Art, Art, Lifestyles, Nonfiction

The Work of Art

The Work of Art is a visionary compendium of ephemera that makes visible the bridge between idea and artwork.

Biography, Nonfiction

Ingenious

Richard Munson’s splendid biography of Benjamin Franklin provides an insightful view of the statesman’s lesser known accomplishments in science.

Biography, Literature, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Literature Biography

Didion and Babitz

Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz is a freewheeling and engaging narrative about two iconic literary rivals and their world in 1970s Los Angeles.

All Nonfiction Coverage

Filter by genre

Award-winning sportswriter Frank Deford has been contributing to Sports Illustrated since 1962, and has also done his share of TV and radio work, including weekly commentaries for NPR. In The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, Deford trips down memory lane to the first decade of the 20th century, when the game gained serious commercial strength and distinctively captured the imagination of the American public. His primary focus is New York Giants great Christy Mathewson, a handsome, strapping, Bucknell-educated pitcher who embodied the virtues of integrity, good sportsmanship and hard work. Mathewson came to his well-earned matinee-idol persona under the tutelage of rough-and-tumble manager John McGraw. Deford adroitly describes their lives, careers, and surprisingly devoted friendship, offering along the way a vivid slice of social history.

A poet’s tale of sickness and strength

by Eliza McGraw

Sports

Sports

The Red Sox rule

Review by bookpagedev

by Martin Brady

Dan Shaughnessy’s Reversing the Curse: Inside the 2004 Boston Red Sox is a blow-by-blow account of the unlikely 2004 Sox triumph. Shaughnessy, a writer for the Boston Globe, profiles the colorful members of the team, including long-haired wildman center fielder Johnny Damon, stalwart fireballing right-hander Curt Schilling, and the Latin Mafia of Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, all instrumental in making history as the Sox snatched victory out of the jaws of certain defeat against the Yanks, and then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games in the World Series. Shaughnessy also runs down in detail the critical personnel changes enacted by youthful Sox general manager Theo Epstein in the wake of Boston’s gut-wrenching 2003 playoff loss to who else? the Yankees.

Dan Shaughnessy's Reversing the Curse: Inside the 2004 Boston Red Sox is a blow-by-blow account of the unlikely 2004 Sox triumph. Shaughnessy, a writer for the Boston Globe, profiles the colorful members of the team, including long-haired wildman center fielder Johnny Damon, stalwart fireballing right-hander…

Giving it all you’ve got

by Linda Stankard

History, Military History

Military History History

Untold story of a Cold War triumph

Review by Roger Bishop

by Roger Bishop

In 1948, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered a blockade of Berlin to pressure the Western Allies into leaving the city or giving up the establishment of a state of West Germany. In response, President Truman, against the advice of his top defense and diplomatic advisors, declared that the United States was in the city to stay. For the next 11 months, under difficult and dangerous conditions, Allied planes delivered such necessities as food, mail, medicine and coal to the beleaguered residents of Berlin—whom those same planes had bombed only three years earlier. Richard Reeves, author of acclaimed biographies of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan, tells this story in his riveting new book, Daring Young Men.

Reeves’ splendid narrative gives us various perspectives of the airlift, or “Operation Vittles,” as it was originally called. He quotes generously from Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Berlin’s most famous diarist of the period, who vividly described the bleakness of the city and was hopeful, but skeptical, that the Allies would help. Reeves also focuses on the 60,000 individuals who made the airlift work, including pilots such as Gail Halvorsen, who had volunteered for service in the airlift and thought he would return home in a few weeks. Instead, he became the famous “Candy Bomber” who dropped improvised parachutes filled with sweets for Berlin’s children.

From the beginning, the airlift faced many obstacles, not least that pilots were restricted to using carefully defined air corridors, and deviation from these meant attack by Soviet aircraft. An extraordinary leap in production occurred when Major General William Tunner was put in charge of the operation. An arrogant, cantankerous and incredibly imaginative man, Tunner had directed the first successful airlift in history, flying supplies over the Himalayas to Nationalist Chinese troops fighting the Japanese during World War II.

Reeves masterfully relates this story of a crucial mission that even American military officials considered nearly impossible—a pivotal chapter in the Cold War that had a profound effect on the course of European and American history.

