CRRL Picks: Read Across America - Non-fictionLike this list

10 items

• Driving While Black

  African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights

  Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan

  Add Driving While Black to your for later shelf

  "Melding new archival research with her family’s story, Gretchen Sorin recovers a lost history, demonstrating how, when combined with Black travel guides—including the famous Green Book—the automobile encouraged a new way of resisting oppression."

• Heartland

  a Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

  Smarsh, Sarah

  Add Heartland to your for later shelf

  "Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm 30 miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Hillbilly Elegy

  a Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

  Vance, J. D.

  Add Hillbilly Elegy to your for later shelf

  "Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than 40 years, has been reported with…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

  Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, 1938-

  Add An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States to your for later shelf

  "Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative."

• The Left Behind

  Decline and Rage in Rural America

  Wuthnow, Robert

  Add The Left Behind to your for later shelf

  "Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America’s small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order—the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Lost Continent

  Travels in Small-town America

  Bryson, Bill

  Add The Lost Continent to your for later shelf

  HIs hometown of Des Moines couldn't hold him, "...but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• One Day

  the Extraordinary Story of An Ordinary 24 Hours in America

  Weingarten, Gene

  Add One Day to your for later shelf

  Sunday, December 28, 1986. A day randomly chosen and examined, revealing "comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Our Towns

  a 100,000-mile Journey Into the Heart of America

  Fallows, James M.

  Add Our Towns to your for later shelf

  "For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Soul of America

  the Battle for Our Better Angels

  Meacham, Jon

  Add The Soul of America to your for later shelf

  "Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America, Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the 'better angels of our nature' have repeatedly won the day."

• Tales of Two Americas

  Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

  Add Tales of Two Americas to your for later shelf

  "Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many…Read moreRead more of this annotation