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Recommendations based on Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Playersby Stefan Fatsis
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain
A humorous and unflinching account of life in restaurant kitchens, exploring the culture and camaraderie of the culinary world.
A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute ... (Goodreads)
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
Exploration of the modern food chain, examining the impact of food choices on our health and the environment.
What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire , how we answer it today, at ... (Goodreads)
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson
A humorous account of a man's attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail, reflecting on the beauty and history of the American wilderness.
The book starts with Bryson explaining his curiosity about the Appalachian Trail near his house. He and his old friend Stephen Katz start hiking the trail from Georgia in the South , and stumble in ... (Wikipedia)
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
by Michael Lewis
How an unconventional approach to baseball changed the competitive landscape.
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball , had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every ... (Goodreads)
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
by Eric Schlosser
An exploration of the industrial food system and its effects on U.S. society.
Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list ... (Goodreads)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
A captivating overview of the natural sciences, spanning the history of the universe.
In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory ... (Goodreads)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
Tracing the origins of human civilizations through the lens of geography, technology, and biology.
"Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years." Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: ... (Goodreads)
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
by David Sedaris
Humorous reflections on everyday life, navigating the absurdities of the human condition.
It's early autumn 1964. Two straight-A students head off to school, and when only one of them returns home Chesney Yelverton is coaxed from retirement and assigned to what proves to be the most ... (Goodreads)
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
by Chuck Klosterman
An exploration of life and death, featuring road trips to music-related death sites.
Building on the national bestselling success of, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, preeminent pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman unleashes his best book yet—the story of his cross-country tour of sites ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy
by Bill Simmons
A deep dive into the history and culture of the NBA, from the perspectives of a lifelong basketball fan.
There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA.* Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions ... (Goodreads)
The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Jon Ronson
An exploration of strange military experiments, exposing the hidden world of military intelligence.
From the bestselling author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry and So You've Been Publicly Shamed . In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within ... (Goodreads)
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
by Ben Mezrich
An inside account of a group of college students who won millions in Las Vegas casinos.
An exclusive blackjack club came up with a system to take the worldUs most sophisticated casinos for all they were worth. In two years, this ring of card savants earned more than three million ... (Goodreads)
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
by A.J. Jacobs
An exploration of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom, through an attempt to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.
Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica ... (Goodreads)
Naked
by David Sedaris
Collection of humorous essays exploring the absurdities of everyday life.
Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris. In Naked , Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, ... (Goodreads)
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
by Ruth Reichl
A restaurant critic's journey to understand the art of food and dining, while hiding her true identity.
Ruth Reichl, world-renowned food critic and editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, knows a thing or two about food. She also knows that as the most important food critic in the country, you need to be ... (Goodreads)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
A collection of case studies, illustrating extraordinary neurological phenomena.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the ... (Goodreads)
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
by Bill Buford
A culinary journey of personal & professional growth, from apprentice to master.
The book that helped define a genre: Heat is a beloved culinary classic, an adventure in the kitchen and into Italian cuisine, by Bill Buford, author of Dirt . Bill Buford was a highly acclaimed ... (Barnes & Noble)
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
by Sudhir Venkatesh
An exploration of urban poverty and gang life, through the eyes of an unlikely researcher.
The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in, Freakonomics,., Gang Leader for a Day, is ... (Goodreads)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King
A series of personal reflections on the art of writing, and the power of story-telling.
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is ... (Goodreads)
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
by David Foster Wallace
Collection of essays and arguments, exploring the absurdities of contemporary culture.
In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary ... (Goodreads)
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
by Julie Powell
A memoir of a woman's year-long journey to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul! ... (Goodreads)
How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
by Thomas Cahill
Recounts the history of how Irish monks preserved civilization during the Middle Ages.
From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne - the "dark ages" - learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization - from the ... (Goodreads)
Cash
by Johnny Cash
Autobiography of Johnny Cash, detailing his life as a musician, struggles with addiction, and personal relationships.
He was the "Man in Black," a country music legend, and the quintessential American troubadour. He was an icon of rugged individualism who had been to hell and back, telling the tale as never before. ... (Goodreads)
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
by Chuck Klosterman
An exploration of pop culture and its influence on contemporary life.
Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman. With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to ... (Goodreads)
How to Be Alone
by Jonathan Franzen
A collection of essays exploring the complexities of solitude, self-reliance, and personal growth.
From the National Book Award-winning author of, The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics While the essays in ... (Goodreads)
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
by A.J. Jacobs
An exploration of faith and morality through the lens of the Bible.
From the bestselling author of "The Know-It-All" comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible. Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith ... (Goodreads)
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas D. Kristof
Examining the global struggle of women and how to empower them in the face of oppression.
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer ... (Goodreads)
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
by Jon Krakauer
A gripping narrative of the 1996 expedition on Mount Everest that resulted in tragedy.
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. ... (Goodreads)
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
by Mary Roach
A humorous exploration of the science and research behind sex and human sexuality.
In Bonk, the best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Why doesn't Viagra help ... (Goodreads)
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
by Dava Sobel
Story of a man's determination to solve the complex problem of determining longitude at sea.
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their ... (Goodreads)