The Red Sox rule

by bookpagedev

Memoir

Memoir

The son his mother wanted

Review by Edward Morris

by Edward Morris

Southern literature is awash in stories about sensitive young boys with domineering mothers, dissolute fathers and quirky extended families. Malcolm Jones’ Little Boy Blues partakes of all these elements, but he doesn’t turn any of them into the usual cut-and-paste stereotypes.

Now a cultural critic for Newsweek, Jones writes of his early boyhood years in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and of the emotional pain and confusion his schoolteacher mother and alcoholic father incidentally inflicted on him. Jones was born in 1952, 10 years after his parents married. By the time he came along—he would be an only child—his father was already drinking heavily, unable to keep a job and often absent for long and unexplained periods. When Jones was 11, his parents divorced. His mother made the most of her “martyrdom,” always letting her “brave little man” know how much she depended on him to reflect well on her. Consequently, he grew up pretty much a loner. If there were best friends or wise teachers in whom Jones confided or found ongoing solace, he fails to mention them.

Instead, Jones turned to music, movies and television for comfort. He recalls being enraptured by an ancient Chris Bouchillon phonograph record he found at his grandmother’s house when he was five. Then there was the summer he spent with his father, during which they would sit together in the evening and watch the Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs TV show. Often he and his mother attended movies together, after which they would discuss them. But even here, her discontent and self-absorption always tainted the experience.

Jones writes with a curiously detached tone, almost as if he’s describing someone else, and he offers no happy ending, no moments of lightheartedness. Although he remained a dutiful son, the tension between who he was and who his mother wanted him to be never abated. She died in 2004, when she was 90. “My mother hated change, especially in me,” he concludes. “But that took years to figure out.”

Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

Now a cultural critic for…

Young, gifted and black

by bookpagedev

Black History, History

History Black History

In their own voices

Review by bookpagedev

by Ron Wynn

Harlem Speaks: A Living History of the Harlem Renaissance, a collection edited by Texas Southern University history professor Dr. Gary D. Wintz, demystifies several heralded individuals through precise, detailed essays from 21 experts on the era’s finest writers, artists, poets, intellectuals and performers. The list of contributors includes literary biographers Arnold Rampersad, Tyrone Tillery and M. Genevieve West; jazz experts Dan Morgenstern and Chip Deffaa; and political analysts and historians like Williams H. Harris and Martha Jane Nadell.

An accompanying CD augments the written material, presenting more than 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews and speeches. Whether it’s the sparkling piano work of Eubie Blake featured in a previously unpublished performance, or extensive interviews by David Levering Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of acclaimed biographies on Dr. W.E.

B. Du Bois, Harlem Speaks combines fresh insights with informed analysis and vivid, striking performances to broaden readers’ awareness and knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

North to freedom

by bookpagedev

Black History, History

History Black History

Pre-dating the Pilgrims

Review by bookpagedev

by Ron Wynn

Tim Hashaw’s The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown follows the inaugural voyage of almost 30 African men, women and children to these shores (specifically Jamestown, Virginia) in 1619. Very little has been written about the trip until now, and Hashaw’s credentials and expertise as an award-winning reporter are particularly useful as he examines two distinct, related elements in this story. One involves the business/commerce angle, as he shows how England’s attack on a Spanish slave ship and the pirating of its cargo of Africans violated a treaty, causing King James to dissolve the Virginia Company of London and end that firm’s North American monopoly. But the second, more compelling story of The Birth of Black America traces the journey of Africans, showing how they established communities and the foundation for black culture and society that followed. The book also documents how the nation eventually wrestled with the issue of slavery, and looks at some of the ugly racist practices and legislation aimed at these African Americans. Everything from questions of lexicon to determining the exact size of the black population (through the clumsy census practices of the day) is examined, as well as many sordid events that followed. The Birth of Black America closely scrutinizes and evaluates a time and series of happenings about which far too many contemporary citizens know absolutely nothing.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Tim Hashaw's The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown follows the inaugural voyage of almost 30 African men, women and children to these shores (specifically Jamestown, Virginia) in 1619. Very little has been written about the…

Thomas Hardy is the latest subject for literary biographer

by bookpagedev

Want more BookPage?

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Trending Nonfiction

Nonfiction Politics Memoir

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.