All I Can Handle: I'm No Mother Teresa
A Life Raising Three Daughters With Autism
Kim Stagliano
Skyhorse, $24.95
Nonfiction book gift list
This inspiring story offers plenty of lighter, humorous moments as the author describes her life since veering off "Suburban Mommy Street and onto the Autism Autobahn." Autism, she explains, has a way of "keeping you on your toes, much like hot coals or ballet shoes … "
Apollo's Angels
A History of Ballet
Jennifer Homans
Random House, $35
Ballet, the author explains in her comprehensive look at this 400-year-old form of dance, possesses "no fixed texts, because it is an oral and physical tradition, a storytelling art passed on, like Homer's epics, from person to person … "
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith et.al.
University of California Press, $35
A blog for the 21st century by the grand, old man of American letters.
The Big Short
Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton, $27.95
A handful of savvy investors made money on the subprime mortgage mess. Lewis tells us how they did it.
Bob Dylan in America
Sean Wilentz
Doubleday, $28.95
Sean Wilentz's examination of the songwriter's early years and influence upon American culture has resulted in a book, our reviewer said, that is "an extraordinary, resonant intersection of subject and biographer."
Children of Fire
A History of African Americans
Thomas C. Holt
Hill and Wang, $30
An interpretation of the African American experience across generations as told through the lives of historical figures from slavery to the White House.
Cleopatra
A Life
Stacy Schiff
Little, Brown, $29.99
Schiff captures the broad sweep of Cleopatra's life.
Colossus
Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
Michael Hiltzik
Free -Press, $30
An accounting of one of the great construction feats of the 20th century and its legacy.
Common as Air
Revolution, Art and Ownership.
Lewis Hyde
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26
The history of intellectual property ownership, presented in a stimulating and troubling book.
Decision Points
George W. Bush
Crown, $35
The 43rd president presents an appealing chronicle of the key decisions of his White House years.
Don't Sing at the Table
Life Lessons from My Grandmothers
Adriana Trigiani
Harper, $22.99
The novelist collects the wisdom of her spirited Italian grandmothers, delivered with plenty of maternal insight and moxie.
Empire of Dreams
The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille
Scott Eyman
Simon & Schuster, $35
Lights, camera, Cecil: An expansive, remarkable accounting of the life and career of an iconic filmmaker who always worked on a grand scale.
Fab
An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney
Howard Sounes
Da Capo, $29.95
Ambitious, ruthless and charming: A Liverpool lad's journey to music superstardom and icon status. And it's unauthorized, love.
Frank
The Voice
James Kaplan
Doubleday, $35
Kaplan's biography "illuminates a serious artist who revolutionized his medium," tracing Frank Sinatra's career from his modest beginnings to his triumphant comeback in the 1950s.
Grant Wood
A Life
R. Tripp Evans
Alfred A. Knopf, $37.50
An absorbing look at the life of the Iowa-born creator of "American Gothic" and other paintings and how he struggled to hide his sexual identity from the harsh judgments of homophobic critics.
Hollywood
A Third Memoir
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster, $24
Hollywood has been very good to the author of "Lonesome Dove," and in this delightfully episodic book, McMurtry describes his long, profitable, rather enjoyable engagement with the movie industry.
A Journey
My Political Life
Tony Blair
Knopf, $35
The author's disarming frankness in all parts of his career — from his relationships with Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana to his friendships with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — makes this a political biography of unusual interest.
Just Kids
Patti Smith
Ecco, $27
The influential rocker and poet offers a moving portrait of her onetime boyfriend and longtime muse, Robert Mapplethorpe. The recipient of this year's National Book Award in Nonfiction.
Let's Take the Long Way Home
A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Random House, $23
An affecting memoir of grief in which the author, the longtime book critic for the Boston Globe, recounts losing a dear friend to cancer in 2002.
Life
Keith Richards
Little Brown, $29
This memoir from the Rolling Stones guitarist riffs on musical influences, life on the stage and the varieties of mischief and trouble Richards has encountered in his rock 'n' roll career.
Listen to This
Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27
A music critic and author of a highly acclaimed collection of essays, "The Rest Is Noise," returns with another eclectic collection of criticism including Mozart and Brahms, Radiohead and Bjork.
The Lost Peace
Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953
Robert Dallek
Harper, $28.99
The destructiveness of World War II should've pushed the leaders of nations toward creating a better world — Dallek (author of books on JFK, LBJ and more) shows us why they didn't.
Love Brought Me Back
A Journey of Loss and Gain
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