It isn’t nonfiction, but I think most students would be totally engrossed by Eggers’ The Circle. I have mixed feelings about the book as a whole (one-dimensional characters), but it’s a good read and really raises great questions about social media etc. Also links nicely to the current passion for dystopian fiction.

Amy, for students, Devil in the White City is entirely boggy in the parts about the building. They love the serial killer stuff but the rest is boring for them (and me).

I am the opposite. I thought the story of the fair was competently done, but the serial killer stuff was pedestrian and relied more on "Oh, the horror" than actual research. Also, the two stories needed to be integrated more. There's a lot he could have said about the economic conditions of 1893 (severe depression) and the forces that made the victims vulnerable.

Do not get me started on the Eurocentric nonsense that is Guns, Germs and Steel.

The Poisoner's Handbook is a brisk read that not only has lurid crimes but also tells a good story about the rise of modern CSI and the impact a few individuals had on it.

I was charmed by The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, And Other Ecological Anachronisms. I'm frequently irritated by having too much of the writer in modern science books, but Barlow does a great job of mixing science and her own amateur naturalist experiments. She feeds local animals fruits she suspects evolved for megafauna and sees whether they disperse the seeds. She takes things like avocados and osage oranges to museums to see if fossilized jaws could chomp on them.

I think David McCullough is one the best of contemporary historians. I confess a fondness for his early stuff. I'd think The Johnstown Flood would certainly keep students' attention, and it has many elements that apply today: the rise of disaster journalism, the arrogance of the rich, misplaced faith in experts and so on.

My personal campaign is to get everyone to read The Education of Henry Adams, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery and Han Zinsser's Rats, Lice and History. My success to date has been limited.

I've been wanting to read The Worst Hard Time, too, about the Dust Bowl. I bought it for Kindle ages ago on sale and just haven't started it yet.

Rats, Lice, and History sounds sort of cool, actually. I know there was another really popular book about rats a few years back, although I can't remember the title. And I really want to read Stiff.

Kat, have you tried Amy John McPhee?

I loved the parts of The Worst Hard Time but not all of it. Definitely incredible and useful especially if you are teaching Grapes of Wrath.

I have the Poisoner's Handbook in my TBR. But I'm partway through 2 other books I need to finish first.

consuela, I read Oranges and Assembling California. I liked both well enough, but not to teach.

I love all the recs, though.

Some of the books on the purchase list are there at requests from other teachers.

We have a fair amount of nonfiction (some Krakauer, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Outliers, some Oliver Sachs, Nickel and Dimed, Freakonomics, The Working Poor, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Breaking Through, Stiff, Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, In Cold Blood) I'm trying to supplement with other stuff I want to teach or others do.

consuela, I read Oranges and Assembling California. I liked both well enough, but not to teach.

I love all the recs, though.

Some of the books on the purchase list are there at requests from other teachers.

We have a fair amount of nonfiction (some Krakauer, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Outliers, some Oliver Sachs, Nickel and Dimed, Freakonomics, The Working Poor, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Breaking Through, Stiff, Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, In Cold Blood) I'm trying to supplement with other stuff I want to teach or others do.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants is a recent one. It had good parts, but it was too much author, not enough rat science.

The Ghost Map, about tracing the origin of a cholera outbreak in London, might appeal to students. Unfortunately, at the end the author has an attack of faux sociology and wants to come up with some sort of cosmic theory about cities and human interactions.

I too keep meaning to read The Worst Hard Time. We lived in the heart of Dust Bowl territory for a year, and the Ken Burns special was full of places I knew.

Oh, The Ghost Map! That was another one I wanted to read.

The special for The Worst Hard Time was just mesmerizing.

I love Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Custer Died for Your Sins.

For biology, there's also Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.

Has anyone read Mikal Gilmore's brilliant Shot through the Heart?

"I have a story to tell. It is a story of murder told from inside the house where murder is born. It is the house where I grew up, a house that, in some ways, I have never been able to leave."