Powered by a book like {foo}
Recommendations based on Bright Dead Thingsby Ada Limon
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Citizen: An American Lyric
by Claudia Rankine
Poetic exploration of racial injustice, highlighting the everyday experiences of racism.
A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting ... (Goodreads)
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A letter to his son, exploring the realities of racism in America.
“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American ... (Goodreads)
No Matter the Wreckage
by Sarah Kay
Poems exploring the power of language and the human experience.
Top-selling poet Sarah Kay releases her debut collection of work from the first decade of her career. Following the success of her breakout poem, "B", No Matter the Wreckage presents readers with new ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Argonauts
by Maggie Nelson
A personal exploration of gender, sexuality, and love, weaving together memoir, criticism, and philosophy.
An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, ... (Goodreads)
Humans of New York: Stories
by Brandon Stanton
A collection of poignant and inspiring stories of individuals living in New York City.
The #1, New York Times, Bestseller! With over 500 vibrant, full-color photos,, Humans of New York: Stories, is an insightful and inspiring collection of portraits of the lives of New Yorkers. Humans ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
Exploring the cultural divide between the Hmong people and the medical establishment.
Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, ... (Goodreads)
The Liars' Club
by Mary Karr
Memoir of a turbulent childhood in East Texas, exploring the power of love and family.
The book tells the story of Karr's troubled childhood in a small Texas town in the early 1960s. Using a non-linear story line, Karr describes the troubles of growing up in a family and town where ... (Wikipedia)
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
by Andrew Solomon
Exhaustive exploration of depression, its causes, and its effects on individuals and society.
With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, award-winning author Andrew Solomon takes the reader on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. ... (Goodreads)
All About Love: New Visions
by bell hooks
A guide to understanding the power of love and changing perceptions of love in modern society.
All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of ... (Goodreads)
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
by Cheryl Strayed
Collection of heartfelt advice from a wise and compassionate storyteller.
Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills - and it can be great: you've had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the ... (Goodreads)
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
by Esmé Weijun Wang
A collection of essays exploring the author's experiences with mental illness and the societal stigma surrounding it.
An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. ... (Goodreads)
H is for Hawk
by Helen Macdonald
A journey of grief and healing, told through the eyes of a goshawk.
Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator. When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly ... (Goodreads)
A Thousand Mornings
by Mary Oliver
An exploration of nature, beauty and gratitude through lyrical poetry.
In A Thousand Mornings , Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. ... (Goodreads)
Unfamiliar Fishes
by Sarah Vowell
A humorous and insightful look at the history of Hawaii and its annexation by the United States.
Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history, when we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self- government. In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 ... (Goodreads)
The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
Reflection on the plight of African Americans in a candid and deeply moving essay.
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James ... (Goodreads)
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
by Priya Parker
A guide to creating meaningful gatherings, from dinner parties to conferences, that foster connection and purpose.
A transformative exploration of the power, purpose, and benefits of gatherings in our lives: at work, at school, at home and beyond. Every day we find ourselves in gatherings, Priya Parker says in ... (Goodreads)
The Empathy Exams
by Leslie Jamison
A collection of essays exploring empathy, pain, and human connection through personal experiences and cultural analysis.
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection; winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was ... (Goodreads)
Upstream: Selected Essays
by Mary Oliver
A collection of essays on the beauty of nature, and the importance of a mindful life.
Comprising a selection of essays, Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing. As she contemplates the ... (Goodreads)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion
Collection of essays exploring the cultural landscape of 1960s America.
The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of ... (Goodreads)
Autobiography of a Face
by Lucy Grealy
A memoir about facing physical deformity and the psychological effects of being ostracized.
The prologue introduces the reader to Lucy's struggle with self-image. She describes her work at the stable Diamond D, which was her first job after finishing chemotherapy. Through this first ... (Wikipedia)
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
by Sherman Alexie
A memoir about the troubled relationship between a Spokane Indian father and his son.
A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, loss, and forgiveness from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award-winning author of, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time ... (Barnes & Noble)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
by Thomas C. Foster
A guide to exploring literature’s hidden meanings and uncovering the underlying themes.
While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper meanings interwoven in these literary texts... How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those ... (Goodreads)
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
by Audre Lorde
Collection of essays and speeches exploring issues of race, gender, sexuality, and liberation.
A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde's literary and philosophical personae. These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's ... (Goodreads)
In the Dream House
by Carmen Maria Machado
A memoir exploring the author's abusive same-sex relationship, using various literary genres to convey the complexity of the experience.
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of, Her Body and Other Parties, In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a ... (Barnes & Noble)
M Train
by Patti Smith
A memoir of Patti Smith's travels, musings, and creative inspirations, from cafes in New York to graves in Paris.
M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose ... (Goodreads)
The Essential Rumi
by Rumi
Collection of the spiritual poet's works, exploring life, love, and the divine.
This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems. Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Body: A Guide for Occupants
by Bill Bryson
A fascinating tour of the human body, its functions, and its quirks, from head to toe.
In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything , Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to ... (Goodreads)
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois
An exploration of the African-American experience and the struggle for racial equality.
This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black ... (Goodreads)
Notes of a Native Son
by James Baldwin
A collection of essays exploring the complexities of race, identity, and society in America through the lens of Baldwin's personal experiences.
Since its original publication in 1955, this first nonfiction collection of essays by James Baldwin remains an American classic. His impassioned essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, ... (Goodreads)
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
by Barack Obama
A political memoir that explores Obama's vision for America and his hopes for the future of the country.
The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama's call for a new kind of politics—a politics that builds upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans. Lucid in his vision of America's ... (Goodreads)
