April’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower Than the Angels, Dan Nadel’s Crumb, and Elaine Pagels’ Miracles and Wonder all feature among the best reviewed nonfiction titles of the month.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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1. Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch
(Viking)

6 Rave • 7 Positive
Read an excerpt from Lower Than the Angels here

“A superb history of Christianity’s 2,000-year relationship with our animal instincts … Masterly … MacCulloch deals candidly with the clumsy and often cruel way in which churches in the post-second world war period dragged their feet on contraception, gay and lesbian rights and the ordination of women.”

–Kathryn Hughes (The Guardian)

2. Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance by Joe Dunthorne
(Scribner)

6 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“By acknowledging the form’s limitations, Dunthorne’s iteration rises to something genuinely, searingly meaningful … Poignant … In Dunthorne’s hands, these disparate moments of bearing witness—sometimes in the most literal way—add up to a remarkable, strange and complicated story, full of the shame and humor a lesser memoir might have avoided.”

–Emma Brockes (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life by Dan Nadel
(Scribner)

6 Rave • 3 Positive

“A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever read. He’s latched onto a fascinating and complicated figure, which helps … Nadel…is an instinctive storyteller, one with a command of the facts and a relaxed tone that also happens to be grainy, penetrating, interested in everything, alive … There are a lot of road trips in this biography … Nadel is a canny visual reader of comics, and he traces Crumb’s influence on a long line of cartoonists.”

–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)

4. Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels
(Doubleday)

4 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Some of the passages in this illuminating and essential work are tough going … But it’s worthwhile hanging in: As the chapters unfold, the plot thickens … I realized that while I knew a great deal more about the origins of Christianity than when I began, the mystery of Jesus himself had deepened. Perhaps that’s how it’s meant to be. But the moral of the story is clear: Christ’s story is an iconic tale of hope emerging from darkness.”

–Leigh Haber (The Los Angeles Times)

5. Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara
(Pantheon)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Vara hasn’t lost her journalist edge, as she shows throughout this book … Searches is as discomfiting as it is entertaining, with Vara exercising playful technique as a writer while also laying down dire warnings about a tech-dominated future. It’s also a clear reminder that, at least for now, nothing can make language sing like a gifted human mind.”

–Hannah Bae (The San Francisco Chronicle)