Are you participating in this year’s Massachusetts Center for the Book 2023 Reading Challenge? If you haven’t been, it’s not too late! Every month offers new prompts to broaden your reading horizons, and you can submit your entries for a previous month even if that month has already happened! May’s prompt is “A book of nonfiction on a subject new to you,” which might be one of the broadest prompts I’ve ever encountered! Everyone has a different knowledge base, so titles that might fit that prompt me might not for you, but the good news is, there is no shortage of interesting nonfiction books to discover! Check out some of these new nonfiction titles that might fit the prompt for you, and let us know what new things you learn about this month!
A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND by Timothy Egan. The Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author details the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to the height of its power in the 1920s and how one brutalized woman’s testimony diminished it. Did you know how powerful the Klan was in the 1920s? I had no idea, and this book is a fascinating mix of historical commentary and true crime story.
POVERTY, BY AMERICA by Matthew Desmond. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted examines the ways in which affluent Americans keep poor people poor. Poverty and economic privilege are some of the hardest things to talk and think about, and this book does a fabulous job of illustrating some realities of American society that you probably never considered, as well as suggesting some solutions.
I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy. The actress and filmmaker describes her eating disorders and difficult relationship with her mother. I was wholly unaware of Nickelodeon child star McCurdy before she rocketed up the bestseller list, but this memoir, told with refreshing candor and dark humor, makes you want to know more.
THE LIE ABOUT THE TRUCK: SURVIVOR, REALITY TV, AND THE ENDLESS GAZE by Sallie Tisdale. In a world of fake news and rampant conspiracy theories, the nature of truth has increasingly blurry borders. In this clever and timely cultural commentary, award-winning author Sallie Tisdale tackles this issue by framing it in a familiar way—reality TV, particularly the long-running CBS show Survivor. As a longtime reality TV watcher, I had no idea how reflective of our current cultural moment reality TV really is.
AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: THE GREAT WAR, A VIOLENT PEACE, AND DEMOCRACY’S FORGOTTEN CRISIS, by Adam Hochschild. From award-winning, New York Times best-selling historian Adam Hochschild, a fast-paced, revelatory new account of a pivotal but neglected period in American history: World War I and its stormy aftermath, when bloodshed and repression on the home front nearly doomed American democracy. I didn’t know much about World War I, and how it shaped so much of the century that was to come.
All these titles, and so many more, can be found in the SAILS network and accessed with your library card. And if you still aren’t sure what to read that’s new to you, we have so many suggestions for you! Just ask!
