New Non-Fiction eBooks

How's this for a timely book? In Debt, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods--that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

This revelatory and spellbinding examination of the covert history Area 51, the military base that officially does not exist, has been flying off the shelves, and with good reason. It contains the never before told story of a place many of us have heard of only in connection to alleged UFO sightings and conspiracy theories -- but this version is chillingly investigative.

Sarah Vowell continues her tour of the ambiguities of our national history with Unfamiliar Fishes, the story of the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. As much a breezy nutshell history of Western encounters with Hawaiian culture as it is a memoir, Vowell's quirky new book proves yet again just how welcome her work is to our understanding of American history.

This sumptuous and candid chef memoir satisfies like an exhilarating and earthy ragout. Hamilton is the owner of the celebrated East Village restaurant Prune -- her childhood nickname given by her boundary-lacking mother, from whom she learned the art of brasserie cooking. The memoir chronicles her decade spent working in high-volume warehouse catering kitchens, wielding a spatula through her undergrad and MFA-earning years, all while journaling religiously and astutely. With her "Protestant dishwasher work ethic," Hamilton unclogs grease traps, butchers lambs and works the brunch shift over hot burners at nine months pregnant. This memoir is a resonant, salty, working-class addition to the genre of hash-slinger confessional. -KD

David Brooks tells the story of how success happens, why we behave the way we do and why we need the things we seek with all the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation. At once broad in scope and intimately human in its depiction of people and relationships, The Social Animal is an insightful and enlightening examination of who we are and why.

Telegraphy, Morse code, the drum language of the Congo, genetics, thermodynamics, language, entropy, cybernetics, quantum physics... a tour of the index of James Gleick's latest work of popular science writing reveals just how ubiquitous and inescapable the concept of information has become. A must-read for anyone interested in understanding the currents of our time, Gleick's work is already being hailed as a classic. -SS

The Pulitzer Prize winning Emperor of All Maladies is expertly researched, clearly narrated, and hopeful, if realistic. It's everything you hope for in a non-fiction narrative. For those not interested at first glance, I just have to say that this is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I've read in years. A page-turner chock full of scientists, discovery, failure, "victims," genomics, politics, moral quandaries and a persistently evasive disease that will, alas, afflict one in three American women and one in two American men in their lifetimes. Knowledge is power, right? Get your knowledge here.