Culture
🥇 01
HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION
🖋️ Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
🏢 Grand Central/Melcher Media
The libretto of the Grammy-, Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, annotated by its creator, along with backstage photos,interviews and a production history.
🥈 02
BORN A CRIME
🖋️ Trevor Noah
🏢 Spiegel & Grau
A memoir about growing up in South Africa by the comedian, now the host of “The Daily Show,” whose parents were in an illegal (under apartheid) interracial relationship.
🥉 03
THE DAILY SHOW (THE BOOK)
🖋️ Chris Smith
🏢 Grand Central
An oral history of the show, based on extensive interviews with Jon Stewart and others.
04
THE CASE OF BEASTS
🖋️ Mark Salisbury
🏢 HarperDesign
Filmmaking secrets, photography and artwork from “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” written by J. K. Rowling.
05
HUMANS OF NEW YORK: STORIES
🖋️ Brandon Stanton
🏢 St. Martin's
Photographs and interviews from the creator of the blog and the book “Humans of New York.”
06
SAPIENS
🖋️ Yuval Noah Harari
🏢 Harper
How Homo sapiens became Earth’s dominant species.
07
HUMANS OF NEW YORK
🖋️ Brandon Stanton
🏢 St. Martin's
Four hundred color photos of New Yorkers, with brief commentary by the author.
08
AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE
🖋️ Sarah Bakewell
🏢 Other Press
An account of the birth of one of the 20th century's major intellectual movements and the revolutionary thinkers who shaped it: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and others.
09
SPQR
🖋️ Mary Beard
🏢 Liveright
A concise history of ancient Rome.
10
SPEAKING AMERICAN
🖋️ Josh Katz
🏢 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The creator of The New York Times dialect quiz provides a guide to how words are pronounced in different parts of the country.