In Other Words: Nonfiction that Reads Like Fiction

Here are five books that are fantastic nonfiction page turners. Check out a copy at the today.

The Soloist: a Lost Dream, and Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve Lopez. 2008

When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles’ skid row, he found it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising classical bass student at Juilliard—ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans—until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless, paranoid, and deeply troubled, but glimmers of that brilliance are still there. Over time, Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers form a bond, and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers’s life.

Nickel and Dimed: on (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. 2001

Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

The Last Stand : Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick. 2010

This history of the Battle of the Little Bighorn reads like a novel. Biographical sketches of the major players, Sitting Bull, General George Armstrong Custer, Libby Custer, Major Marcus Reno, Captain Frederick Benteen, Crazy Horse, and Wooden Leg, are interspersed with flashbacks and action sequences which move the narrative along at a fast clip. The volume includes several maps and photographs and is extensively sourced. Readers interested in the history of the American West will appreciate this work. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

 Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. 2009

Reisen, a journalist, producer, and screenwriter who wrote the script for a PBS documentary on Alcott, provides a biography of Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) within the context of her works. Among the events she describes are the effect of her father's utopian schemes on her life, her family's economic difficulties and uprootings, her experience as a nurse during the Civil War, the loss of her health, her use of opiates to relieve migraines, insomnia, and pain, and the autobiographical nature of many of her writings. Included among Reisen's sources is an interview with Louisa's niece, which was never published. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. 2003

The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds--a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized  talents to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure many young women to their deaths. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, and others. Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both. From the Hardcover edition.