Nonfiction November 2019: Week 1

Nonfiction November has arrived. One of my favorite bloggers, Julie of Julz Reads has agreed to help kick things off by hosting Week 1.

Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

I’ve decided to go slightly rogue and just list my favorite nonfiction books of the year. (Although to be honest, I should say this year so far, since I could discover a few more outstanding books before the end of December.) I read some great nonfiction books this year, all but one courtesy of the public library. I’d like to limit my list to just 10, but I just can’t. So here’s 12 books in no particular order of preference I have no problems whatsoever recommending.

1. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres
2. If All the Seas Were Ink by Ilana Kurshan
3. The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey
4. The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw
5. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
6. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
7. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
8. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
9. 1924: The Year That Made Hitler by Peter Ross Range
10. In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
11. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
12. The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World by Paul Morland

Add to this list a slew of honorable mentions like T. J. English’s Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution, Ken Silverstein’s The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor and Nathan Miller’s New World Coming : The 1920s and the Making of Modern America and the more I think about it, 2019 has been a pretty decent year for nonfiction.