Paper of Wreckage is a vibrant oral history of the New York Post that recounts the tabloid’s sordid—and legendary—glory days.

Art, Lifestyles, Nonfiction

Great Women Sculptors

The beautifully printed, encyclopedic Great Women Sculptors brings together more than 300 artists who have been excluded from institutions and canons on the basis of gender.

LGBTQ+, Nonfiction, Social Science

Nonfiction Social Science LGBTQ+

American Teenager

Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.

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The People’s Hospital

by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Using the stories of five patients, physician Ricardo Nuila reveals how a public hospital in Houston has succeeded in providing health care to people who are the most vulnerable.

Family & Relationships, Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir Family & Relationships

How well can we ever truly know another person? The exceptional first memoir from novelist Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew, explores this question in a way that is simultaneously sharp-edged and loving, honest and painfully haunting.

Wallace’s honed prose and hypnotic pacing carry readers through a layered narrative intertwining the author’s life with those of his friend and brother-in-law William Nealy, his sister Holly and, tangentially, William’s best friend, Edgar. The result is a complicated story of love and loathing and, ultimately, Wallace’s complex deconstruction of his friendship with William after he died by suicide.

Daniel Wallace shares more about his discovery that writing a memoir is “very, very, very hard.”

A talented cartoonist, illustrator, whitewater adventurer and writer, William was a lodestar for Wallace. Their first encounter was during a pool party at Wallace’s childhood home. William was Holly’s 18-year-old boyfriend at the time, and he was perched on their roof, calculating the distance to the swimming pool below. Eventually he jumped through the air, landed in the water, made a huge splash and climbed back onto the roof to do it again. From that moment, the 12-year-old Wallace was “spellbound” by William’s “wildness, the derring-do, his willingness to take flight—literally—into the unknown. . . . He flew, and I, who couldn’t, just watched.”

Over time, Wallace’s relationship with William took root and grew—as a role model, friend, brother-in-law and creative inspiration. “He showed me how it was done: experience, imagine, then create,” Wallace writes. There were road trips across state borders toting illegal drugs, fishing expeditions, raucous rock concerts and other chaotic adventures. Though he was outwardly charismatic, inventive and Clint Eastwood-style macho, William was also Holly’s sensitive and devoted husband, becoming her caretaker as her rheumatoid arthritis worsened.

“But there were two Williams,” Wallace writes. “One was . . . the William we all knew. There was another we didn’t know . . . the William who lived in his own secret room, the narrow confines of an interior life with space for only one, and a much darker space than I’d ever imagined it would be.” It was not until well after William’s tragic death by suicide at age 48 that Wallace discovered a fuller picture of what both drove and tormented William. As Wallace moved through his anger at discovering a version of William he’d never known while William was alive, he gradually realized that even if you cannot fully know another human being, there is at least the possibility that you can, through kindness and self-compassion, know a measure of yourself.

The exceptional first memoir from Big Fish author Daniel Wallace is loving, honest and haunting as it deconstructs his friendship with his late brother-in-law.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Kelly Blewett

Fans of Maggie Smith’s poetry and other writings will be eager to read this tender memoir of reclaiming herself after her divorce.

Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Audio Memoir

All the Beauty in the World

Review by Deborah Mason

by Deborah Mason

When his beloved older brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Patrick Bringley sought a refuge—and found it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he took a job as a security guard. He worked there for 10 years, watching both people and art, and all the while noticing fine details that others were too busy or preoccupied to see. His memoir of his career at the Met, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me (6 hours), is a moving reflection on not only art but also all the messy, mundane, tragic, glorious and moving aspects of our lives.

Bringley’s reading of his book is sensitive and gentle. His soft-spoken narration reflects the profundity that comes from years of humbly observing and interacting with this magnificent museum, the works it houses, the people who serve it and the visitors who explore it. The accompanying PDF contains lovely sketches of the works Bringley reflects on, adding extra layers of enjoyment to this extraordinary audiobook.

Also in BookPage: Read our review of the print edition.

Patrick Bringley’s soft-spoken narration reflects his years of humbly observing and interacting with the Met, the works it houses, the people who serve it and the visitors who explore it.

