Winner Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
SOLA chronicles the true story of a young woman’s plunge from her pleasant narrow life into a rich foreign continent brimming with Panpipe-playing Zen masters, nighttime motorboat rides redlining through the jungle, hikes to Inca ruins and Patagonian glaciers, witches, mummies, goddesses, Brazilian bikinis, and a snow-covered volcano to climb -- accidentally. At the center of it all stands a quirky slightly-unstable surf guru who bends her mind with insightful wacky tidbits of wisdom and ultimately prompts the question: Can you ever go home again?
Two sisters face identical nightmares when their sons are diagnosed with the same leukemia.
The boys’ fight to survive coincides with perhaps the most miraculous medical story of the twentieth century. When doctors adopted a revolutionary approach to clinical trials, they not only developed a cure for childhood leukemia, they established the foundation of chemotherapy treatment as it is known today.
In Trials, Bradley uses the personal journals of his wife and her sister to guide readers though a world where toxic, experimental treatments were given to children by doctors who wondered at times if they were doing more harm than good. More than one hundred interviews with physicians, nurses, and parents of children with cancer further illuminate this story. Trials will leave you wondering, “Could I do that? Do I have that kind of courage?”
A most delightful, sometimes painful, always truthful picture of the realities of our near inevitable future, yours’ and mine, in a Nursing Home. A picture painted with overwhelming love and clarity in the colors of individuals for whom these realities are already present… or past. A must read for anyone over seventeen as insight can transform the present, rewrite the future. “Polka-Dot Bath” stands courageously alone as it opens our societal closet, shedding a glaring yet hopeful light on the dusty shelves of whispered secrets long, and often deliberately, tucked away so as not to draw attention.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
In 1988, a young, mid-level employee named Art Bell pitched a novel concept—a television channel focused 100% on just one thing: comedy—to the chairman of HBO. The station that would soon become Comedy Central, with celebrated programs like South Park, Chapelle’s Show, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, was born.
Constant Comedy takes readers behind the scenes into the comedy startup on its way to becoming one of the most successful and creative purveyors of popular culture in the United States. From disastrous pitch meetings with comedians to the discovery of talents like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, this intimate biography peers behind the curtain and reveals what it’s really like to work, struggle, and ultimately succeed at the cutting edge of show business.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
China is one of the world’s leading producers and consumers of liquor, with alcohol infusing all aspects of its culture, from religion and literature to business and warfare. Yet to the outside world, China’s most famous spirit, baijiu, remains a mystery. This is about to change, as baijiu is now being served in cocktail bars beyond its borders.
Drunk in China follows Derek Sandhaus’s journey of discovery into the world’s oldest drinking culture. He travels throughout the country and around the globe to meet with distillers, brewers, snake-oil salesmen, archaeologists, and ordinary drinkers. He examines the many ways in which alcohol has shaped Chinese society and its rituals. He visits production floors, karaoke parlors, hotpot joints, and speakeasies. Along the way he uncovers a tradition spanning more than nine thousand years and explores how recent economic and political developments have conspired to push Chinese alcohol beyond the nation’s borders for the first time. As Chinese society becomes increasingly international, its drinking culture must also adapt to the times. Can the West also adapt and clink glasses with China? Read Drunk in China and find out.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
Are you my enemy? Am I yours?
Violent stories surround us. Brutal beginnings, horror-filled middles, despair-inducing endings. We need better stories: stories forged in the furnace of conflict, narratives that kindle compassion and ignite hope. In the pages of I Am Not Your Enemy, writer Michael T. McRay visits divided regions of the world and interviews activists, peacebuilders, former combatants, and clergy members about their personal stories of conflict, justice, and reconciliation. In Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, he hears from grieving parents who comfort each other across enemy lines, a woman who meets her father's killer, and a young man who uses theater to counter the oppression of his people.
In a time of heightened alienation and fear, McRay offers true, sacred stories of reconciliation and justice, asking what they can teach us about our own divided states. Must violence be met with violence? Is my belonging complete only when I take away yours? Will more guns, more walls, more weapons keep us safe?
We need stories that cultivate empathy and tell the truth. We need stories to save us from our fear.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
Shortly after Teresa gave birth to her second son, Nick, he was diagnosed with Down syndrome. Early infant and child intervention helped Nick reach developmental milestones in his own time. But there was more to come when Nick hit third grade. A wave of fire alarm-pulling along with other serious and dangerous behaviors signaled that this was something more than just Down syndrome.
At last, a book that takes a deep dive into the complexities that families face raising a child with a dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism (DS-ASD) and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.
A New Course is a hybrid of a memoir combined with valuable lessons following each chapter and in the appendix. It’s a must read for families, school faculty, therapists, physicians, and support groups wanting to understand a parent’s perspective.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
I’m So Glad You’re Here is the story of a family disrupted by ramifications of a father’s mental illness. The memoir opens with a riveting account of Gay, age eighteen, witnessing her father being bound in a straitjacket and carried out of the house on a stretcher. The trauma she experiences escalates when, after her father has had electroshock treatments at a state mental hospital, her parents leave her in a college dorm room and move from Massachusetts to Florida without her. She feels abandoned. Both her parents have gone missing.
Decades later, when Gay and her three much-older siblings show up for their father’s funeral, she witnesses her sundered family’s inability to gather together. Eventually, she is diagnosed with PTSD of abandonment and treated with EMDR therapy—and finally begins to heal. Poignant and powerful, I’m So Glad You’re Here is Gay’s exploration of the idea that while the wounds we carry from growing up in fractured families stay with us, they do not have to control us—a reflective journey that will inspire readers to think about their own relational lives.
Finalist Narrative Non-Fiction The 2020 Best Book Awards
In 1999, Juliet Cutler leaves the United States to teach at the first school for Maasai girls in East Africa. Captivated by the stories of young Maasai women determined to get an education in the midst of a culture caught between the past and the future, she seeks to empower and support her students as they struggle to define their own fates.
Cutler soon learns that behind their shy smiles and timid facades, her Maasai students are much stronger than they appear. For them, adolescence requires navigating a risky world of forced marriages, rape, and genital cutting, all in the midst of a culture grappling with globalization. In the face of these challenges, these young women believe education offers hope, and so, against all odds, they set off alone—traveling hundreds of miles and even forsaking their families—simply to go to school.
