Paperback Nonfiction
🥇 01
THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE
🖋️ Bessel van der Kolk
🏢 Penguin
How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery.
🥈 02
ON TYRANNY
🖋️ Timothy Snyder
🏢 Crown
Twenty lessons from the 20th century about the course of tyranny.
🥉 03
THE BRITISH ARE COMING
🖋️ Rick Atkinson
🏢 Holt
The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist begins his Revolution Trilogy with events from 1775 to 1777.
04
A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
🖋️ James West Davidson
🏢 Yale University
An overview of key figures in our country’s history.
05
THE WAGER
🖋️ David Grann
🏢 Vintage
The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.
06
CULTISH
🖋️ Amanda Montell
🏢 Harper Perennial
The author of “The Age of Magical Overthinking” evaluates language techniques used by various groups to develop followers.
07
THE WIDE WIDE SEA
🖋️ Hampton Sides
🏢 Vintage
The author of “On Desperate Ground” depicts Captain James Cook’s final voyage and the controversies surrounding its legacy.
08
BORN A CRIME
🖋️ Trevor Noah
🏢 One World
A memoir about growing up biracial in apartheid South Africa by the former host of “The Daily Show.”
09
EDUCATED
🖋️ Tara Westover
🏢 Random House
The daughter of survivalists, who is kept out of school, educates herself enough to leave home for university.
10
THE GLASS CASTLE
🖋️ Jeannette Walls
🏢 Scribner
The author recalls how she and her siblings were constantly moved from one bleak place to another.
11
THE COLOR OF LAW
🖋️ Richard Rothstein
🏢 Liveright
A case for how the American government abetted racial segregation in metropolitan areas across the country.
12
OUTLIERS
🖋️ Malcolm Gladwell
🏢 Back Bay
Unexpected factors that explain why some people succeed, such as upbringing, timing and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
13
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
🖋️ Robin Wall Kimmerer
🏢 Milkweed Editions
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.
14
THINKING, FAST AND SLOW
🖋️ Daniel Kahneman
🏢 Farrar, Straus and Giroux
When we can and cannot trust our intuitions in making business and personal decisions.
15
JUST MERCY
🖋️ Bryan Stevenson
🏢 One World
A civil rights lawyer and MacArthur grant recipient’s memoir of his decades of work to free innocent people condemned to death.