Nonfiction Book Discussion Kits

If you have your own book group, we'd love to share our book kits! Extra copies are located in storage, so please place holds online or ask at our front desk for the entire set. Most sets have at least 8 copies or more.

Updated December 2, 2025
M
Marion Public Library (OH) Marion Public Library (OH)
This is your list in printable form. Simply print this page using your browser's print command.

Nonfiction Book Discussion Kits

If you have your own book group, we'd love to share our book kits! Extra copies are located in storage, so please place holds online or ask at our front desk for the entire set. Most sets have at least 8 copies or more.

Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Animal, vegetable, junk :
Bittman, Mark.
Paper Book
"Epic and engrossing." --The New York Times Book Review From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and pioneering journalist, an expansive look at how history has been shaped by humanity's appetite for food, farmland, and the money behind it all--and...
Brain on fire : my month of madness
Cahalan, Susannah.
Paper Book
A gripping memoir and medical suspense story about a young New York Post reporter's struggle with a rare and terrifying disease, opening a new window into the fascinating world of brain science. One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a...
We keep the dead close :
Cooper, Becky,
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER Named One of The Best Books of 2020 by NPR's Fresh Air * Publishers Weekly * Marie Claire *...
The undocumented Americans /
Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation. "Karla's book sheds light on people's personal...
Storm Lake : a chronicle of change, resilience, and hope from a heartland newspaper
Cullen, Art
Paper Book
When The Storm Lake Times, a tiny Iowa twice-weekly, won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry for poisoning the local rivers and lake, it was a coup on many counts. In this candid and timely book, Art Cullen describes how the rural prairies have changed dramatically. Politics,...
The Gulf :
Davis, Jack E.,
Paper Book
When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea-bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience-and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the...
Blood and treasure : Daniel Boone and the fight for America's first frontier
Drury, Bob
Paper Book
The Instant New York Times Besteller National Bestseller "[The] authors' finest work to date." --Wall Street Journal The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by...
Soil : the story of a Black mother's garden
Dungy, Camille T.
Paper Book
A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage. In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, poet and...
A fever in the heartland : the Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them
Egan, Timothy
Paper Book
The Roaring Twenties - the Jazz Age - has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in...
Our team : the epic story of four men and the World Series that changed baseball
Epplin, Luke
Paper Book
The riveting story of four men--Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige--whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not...
Africa is not a country : notes on a bright continent
Faloyin, Dipo
Paper Book
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 An exuberant, opinionated, stereotype-busting portrait of contemporary Africa in all its splendid diversity, by one of its leading new writers. So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of...
Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer
Fox, Margalit
Paper Book
"A wonderfully vivid portrait of the man behind Sherlock Holmes . . . Like all the best historical true crime books, it's about so much more than crime."--Tana French, author of In the Woods   A sensational Edwardian murder. A scandalous wrongful...
The ruin of all witches : life and death in the New World
Gaskill, Malcolm
Paper Book
A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. "The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms...
Book and dagger : how scholars and librarians became the unlikely spies of World War II
Graham, Elyse
Paper Book
The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the war At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today's CIA, was...
The Wager : a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager...
The anxious generation : how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness
Haidt, Jonathan
Paper Book
THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold * A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech--and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood....
Wise gals : the spies who built the CIA and changed the future of espionage
Holt, Nathalia
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls comes the never-before-told story of a small cadre of influential female spies in the precarious early days of the CIA--women who helped create the template for cutting-edge espionage (and blazed new paths...
Spying on the South : an odyssey across the American divide
Horwitz, Tony
Paper Book
The New York Times-bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz.   With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic...
How we fight for our lives : a memoir
Jones, Saeed
Paper Book
From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives--winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award--is a "moving, bracingly honest memoir" (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power. One of the best...
Empire of pain : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From...
The art and science of connection : why social health is the missing key to living longer, healthier, and happier
Killam, Kasley
Paper Book
