August’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction

Peter Ames Carlin’s Tonight in Jungleland, Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin, and Scott Anderson’s King of Kings all feature among August’s best reviewed nonfiction titles.

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

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1. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson
(Doubleday)

9 Rave • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed

“This is an exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling. Anderson leavens his sweeping and complex chronicle with rich character portraits.”

–Mark Bowden (The New York Times Book Review)

2. Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin
(Doubleday)

10 Rave

“Carlin revisits those pivotal years with a fan’s fervor and a journalist’s attention to detail … Like a director’s cut, Tonight in Jungleland expands on, updates and sometimes revises his researches into Springsteen’s self-invention in the 1970s … Carlin’s prose heightens the drama of the album’s construction … Vividly summons the album’s struggle and its spirit.”

–Jon Parles (The New York Times Book Review)

3. The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-Of-The-Century America by David Baron
(Liveright)

7 Rave • 4 Positive

“[A] romp … Baron skillfully builds tension around the house of cards Lowell creates. How and when everything will come tumbling down is a powerful narrative driver … Baron meticulously pieces all of this together … Prepare to be dazzled.”

–Maren Longbella (The Star Tribune)

4. A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews
(Bloomsbury)

9 Rave

“A layered confrontation with the deaths, grief, and guilt that have animated her work for nearly 30 years, providing haunting insights on how to live after tragic loss … Without the constraints of the novel—namely the need to advance a plot—Toews lets her mind loose on the page … Discursive … The reader bobs along in the author’s stream of consciousness, riding crests of despair, anger, and hilarity as Toews assembles the shards of her past to investigate her will to write, which is deeply entwined with her will to live.”

–Kristen Martin (The Atlantic)

5. Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

8 Rave • 1 Positive
Read an interview with Nicholas Boggs here

“Sensational … Boggs handles all of this with a commanding, sure-footed authority and comprehensiveness, subtle and solemn at once, that dazzles and awes. The churn and swirl of Baldwin’s life is rendered emotionally rational as Boggs expertly details how Baldwin’s personal life pervades his work.”

–Charles M. Blow (The New York Times Book Review)