Nonfiction

• Gender Studies

  HEATHER HAVRILESKY: Elisabeth Badinter's The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women

• Food Writing

  KATE CHRISTENSEN: Tyler Cowen's An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies

• Biography

  SUZY HANSEN: Christopher de Bellaigue's Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

• Literary Studies

  GEORGE PROCHNIK: Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

• True Crime

  LUC SANTE: Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness

• Photography

  MICHAEL FRIED: Robert Adams's The Place We Live: A Retrospective Selection of Photographs, 1964–2009

• FILM

  NOAH ISENBERG: Miriam Bratu Hansen's Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno

• Environment

  CORAL DAVENPORT: Edward Humes's Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

• Cultural Studies

  J. HOBERMAN: Katerina Clark's Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941

• Humor

  PETER ARKLE: David Rees's How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants

• Memoir

  BRENT HAYES EDWARDS: Gil Scott-Heron's The Last Holiday

• Memoir

  PETER MANSEAU: Gideon Lewis-Kraus's A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

• Comics

  SARA MARCUS: Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama

• Film

  RHONDA LIEBERMAN: M. G. Lord's The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice

• Literature

  ATOSSA ARAXIA ABRAHAMIAN: Daniel Levin Becker's Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature