Adult Nonfiction

Cooper, Anderson and Gloria Vanderbilt.The Rainbow Comes and Goes.Harper, 2016.

Anderson Cooper was busy with his career as a journalist when his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, suffered her first serious illness at the age of ninety-one. After that experience, he decided to spend more quality time with her. This book follows a year-long conversation between mother and son discussing family history, personal tragedies and triumphs.

Heti, Sheila, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton.Women in Clothes.Blue Rider Press, 2014.

A conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities— famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.

Knisley, Lucy.Displacement: A Travelogue.Fantagraphics Books, 2015.

Displacementis Lucy Knisley’s graphic memoir of her experiences traveling with her aging grandparents on a cruise. Knisley explores her frustrations and fears while taking care of her grandparents and coming to terms with their mortality. The graphic novel looks at her family history, using her grandfather’s WWII memoir as a guide.

Lightman, Alan.Screening Room: A Memoir of the South.Pantheon Books, 2015.

Alan Lightman's grandfather, M.A. Lightman, was the family's undisputed patriarch. It was his movie theater empire that catapulted the Lightmans, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, to prominence in the South; his triumphs both galvanized and paralyzed his descendants. In this evocative personal history, the author chronicles his return to Memphis and the stifling home he was so eager to flee forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts retell old stories, Alan finds himself reconsidering long-held beliefs about his larger-than-life grandfather and his quiet, inscrutable father.

Shapiro, Bill and Naomi Wax.What We Keep: 150 People Share the One Object that Brings Them Joy, Magic, and Meaning.Running Press Adult, 2018.

Best-selling author and former editor-in-chief of LIFE magazine, Bill Shapiro shares the stories of 150 objects that are each deeply personal to their owners. The interviews range from renowned authors to everyday individuals. The stories are paired with photographs of the object and the interviewee.