Non-Fiction

Erik Larson has a knack for finding intimate, personal stories wrapped in and around larger, well-known events.

Empire of the Summer Moon traces the history of the Parker family in Texas and Oklahoma: their move west, the Comanche raid on their settlement, the capture of Cynthia Ann Parker and her brother, and the birth and life of Quanah, son of Cynthia Ann and her Comanche husband.

In her book Bossypants, Tina Fey comes off as an average woman to whom stunningly above average things have happened. Whether it's being slashed across the face in the alley behind her house when she was five or winning seven Emmy awards for her TV show 30 Rock, Ms Fey describes herself as ordinary and the events as extraordinary.

The first part of the book, with its riffs on menstruation and growing up with gay friends, staggers around, funny but unanchored -- a stand up routine when I expected a memoir.

Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother, has been known mostly by the over-simplified description "a white woman from Kansas", and as a victim of a medical insurance system that denied benefits when she was dying of cancer.  Now Janny Scott gives us a rich and complex view of this brilliant, unconventional woman, based on Dunham's correspondence and professional writings and on extensive interviews with extended family members, high school classmates, academic colleagues, co-workers, and, of course, her children Barack and Maya. 

Even the title of Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit, is a clever oxymoron. You might think that to be creative means you put yourself in a zen environment and wait for the genius spark to ignite.

Wrong.

According to Tharp, an iconic Tony winning choreographer, creativity results from structured habits that increase the chance for sparks of genius. "Creativity is not a gift from the gods."

It seems everyone who goes to Italy wants to move there. Relocating to a new country is very different from vacationing there -- one really gets the opportunity to experience the culture and people of the country intimately.

Our firm, Stephen B. Chambers Architects, Inc., recently logged into GreenExpo365.com, a virtual interactive green building community, to watch a continuing education for architects webinar featuring Sarah Susanka.

Andy Warhol, observer, recorder, and preserver of the everyday, would have appreciated Greenberg and Jordan's careful and non-judgmental account of his life and work. More than a factual recounting of his story, this slim volume is filled with anecdotes, quotes, and memories from Warhol and his friends and family.

A book written in 1999 promising to tell me the best known marketing secret? I hesitated to read anything about marketing that had no discussion of Facebook, LinkedIn, or even email.

Part memoir, part opinion, part stand up routine, Nora Ephron's latest collection of essays, I Remember Nothing, feels like a conversation with an old friend. Some of what she says is impressive and memorable; some is stuff everyone knows and believes; some is kind of weird and makes you wonder why it came up. But all of it is fun.

People have complained about the next generation not getting its act together since the beginning of recorded history. And it's true, each generation faces different challenges than the ones that came before. Whether social, technological or financial, the changes allow kids to tell their parents that they just don't understand.

I received this book as a birthday gift from a friend with whom we had a marvelous dinner at Per Se Restaurant in New York.  I love books about places I've been or want to go, especially those involving food and wine.

First admission, I read the book - cover to cover. Really.

The author would argue that my actions likely stifle my creativity in reviewing his book, and Oscar Wilde would assert that I am too prejudiced to effectively review it. This is not a "how to" book on looking cultured and well-read when one is not.

Does history determine beverage options, or have available options shaped history? In A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage summarizes thousands of years of human existence in terms of the emergence and availability of beverages that were, and are, often safer to drink than water.

In June 2009, we took the test covered in the book, Now, Discover your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. Tamara has had the opportunity to hear Marcus Buckingham speak a couple of times since then, most recently at the Women of Faith conference in Dallas,