweat. This electrifying account is the harrowing vision of a way of life no outsider has ever
seen before.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American
prosperity.
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them.
She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the
ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home,
took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to
Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She
lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even
the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you
need at least two if you int to live indoors.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast
food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and
for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a
restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by 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. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the
Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone.
Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one
young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that
darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of
an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that
in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser

In 2001, Fast Food Nation was published to critical acclaim and became an international bestseller. Eric Schlosser’s exposé
revealed how the fast food industry has altered the landscape of America, widened the gap between rich and poor, fueled
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
an epidemic of obesity, and transformed food production throughout the world. The book changed the way millions of
people think about what they eat and helped to launch today’s food movement.
In a new afterword for this edition, Schlosser discusses the growing interest in local and organic food, the continued
exploitation of poor workers by the food industry, and the need to ensure that every American has access to good, healthy,
affordable food. Fast Food Nation is as relevant today as it was a decade ago. The book inspires readers to look beneath the
surface of our food system, consider its impact on society and, most of all, think for themselves.
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the
evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of
social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the
beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, selfconsciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

New York Times bestselling author of The Wordy Shipmates and contributor to NPR’s "This American Life" Sarah Vowell
embarks on a road trip to sites of political violence, from Washington DC to Alaska, to better understand our nation’s everevolving political system and history.
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of
humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American
political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.
From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling
of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty,
and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of
Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial.
The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue -- it is the disturbing and fascinating
story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and -the author's favorite -- historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see
how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives
of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenthcentury biblical sex cult.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering
thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But, as MIT
technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. As technology
ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our
lives on the digital terrain. Based on hundreds of interviews, it describes new unsettling relationships between friends,
lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy, and solitude.
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill

In his fifties, Michael Gates Gill had it all: a mansion in the suburbs, a wife and loving children, a six-figure salary, and an Ivy
League education. But in a few short years, he lost his job, got divorced, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. With no
money or health insurance, he was forced to get a job at Starbucks. Having gone from power lunches to scrubbing toilets,
from being served to serving, Michael was a true fish out of water.
But fate brings an unexpected teacher into his life who opens his eyes to what living well really looks like. The two seem to
have nothing in common: She is a young African American, the daughter of a drug addict; he is used to being the boss but
reports to her now. For the first time in his life he experiences being a member of a minority trying hard to survive in a
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
challenging new job. He learns the value of hard work and humility, as well as what it truly means to respect another
person.
Behind the scenes at one of America’s most intriguing businesses, an inspiring friendship is born, a family begins to heal,
and, thanks to his unlikely mentor, Michael Gill at last experiences a sense of self-worth and happiness he has never known
before.
Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us by Dan Agin

During the next thirty years, the American public will suffer from a rampage against reason by special interests in
government, commerce, and the faith industry, and the rampage has already begun. In Junk Science, Dan Agin offers a
response--a stinging condemnation of the egregious and constant warping of science for ideological gain.
In this provocative, wide-ranging, and hard-hitting book, Agin argues from the center that we will pay a heavy price for the
follies of people who consciously twist the public's understanding of the real world.
In an entertaining but frank tone, Agin separates fact from conveniently "scientific" fiction and exposes the data faking,
reality ignoring, fear mongering, and outright lying that contribute to intentionally manufactured public ignorance. Many
factions twist scientific data to maintain riches and power, and Agin outs them all in sections like these:
--"Buyer Beware" (genetically modified foods, aging, and tobacco companies)
--"Medical Follies" (chiropractics, health care, talk therapy)
--"Poison and Bombs in the Greenhouse" (pollution, warfare, global warming)
--"Religion, Embryos, and Cloning"
--"Genes, Behavior, and Race"
We already pay a heavy price for many groups' conscious manipulation of the public's understanding of science, and Junk
Science arms us with understanding, cutting through the fabric of lies and setting the record straight.
Culture
The Devil’s Highway by Luis Urrea

In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the
deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened
to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a
work proclaimed as a modern American classic.
Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John

