It’s the final week of Nonfiction November and the final topic was Nonfiction Reads New To My TBR and was hosted by Emerald City Book Review. I went back and looked through everyone’s Nonfiction November posts as well as comments on my own posts to sift through all the amazing recommendations I read and received throughout the month.
The titles I picked for this list mostly fall within topics for which I either want to create or update book lists next year (Russia, World War II, China and Fateful Voyages) and that I therefore hope to read soon. A few were books I’d heard of and considered reading in the past, but seeing them featured on a blog this month reminded me of them again – for example My Life In Middlemarch.
Thanks to everyone for all the TBR fodder this month and thanks to Sarah’s Book Shelves, Doing Dewey, Emerald City Book Review, Julz Reads and Sophisticated Dorkiness for doing such a great job of hosting – can’t wait for next year!
October: The Story Of The Russian Revolution
Recommended by Maphead’s Book Blog
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Plot Teaser: Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Miéville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story.
A Mountain Of Crumbs
Recommended by What’s Nonfiction?
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Plot Teaser: A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a young Soviet girl’s discovery of the hidden truths of adulthood and her country’s profound political deception. Elena’s home is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars. Instead, it is a nation humiliated by its first faltering steps after World War II, putting up appearances for the sake of its regime and fighting to retain its pride. In this deeply affecting memoir, Elena re-creates the world that both oppressed and inspired her.
Blitzed: Drugs In The Third Reich
Recommended by The Paperback Princess
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Carefully researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws surprising light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows.
Ravensbrück
Recommended by The Paperback Princess
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Plot Teaser: A groundbreaking, masterful, and absorbing account of the last hidden atrocity of World War II—Ravensbrück—the largest female-only concentration camp, where more than 100,000 women consisting of more than twenty nationalities were imprisoned. Chilling, compelling, and deeply unsettling, Ravensbrück is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nazi history,
Hitler’s Furies
Recommended by The Paperback Princess
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: Through the interwoven biographies of thirteen women, the reader follows the transformation of young nurses, teachers, secretaries and wives who start out in Weimar and Nazi Germany as ambitious idealists and end up as witnesses, accomplices and perpetrators of the genocide in Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. Hitler’s Furies presents overwhelming evidence that the women in these territories actively participated in the mass murder – and some became killers.
A Death In Italy
Recommended by What’s Nonfiction?
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: London Times journalist John Follain presents the most comprehensive account of the most publicized and controversial trial in a decade. Uniquely based on four years of reporting and access to the complete case files, and hundreds of first hand interviews, Death in Italy takes readers on a riveting journey behind the scenes of the investigation, as John Follain shares the drama of the trials and appeal hearings he lived through.
Bring Back The King
Recommended by Lindsay’s Library
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: Helen Pilcher is uniquely qualified to explain the cutting-edge science that makes the resurrection of extinct animals a very real possibility, while acknowledging the serious and humorous aspects of giving a deceased animal a second chance to live. If you could bring back to life a person or animal, what would you choose? Pilcher highlights her own choices from eras gone, including the King of the Dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley.
A Night To Remember
Recommended by My Wild Places
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Plot Teaser: First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic‘s fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain.
My Life In Middlemarch
Recommended by Lakeside Musing
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: In this wise and revealing work of biography, reporting, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot’s masterpiece–the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure–and brings them into our world.
Little Soldiers
Recommended by Based On A True Story
Kindle Goodreads Hardcover Paperback
Plot Teaser: A hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system—held up as a model of academic and behavioral excellence—that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education. Lively and intimate, beautifully written and reported, Little Soldiers challenges our assumptions and asks us to reconsider the true value and purpose of education.
Have you read any of these titles? Which should I start with? Are there any other books you discovered during Nonfiction November that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments!
If you’re looking for more nonfiction recommendations for your TBR list, check out my book lists on Scientology, True Crime, North Korea, Scientific Nonfiction, Fateful Voyages, Noble Women Through History, Memoirs Of Escape And Redemption and Medical Memoirs.
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Oh this is such a great list! Taking notes myself 🙂 The WWII titles sound really intriguing. And I’m very glad I could give you some suggestions!
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I really enjoyed My Life In Middlemarch – I thought it was interesting and really well written x
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Good to hear Emma!
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I really want to read Ravensbrück as well, but I’m sure it will be utterly devastating. I read A Night to Remember when I was a pre-teen in the middle of my Titanic obsession phase. I think I was probably a bit too young for it, but I do remember enjoying it.
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Yeah the WWII nonfiction can be really tough and depressing… I try to space it out 🙂
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Great list! I really enjoyed the audio version of Blitzed. It was refreshing to read such a different perspective on the war. And I’ll definitely check out Bring Back the King. It sounds right up my alley!
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Started listening to this yesterday! Thanks for the recommendation to check it out in audiobook form.
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I haven’t read any of these titles, but I am always drawn to WWII and the Holocaust so those are the ones that interest me the most.
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Thanks for the shout-out! I hope you like October. I also want to read A Mountain of Crumbs!
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I haven’t read any of these, but really want to read Ravensbruck after reading Lilac Girls. I’ve only hesitated because it’s so long!
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I put Lilac Girls on my TBR a while ago and promptly forgot about it. Sounds like it was good?
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I loved it. It was on my top ten list last year.
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Quite a few of these are on my TBR list, too. Hope you enjoy My Life in Middlemarch… it made me want to reread the beloved classic!
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I could definitely do with a Middlemarch re-read myself soon. It’s probably in my Top 5 favorite classic novels and I’ve read it 3 times so far.
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Bring Back The King sounds really cool!
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A Night to Remember sounds really intriguing! I don’t think I’ve read any nonfiction on The Titanic and, after recently finding out that the Vanderbilt’s were on board (I read The Last Castle during Nonfiction November!), I’d love to know more!
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