1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
By Charles C. Mann (Knopf, $30.50)
Notable nonfiction of 2011
A god’s-eye view of the world in 1493 that explores the economic and ecological shifts unleashed by Columbus’s discovery of America. — Gregory McNamee
AGE OF GREED: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
By Jeff Madrick (Knopf, $30)
Looking for the roots of our financial decline, Madrick narrates a history that brims with powerful men, ugly fights, infamous scandals, twists and turns, and, true to the book’s title, lots of shameless cupidity. — David Greenberg
ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
By Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera (Portfolio/Penguin, $32.95)
Although delivered in a measured tone, the revelations in this account of the events that helped bring on the financial crisis are nonetheless shocking. — Daniel Gross
AND SO IT GOES: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
By Charles J. Shields (Henry Holt, $30)
This unsparing but ultimately convincing portrait shows Vonnegut as alternately generous and abrasive, kind and petulant, sentimental and emotionally remote — a man defined by his contradictions and determined to have his say. Shields looks beyond Vonnegut’s status as cultural icon, showing us the gifted, all-too-human figure beneath. The result is a first-rate biography and a cogent work of social and cultural history. — William Sheehan
AND THE SHOW WENT ON: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris
By Alan Riding (Knopf, $28.95)
A vivid historical account of the Nazi era that plunges the reader into the French cultural scene of the 1930s and ’40s and shows us how real men and real women dealt with the devil. — Michael Dirda
A WORLD ON FIRE: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
By Amanda Foreman (Random House, $35)
An energetic, detailed tale of the British engagement with the American Civil War built around a huge cast of politicians, diplomats, soldiers and civilians in Great Britain, the United States and the Confederacy. — Gary W. Gallagher
BELIEVING IS SEEING: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
By Errol Morris (Penguin Press, $40)
A thought-provoking and detailed exploration of photography’s connection to the real world by the Academy Ward-winning filmmaker. — Michael S. Roth
By Joan Didion (Knopf, $25)
Didion’s companion volume to “The Year of Magical Thinking,” a memoir about the death of her daughter and her own diminished capacities, is a beautiful condolence note to humanity about some of the painful realities of the human condition. — Heller McAlpin
BOOMERANG: Travels in the New Third World
By Michael Lewis (Norton, $25.95)
In his latest book on the planet’s seemingly endless financial implosion, Lewis drops in on Iceland, Greece, Ireland and Germany and chronicles the messes they’ve made of their markets and money. — Carlos Lozada
By Jimmy Breslin (Viking, $19.95)
Breslin’s eloquent tale of the man who masterminded the integration of baseball. — Steven Levingston
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