Non-Fiction Book Club meets at 6:30 PM the first Thursday of every month. The meetings are free and open to the public. Copies of books up for discussion are available to borrow from the Ground Floor Check Out Desk (first come first serve). For more information about this group please contact Sean Thibodeau, Coordinator of Community Planning, at sthibodeau@LowellLibrary.org or 978-674-1542.
Upcoming Discussions:
- August 5, 2021 – American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
- September 2, 2021 – Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed it to the World by Lesley M.M. Blume
Past Reads
2021
- July – Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Costal South Africa – Matthew Galvin Frank
- June – Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World – Peter Wohlleben
- May – Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter by Kerri K. Greenridge
- April – My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir
- March – How to Be Less Stupid About Race by Crystal M. Fleming
- February – The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times by Christopher De Bellaigue
- January – Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
2020
- December – Man’s Search for Meaning by Vicktor Frankl
- November – Lawrence In Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
- October – Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrass Tyson
- September – The Library Book by Susan Orlean
- August – White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
- July – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
- June – Don’t Make Me Pull Over: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip by Richard Ratay
- May – Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
- April – Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
- March – I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
- February – The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú
- January – Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
2019
- December – On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
- November – Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Element of Our Lives by Jane Brox
- October – The World in A Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization by Vince Beiser
- September – Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood by Maureen Stanton
- August – The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea by Jack E. Davis
- July – no meeting
- June – New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren
- May – Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
- April – Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival by Bernd Heinrich
- March – Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence by Carol Berkin
- February – H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
- January – A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
2018
- December – The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
- November – The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
- October – One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together by Amy Bass
- September – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- August – Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
- July – no meeting
- June – Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman
- May – Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgård
- April – Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America by Jay Atkinson
- March – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- February – Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
- January – meeting cancelled due to weather
2017
- December – The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- November –The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
- October – The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel (2017 Lowell Reads selection)
- September – Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James T. Patterson
- August – A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau
- July – The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox
- June – The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
- May – No meeting – Foundation Author Night Featuring Andre Dubus III
- April – The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
- March – Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson
- February – The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
- January – Book Talks
2016
- December – What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
- November – SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
- October – Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad by Eric Foner
- September – Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery (2016 Lowell Reads selection)
- August – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
- July – The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
- June – A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert ‘Believe It or Not” Ripley by Neal Thompson
- May – Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller
- April – The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail But Some Don’t by Nate Silver
- March – Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream by Bruce Watson
- February – Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War by Linda Hervieux
- January – How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
2015
- December – We Are Market Basket: The Story of the Unlikely Grassroots Movement that Saved a Beloved Business by Daniel Korschun and Grant Welker
- November – Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba…and then Lost it to the Revolution by T.J. English
- October – Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
- September – The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford
- August – The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821-61 by Brian Mitchell
- July – no meeting
- June – Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
- May – The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescure by Michael Tougias
- April – Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
- March – Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
- February – The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
- January – Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katheine Boo
2014
- December – The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century by Dr. Dickson Despommier
- November – The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
- October – The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
- September – Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre
- August – Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
- July – no meeting
- June – Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
- May – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
- April – New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore
- March – Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
- February – The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
- January – no meeting
2013
- December – The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
- November – The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
- October – A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- September – Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife
- August – Truman by David McCullough
- July – no meeting
- June – Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas
- May – no meeting
- April – Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
- March –Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
- February – The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
- January – Unfamiliar Fishesby Sarah Vowell
2012
- December – In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
- November – Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata & Jim Fingal
- October – Lost in Shangri-La: The True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff
- September –Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes
- August – Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater
- July – The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
- June – Common As Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership by Lewis Hyde
- May – Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen
- April – Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
- March – An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us by James Carroll
- February – The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- January –The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
2011
- December – Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire
- November – Just Kids by Patti Smith
- October – The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
- September – Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti
- August – Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
- July – Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puelo
- June – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- May – A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States by Jill Lepore
- April – The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
- March – Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
- February – Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
- January – Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn