Nonfiction Archives

7 min

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite

In 2011, the Korean American writer and teacher Suki Kim taught English to the sons of North Korea’s elite. This book explores her experiences there and, as she writes, “My goal was to write a book that humanizes North Koreans.”

6 min

Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir

Native Country of the Heart was the right book at the right time. It read like a personal letter from Cherríe Moraga to me, and I will be forever grateful…

3 min

Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy

Sycophancy (ˈsikəˌfan(t)sē) is the phenomenon known to most of us by alternative words or phrases such as sucking up, ass kissing, brown nosing, and bootlicking—words and terms that give sycophancy…

6 min

Tiger and Clay – Syria Fragments

“There are memories for which we can live more than a life time.” —Brother of Rana Abdulfattah Photographs over the past several years have shown migrants and refugees crossing the…

Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939

As the son of a WW II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, I grew up hearing stories from my Dad about his personal experiences in the war. I picked up Volker Ullrich's Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939 because I wanted to know more about Hitler the man: his roots, his formative years, his path to Führer, the choices he made along that path. "If anything, he will emerge as even more horrific."

17 min

No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems

Liu Xiaobo is the author of hundreds of essays and seventeen books. Most of the essays in No Enemies, No Hatred are from the period between 2004 and 2008, and reflect, in the service of freedom of speech, how words followed by action can change the direction of a country.

10 min

The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin was first published in 1963 during the emerging Civil Rights Movement and was an instant best seller. A brilliant social critic, public intellectual, and interpreter of racial myths and beliefs, Baldwin captured the zeitgeist of a country riven by race. Without prejudice or fear, he deconstructed the institution of racism in America.

13 min

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns is a magisterial book examining the Great Migration from the South that began during World War I and lasted until the 1970s.

7 min

The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

One of Di Giovanni’s themes in her book The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria is “the velocity of war,” the speed with which it descends upon a country, whether it be Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, or Syria. The book is based on Di Giovanni’s reporting from Syria during the six-month period, June–December 2012.

7 min

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

Ben Ehrenreich, on assignment for Harper’s magazine, went to Palestine’s West Bank in 2011 to report on Israel’s water war with Palestine. The Way to the Spring is based on his eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.

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