Memoir, Music, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Music Memoir

Arrangements in Blue

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

by Carla Jean Whitley

“When I love a song, there is almost always a moment that sounds like how I imagine truth to sound,” writes poet Amy Key in Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone. “It’s the moment in the song that touches the bruise you didn’t know you had, the aching, denied part of you. You are found out by it.”

Every track of Joni Mitchell’s Blue uncovers a bruise for Key. The 1971 album has been dear to her for three decades, since she borrowed the cassette tape from her older sister when she was 14. From the moment Mitchell sang, “I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling, looking for something, what can it be?” Key experienced a sense of longing. At first it was a longing to consume every note of the album. But as she’s moved through the decades of her life, Key has come to associate Blue with her desire for romantic love. She yearns for a partner, but she also yearns for a sense of self that isn’t defined by her singleness.

In Arrangements in Blue, Key uses Mitchell’s seminal work as a magnifying glass for her emotions and experiences as a single woman. These 10 essays parallel the tracks of Blue, but intimacy with the album isn’t required to understand and appreciate Key’s insights. She recounts solo meals and solo travels, and reflects on how people have looked at her during those moments. She confesses all the ways she’s held out her heart and body to men who were happy to receive but unwilling to open themselves in return. By embracing a vulnerability that matches Mitchell’s, Key reveals the full spectrum of human feeling with words honed as carefully as poetry.

Key offers analysis of Mitchell’s work throughout, but Arrangements in Blue isn’t exactly about Blue. It’s a window into the way one woman has moved through a world that’s quick to define women by their relationships. It’s also an ode to the ways music can give voice to our emotions, sometimes shape-shifting over years to remain as relevant as the first time we hit play.

In Arrangements in Blue, Amy Key uses Joni Mitchell’s seminal work as a magnifying glass for her emotions and experiences as a single woman.

Biting the Hand

by Alice Cary

Julia Lee’s piercing discussions of Asian American identity are likely to challenge readers across the ideological spectrum. In fact, she even challenges her own views.

Family & Relationships, LGBTQ+, Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir LGBTQ+Family & Relationships

Choosing Family

Review by Brittany Sky

by Brittany Sky

In a society that elevates white people and heteronormative relationships, the word family has come to suggest a white dad, a white mom and their two white children living in the suburbs. In Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance, however, DePaul University professor Francesca Royster provides a look at what family really means. It’s an expansive word that encapsulates what folks from all backgrounds have always done, especially within systems that can separate biological family members: blending both blood relatives and those chosen through adoption, marriage or simple affection.

Royster brings readers along for her journey into motherhood as a queer woman fashioning a family. This includes not only the story of adopting a daughter with her wife, Annie, but also research about and with Black and queer chosen families. By artfully interweaving her own story with the work of scholars of African American and queer studies, Royster adds weight to her lived experience without distracting from the narrative. This approach also provides fuller context about the history of these marginalized identities for readers who do not share them.

Having a child inspires many parents to reflect on their own ancestral histories and families of origin, and this is certainly true for Royster. Throughout Choosing Family, she introduces the many mothers who came before her in her family line: her great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mother and stepmother, each of whom formed families from both blood and choice. For example, when her parents divorced, Royster’s mother created a family from deep friendships with strong, nurturing women. These relationships set the foundation for Royster to one day create the family she wanted, one that didn’t necessarily match the traditional image of family.

Parenthood is complex, and readers will feel Royster’s anticipation, joy and deep love, along with her fear. Her writing style has a smooth cadence and makes you feel like you’re with her every step of the way as she raises her daughter in a family that is Black, queer and chosen.

In her artful memoir, Francesca T. Royster brings readers along for her journey into motherhood as a queer woman fashioning a family.

Fatherland

by Roger Bishop

In his exceptionally well-written memoir, Burkhard Bilger shares his long journey of historical investigation into his grandfather, who was a Nazi Party chief.

European History, History, Nonfiction

Nonfiction History European History

His Majesty’s Airship

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

by Deborah Hopkinson

In His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine, award-winning author and historian S.C. Gwynne (Rebel Yell) delves into the little-known story behind the 1930 crash of a hydrogen-filled British airship called R101.

