Tempting Titles: New Nonfiction 800 - 999, Biographies

We get to the end of the Dewey Decimal system and we add the 92s, biographies. Hope you're tempted to read some of them. Tell our book selectors what new books you're reading and who and what you'd like to read about if we don't have it.

800 Literature

The Triumph of the Thriller: how cops, crooks, and cannibals captured popular fiction by Patrick Anderson.

The reviews laud his thesis, but point out that he may not like your favorite thriller writer. It's “for the reader who isn’t a thriller fan but is curious about this enormously popular genre ..” Publishers Weekly.

Waltzing Again: new and collected conversations with Margaret Atwood edited by Earl G. Ingersoll

...author and poet Margaret Atwood, on interviewing: "I don't mind 'being interviewed' any more than I mind Viennese waltzing-that is, my response will depend on the agility and grace and attitude and intelligence of the other person." Atwood fills her dance card with these 21 interviews, dropping nimble observations on her interviewers (Joyce Carol Oates among them) regarding the nature of writing. Publishers Weekly

Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin

“ … touching biography of the mild-mannered provincial architect from Dorchester who created seething novels about inequity and thwarted ambition. Kirkus, starred review.


900 History, Travel

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family by: Martha Raddatz

The personal stories of U.S. soldiers caught in a deadly 2004 ambush in Sadr City that the author believes marked a turning point, when the war’s mission shifted from peacekeeping and nation-building to battling an insurgency. ABC News Chief White House correspondent Raddatz, who has reported frequently from Iraq, displays a compassionate heart in her first book, which is also notable for its cinematic narrative structure. .... She tells their backstories, describes their experiences in high school, their marriages, their parents …. Two-thirds of the way through, a surprise—the story of the death of Casey Sheehan, son of antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. Kirkus 2007

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche by: Gary Krist

In February of 1910, two trains set out to cross the Cascade Mountains of Washington state, steaming from Spokane to Seattle through the remote Stevens Pass. That the Great Northern Railway could build and maintain such a route was heralded as an example of man's triumph over nature—but nature had not yet begun to fight. Within hours, both trains would become trapped in the middle of the stark and desolate pass, caught by a snowstorm greater than any recorded to that day. By the time the ordeal was over, both trains lay crushed by a massive avalanche, and nearly 100 passengers, crew and railroad workers lay dead under the snow. … tells their story and the story of those few who survived, as well as that of the railroad men who struggled to free the trains only to have their efforts thwarted—and their wisest choice turned into the worst mistake of all. BookPage Reviews.


92 Biographies

Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous And Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son
by Sigal, Clancy

Gritty prose worthy of any classic noir film propels this engaging, often tender memoir of a larger-than-life woman and her self-deprecating but accomplished son, who still misses their shared adventures. PW Reviews 2006 March

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
by Metaxas, Eric

Metaxas tells Wilberforce's story with a charm and energy reminiscent of a favorite history professor, painting a captivating picture of this era of social reform that revolutionized the world. BookPage Reviews March