Recommended Reading: Popular Non-Fiction

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. In the days after the storm, Abdulrahman traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared--arrested and accused of being an agent of Al-Qaeda.

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Survivor Lt. Louis Zamperini is captured by the Japanese and and suffers with hope, resolve, and humor.

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

This is the extraordinary ringside account of this unprecedented effort to shift public opinion and reengineer the political certainties of an era

Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In asking, what are the effects of children on their parents, the author analyzes the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives.

Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us all, no matter where we live.

Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America's major civil rights struggles.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Explores the roles of both genetics and training in athletic success, arguing that both are equally necessary components of athletic achievement while considering such topics as race, gender, and genetic testing.

A fascinating and deeply researched investigation into the mysteries of flavor, from our ancestors' first bites to ongoing scientific advances in taste and today's "foodie" revolution.

Human waste is a major public health threat: population growth is taxing even the most advanced sewage systems, and the disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death.