Based on the adult bestseller, Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a
Difference, this young people's edition is a complex and inspirational story about the Fugees, a youth soccer team made up
of diverse refugees from around the world, and their formidable female coach, Luma Mufleh. Clarkston, Georgia, was a
typical southern town until it became a refugee resettlement center. The author explores how the community changed
with the influx of refugees and how the dedication of Lumah Mufleh and the entire Fugees soccer team inspired an entire
community.
Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks

What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to
eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages
readers to see how feminism can touch and change their lives—to see that feminism is for everybody.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Genocide of the Mind by MariJo Moore

After five centuries of Eurocentrism, many people have little idea that Native American tribes still exist, or which traditions
belong to what tribes. However over the past decade there has been a rising movement to accurately describe Native
cultures and histories. In particular, people have begun to explore the experience of urban Indians—individuals who live in
two worlds struggling to preserve traditional Native values within the context of an ever-changing modern society. In
Genocide of the Mind, the experience and determination of these people is recorded in a revealing and compelling
collection of essays that brings the Native American experience into the twenty-first century. Contributors include: Paula
Gunn Allen, Simon Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Maurice Kenny, as well as emerging writers from
different Indian nations.
Just Like Us: The Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by Helen Thorpe

Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. We meet
the girls on the eve of their senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all
four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. As the girls attempt to make it into college, they
discover that only the legal pair sees a clear path forward. Their friendships start to divide along lines of immigration status.
Then the political firestorm begins. A Mexican immigrant shoots and kills a police officer. The author happens to be married
to the Mayor of Denver, a businessman who made his fortune in the restaurant business. In a bizarre twist, the murderer
works at one of the Mayor’s restaurants—under a fake Social Security number. A local Congressman seizes upon the
murder as proof of all that is wrong with American society and Colorado becomes the place where national arguments over
immigration rage most fiercely. The rest of the girls’ lives play out against this backdrop of intense debate over whether
they have any right to live here.
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire

“Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban.” In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana—exiled from
his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro’s revolution. This stunning memoir is a vibrant and evocative
look at Latin America from a child’s unforgettable experience.
Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth—with its
lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas—becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla
named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire.
Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a
place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by
becoming a modern American man—even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.
Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament
to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

"I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday."
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced
and fought for her right to an education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at pointblank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan
to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest
nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father
who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents
who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.
I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality
is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in
the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with
hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw
away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little
luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even
the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely
accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex,
power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one
another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting,
carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible
to forget.
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to
tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent,
powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her
father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister
are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the
love and understanding of her family.
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was
ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree
that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter.
For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathSroom of a local pastor while
hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that
Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting
relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional
love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family s killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young
woman s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and
loss.
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch

In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi
minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's
war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's
background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will
endure as a chilling document of our time.
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian
aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of
any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was
eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition
of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.
Escape by Carolyn Jessop

The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s
courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.
When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man
thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of
Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS),
the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the
next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his
other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.
Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be
treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—
at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children
held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught,
her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get
her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20
to her name.
Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their
followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run
schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she
manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children
in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a
crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have
shaped her identity.
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