2025 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS GOLD WINNER * 2024 LIVING NOW BOOK AWARDS GOLD MEDAL WINNER * HARVARD PUBLIC HEALTH MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF 2024 * ASPEN IDEAS RECOMMENDED HEALTH BOOK OF 2024 A groundbreaking redefinition of what it means to be healthy that introduces the need for social health-...
Hidden Valley Road :
Kolker, Robert
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY * The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in...
Class : a memoir
Land, Stephanie
Paper Book
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick "Raw and inspiring." --People "Land is not just exploring her own story, but also the larger implications of what it means to fall between the cracks of American capitalism." --The New...
The demon of unrest : a saga of hubris, heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War
Larson, Erik
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this "riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult" (Los Angeles Times). ...
The splendid and the vile : a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the blitz
Larson, Erik
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz--an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of...
The ride of her life : the true story of a woman, her horse, and their last-chance journey across America
Letts, Elizabeth
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER .The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion presents a "heartwarming and engaging folk-hero biography" (Kirkus Reviews) of a woman who fulfilled her lifelong wish to see the Pacific Ocean by riding...
Hitler's furies : German women in the Nazi killing fields
Lower, Wendy.
Paper Book
Wendy Lower's stunning account of the role of German women on the World War II Nazi eastern front powerfully revises history, proving that we have ignored the reality of women's participation in the Holocaust, including as brutal killers. The long-held picture of German women holding down the home...
Selling the dream : the billion-dollar industry bankrupting Americans
Marie, Jane (Journalist)
Paper Book
Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class. We've all heard of Amway, Mary...
The pioneers : the heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west
McCullough, David G.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal)--the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who...
The sum of us :
McGhee, Heather C.,
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * One of today's most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone--not just for people of...
The Amish wife : unraveling the lies, secrets, and conspiracy that let a killer go free
Olsen, Gregg
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author Gregg Olsen solves a murder among the Amish and reveals the conspiracy to keep it a secret in a heartbreaking and horrifying true-crime story. In 1977, in an Ohio Amish community, pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman...
Fuzz : when nature breaks the law
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are...
When women ran Fifth Avenue : glamour and power at the dawn of American fashion
Satow, Julie
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them, from the award-winning author of The Plaza. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue, Smithsonian, New York Post,...
Brave the wild river : the untold story of two women who mapped the botany of the Grand Canyon
Sevigny, Melissa L.
Paper Book
In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most...
Flee north : a forgotten hero and the fight for freedom in slavery's borderland
Shane, Scott
Paper Book
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and...
Heartland : a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on Earth
Smarsh, Sarah
Paper Book
*Finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for...
The gatekeeper : Missy LeHand, FDR, and the untold story of the partnership that defined a presidency
Smith, Kathryn
Paper Book
The first biography of arguably the most influential member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand, FDR's de facto chief of staff, who has been misrepresented, mischaracterized, and overlooked throughout history...until now. Widely considered the first...
Hands of time : a watchmaker's history
Struthers, Rebecca
Paper Book
"A hugely entertaining achievement." -Esquire "An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." - Wall Street Journal "As impeccably crafted and precisely...
Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis
Vance, J. D.
Paper Book
Hillbilly Elegy recounts Vice President J.D. Vance's powerful origin story... From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as the Vice President of the United States, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing...
One day : the extraordinary story of an ordinary 24 hours in America
Weingarten, Gene
Paper Book
A journalist pulls a random day in history from a hat to see if he can make a worthwhile news story from what happened. The result is One Day, a deeply illuminating and affecting exploration of the quiet dramas and human interaction that make a seemingly insignificant day - December 28th, 1986 -...
Master slave husband wife : an epic journey from slavery to freedom
Woo, Ilyon
Paper Book
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography "A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and...
Anansi's gold : the man who looted the west, outfoxed Washington, and swindled the world
Yeebo, Yepoka
Paper Book
"Catch Me if You Can meets Coming to America in this epic tale of one of the greatest scammers of all time."-NPR Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize * A New York Times Notable Book of the Year * A New Yorker, NPR, Newsweek...
Find this list online

https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/525.859/list/4579

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.