5 Nonfiction Titles to Look for this May

With all of the great Fiction coming out this month -- we've already highlighted ten titles this month in two separate posts -- I really didn't think I'd have time for a post on Nonfiction as well. But then, well, there was lots of great Nonfiction being published this month too, so I couldn't leave it out. I don't know about you but my reading list is getting pretty long now and here are a few more that may get added to it.

I Invented the Modern Age: the rise of Henry Ford (M)
by Richard Snow (May 14).

With all the changes that have happened in the American automotive industry over the last few years, it seems a fitting time to revisit the life of Henry Ford. I've seen more than one review of this book referring to it as highly readable: a thoughtful and well crafted look at the life of a man who greatly influenced the development of modern western culture. Publisher's Weekly said "Snow's portrait is of a man equally easy to admire and disdain, but impossible to dismiss."

The Outsider: a memoir (M)
by Jimmy Connors (May 14)

Tennis Anyone? American tennis great Connors played against the big names of the 1970s and 80s, winning 8 Grand Slam singles titles. He's been out of the limelight for awhile but returns now with this tell all memoir. "Jimmy Connors is a working-man's hero, a people's champion who could tear the cover off a tennis ball, just as he tore the cover of country-club gentility off his sport. A renegade from the wrong side of the St. Louis tracks, Connors broke the rules with a radically aggressive style of play and bad boy antics that turned his matches into entertaining prizefights. In 1974 alone, he won 95 out of 99 matches, all of them while wearing the same white shorts he washed in the sink of his hotel bathrooms. In The Outsider, Connors tells the complete, uncensored story of his life and career, setting the record straight about his formidable mother, Gloria; his very public romances; and his famous opponents. Connors reveals how his issues with obsessive-compulsive disorder, dyslexia, gambling, and women at various times threatened to derail his career. The Outsider is a grand slam of a memoir written by a man once again at the top of his game, as feisty, unvarnished, and defiant as ever."

Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein: colossal mistakes by great scientists that changed our understanding of life and the universe (M)
by Mario Livio (May 14).

The title of this book gives a pretty good sense of the topic, and that's the appeal to me: the idea of learning from great mistakes. Livio is previously the author of The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry.

Brotherhood (M)
by Deepak and Sanjiv Chopra (May 21).

A story of family, culture and success from two well known experts: sure to grab attention from fans of each. "Deepak and Sanjiv Chopra ... were born in the ferment of liberated India after 1947, as an age-old culture reinvented its future. For the young, this meant looking to the West. The Chopra brothers were among the most eager and ambitious of the new generation. In the 1970s, they each emigrated to America to make a new life. Both faced tough obstacles: While Deepak encountered resistance from Western-trained doctors over what he called the mind-body connection, Sanjiv struggled to reconcile the beliefs of his birthplace with those of his new home. Eventually, each brother became convinced that America was the right place to build a life, and the Chopras went on to great achievements..."

Last Train to Zona Verde (M)
by Paul Theroux (May 21).

Renowned travel writer Theroux returns with a new book that takes readers deep into Africa and a continuation of the journey recounted in his 2003 book Dark Star Safari. In the first title he detailed a trip from Cairo to Cape Town via the "right-hand" of Africa, in this latest he explores the "left-hand" beginning in Cape Town and travelling to Angola. Publishers Weekly said "Theroux's prose is as vividly descriptive and atmospheric as ever": a must read for fans of thoughtful travel literature.