September’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction

Jon Ronson’s The Castle, Emily Wilson’s Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead 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. The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men by Jon Ronson
(Riverhead)

7 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“This is his first book in 11 years and it’s as good a read as any of his previous big hits. A Jon Ronson book is never clear-cut, there are no neat finishes or satisfying conclusions. The Castle is no different. But like all of his writing, this book will open new insights for you, and it will linger long after you’ve closed the final chapter … A great attempt to unpick modern masculinity and to see what is prompting a real mental health crisis in men. Only when we understand it will we be able to address it.”

–Sinead Gibney (The Irish Times)

2. American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark
(Scribner)

8 Rave • 2 Positive

“I gobbled up every page … A bounteous cornucopia of midcentury sleaze and uneasily addictive for just that reason … As ugly and lurid as this saga is, American Scoundrel is consistently riveting, full of astonishing twists, ballsy plots, and eleventh-hour escapes from justice, like the legal version of the exploits of some Old West outlaw who is forever eluding the sheriffs by the skin of his teeth.”

–Laura Miller (Slate)

3. Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
(FSG)

8 Rave • 1 Positive
Read an excerpt from Said the Dead here

“[An] emotionally charged, genre-bending work of history and fiction … Blending documented history with imaginative reconstruction, Ní Ghríofa reverently portrays women deprived of freedom and agency, caught between a burgeoning women’s rights movement and the quagmire of paternalism.”

–Joelle Egan (Booklist)

4. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature by Emily Wilson
(Liveright)

8 Rave

“Wonderfully spirited … An expert in the ancient world, she nevertheless draws constantly (and productively) from contemporary culture … Wilson elegantly braids together close, line-by-line readings with larger arguments about how much is often at stake … You don’t even have to be particularly interested in ancient literature to enjoy this book, though by the time you finish it you probably will be. Wilson’s excitement for her subject is irrepressibly moving.”

–Jennifer Szalai (The New York Times)

5. Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre
(Crown)

7 Rave

“The British writer Ben Macintyre has made an illustrious career of taking dusty government archives and transforming them into propulsive nonfiction thrillers … He has done it again … The book’s last pages are its saddest.”

–Joseph Finer (The New York Times Book Review)