Get to Know the National Book Award Finalists for Nonfiction
Several of this year’s nominees have been featured on Longreads before (see: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adam Johnson, Noelle Stevenson), and this reading list features the five nonfiction nominees. The winner will be announced on November 18, 2015.
I Would Rather Be Herod’s Pig: The History of a Taboo
The story of how pigs became the world’s most divisive meal. An excerpt from Mark Essig’s book, Lesser Beasts.
In Search of a Separate Peace: Five Stories About Communes
What is the purpose, the lure, of communal living? Why have the residents of different communes in United States chosen isolation over convenience? In these five stories, you’ll meet men and women—many, members in the LGBTQIA+ community—who have chosen, with mixed results, to dedicate themselves to their chosen families.
The Teachings of Don Carlos
Pulling back the curtain on Carlos Castaneda, one of America’s most secretive and popular authors.
The Politics of Poetry
The New York Times’s poetry columnist on the intersection between poetry and politics.
Relearning How to Talk in the Age of Smartphone Addiction
Sherry Turkle studies how we relate to our devices, and thinks it’s high time we start talking to each other again.
Appropriate for a Seven-Year-Old Child
Marlo Mack’s podcast How To Be a Girl is a sensitive and honest exploration of the joys, fears, and struggles of raising of a transgender child.
The Crossroads of Secular and Spiritual: A Reading List
The following four essays take on saints, proselytization, prayer and coincidence: abstractions that may have great impact on our everyday lives, regardless of faith tradition.
My Unsentimental Education
Sex, longing, and coming of age in 1970’s Wisconsin.
Atomic Summer: An Essay by Joni Tevis
On Buddy Holly, John Wayne, and a time when Americans planned their vacations around A-bomb testing.