R101 was the brainchild of Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson, who held the rather inflated title of Secretary of State for Air. A baron and peer of the House of Lords, Thomson had been put in charge of the development of British dirigibles. On October 4, 1930, he prepared to make a 5,000-mile journey from England to Karachi, India, in R101, which Gwynne describes as “a giant silver fish floating weightless in the slate-gray seas of the sky.”

At the time, R101 was one of the largest human-made objects on Earth, larger by volume than the Titanic. It’s an apt comparison, because like the ocean liner, the R101 was touted as the pinnacle of technological achievement, luxury and safety. Its press office boasted that the 777-foot-long hydrogen-filled R101 was “the safest aircraft of any kind ever built.”

Using hydrogen airships to fly long distances and connect England with its far-flung colonies was in part a reaction to the state of airplane travel at the time. Just three years previously, in 1927, a flight from England to India took 12 days and required 20 stops. An ocean liner could make the trip in two weeks. Thomson’s goals for the R101? Four days.

Gwynne intersperses the story of R101’s short, tragic flight with the history of zeppelin airships more generally, including the use of airships as aerial bombers during World War I and the impact of the August 1921 crash of a British airship called R38. Gwynne’s well-documented account also includes photos of airships, as well as of Thomson. The most fascinating part, of course, is following Lord Thomson as he prepared for this doomed voyage, for which he brought champagne, lots of ministry paperwork and even fancy carpets! R101 took off into a developing severe weather system, flying over London against a stiff wind while people rushed out onto the streets to see this incredible sight.

R101 has more eerie similarities with the Titanic: It burst into flames shortly after 2 a.m., and newspapers around the world carried news of the disaster. There were only six survivors (all crew members) out of 54 people on board, but the crash of R101 did not entirely end the era of experimentation with hydrogen airships. That would come later, in the aftermath of a crash far better known today: the Hindenburg.

Gwynne is a consummate storyteller, and his account of R101 is riveting and not to be missed.

S.C. Gwynne is a consummate storyteller, and his account of the 1930 crash of a spectacularly large hydrogen-filled British airship is not to be missed.

Monsters

by Sarah McCraw Crow

An enjoyable book about a thorny, elusive subject, Monsters is an incisive work of literary criticism about art created by men we now consider monsters.

Family & Relationships, Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports

Nonfiction Sports Memoir Family & Relationships

Review by Catherine Hollis

by Catherine Hollis

Ice climbing and mountain guiding require endurance, organization, ambition and a high tolerance for physical discomfort. Founding an international conservation organization requires similar talents, with an emphasis on logistics and fundraising. Professional climber and conservation activist Majka Burhardt has been successful in both endeavors, developing a skill set that should have helped when she became a mother to twins. As she recounts in her emotionally raw memoir, however, Burhardt found that motherhood is far more psychologically and physically demanding than the hardest climb.

In More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood, Burhardt wrestles with the impossible task of balancing the call of adventure and the necessity of work with the whirlwind of pregnancy and childcare. Written in the present tense as a series of letters to her beloved twins, More sets out to tell the visceral truth of early parenthood, from pumping milk at a belay station on an ice climb to ugly sobbing in the car. Like urgent dispatches from risky terrain, these entries are brutally (painfully!) honest about how motherhood changes everything—especially Burhardt’s feeling about her husband and mother. Burhardt’s frank assessment of resentment and ambivalence in these otherwise loving relationships rings so very, very true.

Mountaineering literature is filled with tales of men having adventures, sometimes fatal ones, and the women and children who are left behind. Only recently have female climbers begun to write about the risks and rewards of climbing as a woman or a mother—about a passion for mountains as strong as the primal bond with a child. Burhardt wants it all, mountains and motherhood, but the pressure to hold it all together is intense and unrelenting. Her boldly candid memoir charts a path into a new territory in adventure writing, with motherhood as the ultimate journey.

Professional rock and ice climber Majka Burhardt’s memoir captures all the ways motherhood is more psychologically and physically demanding than the hardest climb.

Orphan Bachelors

by Alden Mudge

Fae Myenne Ng’s luminous, sometimes sorrowful, memoir recounts how racist U.S. immigration policies have shrouded four generations of her family in secrets and mystery.

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How to Stand Up to a Dictator

Maria Ressa

By Sarojini Seupersad

Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.