The emotional, incredible true story of Neil White, a man who discovers the secret to happiness, leading a fulfilling life, and
the importance of fatherhood in the most unlikely of places—the last leper colony in the continental United States. In the
words of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), White is “a splendid writer,”
and In the Sanctuary of Outcasts “a book that will endure.”
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Condensed version of the Nonfiction Novel List
Varied Stories
Freakanomics: A Rogue Economists Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
SuperFreakanomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
Family Relationships
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Healthy Madness by Pete Earley
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
School
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol
The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts
The Shame of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol
Literacy and American Lives by Deborah Brantd
Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol
Sports
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season by Chris Ballard
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
Math, Science, and Health
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of Great Mathematicians by Amir D. Aczel
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Complications by Atul Gwande
A Nurse’s Story: Life, Death, and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit by Talda Shalof
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
History
Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Sundown Town: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America by Donald Miller
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II by Gregory Freeman
Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Escape of the Pacific War by John D. Lukacs
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
Society and Politics
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Survive or Fail by Jared Diamond
No Impact Man by Colin Beaven
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu
Just War Against Terror by Jean Bethke Elshtain
In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry III
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West
Coyotes by Ted Conover
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill
Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us by Dan Agin
Culture
The Devil’s Highway by Luis Urrea
Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John
Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
Genocide of the Mind by MariJo Moore
Just Like Us: The Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by Helen Thorpe
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez
Escape by Carolyn Jessop
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
The following are possible titles to
use for your independent nonfiction
novel assignment. You will read this
book throughout the semester, so be
sure to select a text in which you
have interest.
Sports
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by
Laura Hillenbrand
One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an
Unlikely Coach, and a Magical
Baseball Season by Chris Ballard
Varied Stories
Freakanomics: A Rogue Economists
Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J.
Dubner
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe,
Superathletes, and the Greatest Race
the World Has Never Seen by
Christopher McDougall
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
SuperFreakanomics: Global Cooling,
Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide
Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J.
Dubner
Outliers: The Story of Success by
Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath: Underdogs,
Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell
Family Relationships
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through
America’s Mental Healthy Madness by
Pete Earley
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey
Through His Son’s Addiction by David
Sheff
School
Savage Inequalities: Children in
America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol
The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven
Birkerts
The Shame of a Nation by Jonathan
Kozol
Literacy and American Lives by
Deborah Brantd
Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol
Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and
Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936
Berlin Olympics by Daniel James
Brown
Math, Science, and Health
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of
Great Mathematicians by Amir D.
Aczel
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human
Cadavers by Mary Roach
Complications by Atul Gwande
A Nurse’s Story: Life, Death, and InBetween in an Intensive Care Unit by
Talda Shalof
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death,
and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye
View of the World by Michael Pollan
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel
Gilbert
History
Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story
of America’s Great Migration by
Isabel Wilkerson
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com
Sundown Town: A Hidden Dimension
of American Racism by James W.
Loewen
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of
Human Societies by Jared Diamond
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Devil in the White City: Murder,
Magic, and Madness at the Fair that
Changed America by Erik Larson
The City of the Century: The Epic of
Chicago and the Making of America
by Donald Miller
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by
Alex Haley
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story
of the Men Who Risked All for the
Greatest Rescue Mission of World
War II by Gregory Freeman
Escape from Davao: The Forgotten
Story of the Most Daring Prison
Escape of the Pacific War by John D.
Lukacs
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass: An American Slave by
Frederick Douglass
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold
Story of Those Who Survived the
Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy
Egan
Unbroken: A World War II Story of
Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold
Story of the Women Who Helped Win
World War II by Denise Kiernan
Society and Politics
Culture
Collapse: How Societies Choose to
Survive or Fail by Jared Diamond
The Devil’s Highway by Luis Urrea
No Impact Man by Colin Beaven
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
by David Shipler
No Future Without Forgiveness by
Desmond Tutu
Just War Against Terror by Jean
Bethke Elshtain
Outcasts United: An American Town,
a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s
Quest to Make a Difference by
Warren St. John
Feminism is for Everybody by bell
hooks
Genocide of the Mind by MariJo
Moore
In Defense of Elitism by William A.
Henry III
Just Like Us: The Story of Four
Mexican Girls Coming of Age in
America by Helen Thorpe
The New Jim Crow by Michelle
Alexander and Cornel West
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos
Eire
Coyotes by Ted Conover
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up
for Education and was Shot by the
Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By
in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Wild: From Lost to Found on the
Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
The Beauty Myth: How Images of
Beauty are Used Against Women by
Naomi Wolf
Assassination Vacation by Sarah
Vowell
Alone Together: Why We Expect More
from Technology and Less from Each
Other by Sherry Turkle
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son
of Privilege Learns to Live Like
Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill
Junk Science: How Politicians,
Corporations, and Other Hucksters
Betray Us by Dan Agin
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life,
Death, and Hope in a Mumbai
Undercity by Katherine Boo
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of
an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline
Yen Mah
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst
the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee
Ilibagiza
We Wish to Inform You that
Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our
Families: Stories from Rwanda by
Philip Gourevitch
Kabul Beauty School: An American
Woman Goes Behind the Veil by
Deborah Rodriguez
Escape by Carolyn Jessop
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a
Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine
Hong Kingston
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil
White
All summaries were taken from Amazon.com