We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it’s summer doesn’t mean it’s all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers’ favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We’ve got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While poignant and vulnerable, her memoir is also insightful and funny, especially as she recounts adventures with Russell and her attempts to track down and reclaim jewelry that was stolen from her apartment about a month before he died: a caper he would have enjoyed in the telling.
Renée DiResta, a disinformation researcher at Stanford University, shares her own experiences on the front lines of the struggle to define objective reality, including entering the field after confronting anti-vaccine sentiment when she became a parent.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal NewportIf you’re the typical knowledge worker, your life is overwhelmed by a dizzying flurry of emails and Slack messages breaking your focus every few minutes.
Deeply reported and deftly written, this book is a feat not only because it sheds light on one of today’s most consequential political figures, but also the history that shaped him and the tectonic shift in geopolitics that he’s now forced to navigate.
Undergirding all is a culture of privilege, yes, but also silence and tradition rooted in the British Empire, sending 8-year-olds away from home as “the done thing.” Spencer’s quote from author Hilary Mantel in the book’s epigraph is telling, “I am writing in order to take charge of my childhood.” — Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition
From a humorous take on getting drenched in a rainstorm to a beloved tree on its last day of existence to a woman processing the bleak reality of the world her grandchildren will inherit, these poems encouraged a heightened noticing in me and (bonus!)
The original article contains 2,586 words, the summary contains 264 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Ah my friend, a rare miss. Formatting got you on this one.