Nonfiction Holiday Gift Guide
This week Alice and Kim talk holiday gifts for the nonfiction book lover in your life.
This episode is sponsored by Book Riot’s Read Harder Journal, and Book Riot Insiders.
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Nonfiction in the News
National Book Award goes to Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House!
Holiday Gift Guide
Q: I am looking for a book for my grandpa for the holidays on Sociology or Ethics. He is a former Criminology Professor and so hard to buy for.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
Q: My partner is a triathlete and loves to read books about or from cyclists and triathletes. There is not that many of them so he is running out of reading material, and I’m running out of ideas for gifts. Could you recommend good nonfiction on sport or by sportspeople? I think what he enjoys is reading about personal achievements.
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game by Selena Roberts
C.C. Pyle’s Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America by Geoff Williams
Q: I am looking for a book for my dad. And that is what I want – a good, solid dad book (frontlist) recommendation. Think The Pioneers by David McCullough or Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. My dad is in his 80s and fairly conservative.
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman
The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel
American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley
Q: I find a lot of the non-fiction I read is fairly heavy. Recent reads I’ve enjoyed are Invisible Women, Prisoners of Geography and Say Nothing, and although I’ve loved them all, all the war and death and sexism is hard going. So, I’d like your favourite happy, uplifting non-fiction on any topic to read over the holiday season!
Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House by Alyssa Mastromonaco
From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein
The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir by Samantha Power
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
The Wonder Trail: True Stories from Los Angeles to the End of the World by Steve Hely
Reading Now
KIM: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
ALICE: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
CONCLUSION
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