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."

The Poisoner's Handbook also has going for it educational resources from the American Experience film.

A million seconds on the Ghost Map. I love that book.

And Consuela is me. John McPhee's Annals of the Former World is the book I do not lend out. I just pet it now and then and tell everyone about it.

I loved Poisoner's Handbook. And everything Mary Roach has ever written.

Great Plague is a great book, but probably way too long for high school students unless you were doing a whole course just on the Spanish Flu.

In the Land of Invisible Women was not the best writing ever, but the story was good enough to carry it through. And it's a quick read.

I always liked Booker T Washington but recently some Tweeps I follow have had a passionate debate about the Washington vs. WEB DuBois that has me reconsidering some of his approaches. It would be interesting to read both and use them for compare/contrast exercises.