Into Thin Air is an exciting nonfiction recount of the 1996 Mt. Everest Disaster. Author and protagonist Jon Krakauer is a mountain climber and magazine writer. Krakauer wants to write an article about the commercialization of Mt. Everest, and he joins an expedition team that wants to make it to Everest’s summit. The team is faced with the expected problems of being at high altitudes, such as cold weather and a lack of oxygen.
One of the greatest scientific discoveries has been made - on the brink of a war. It’s 1938, and chemist Otto Hahn has discovered that neutrons, at a high enough speed, can cause uranium atoms to split apart, releasing a huge amount of energy. The idea of an atomic bomb slowly falls into place and spreads like lightning, as Germany begins its campaign across Europe. As Germany begins collecting uranium, the rest of the world needs to catch up and create their own atomic bombs. Renowned scientists coalesce in Los Alamos, researching the atomic bomb, even with spies in their midst.
In this true story, a white man, journalist John Howard Griffin, decides to become a Negro to see how it feels like. At the beginning of the book, he meets with his friend and tells him his idea. Regardless of what others thought, John goes to New Orleans and consults with doctors. He changes his skin color to see how one would treat a negro. However, he learns that some still treat black men without equality. John decides to change that.
In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates discusses how at this point, climate change is unavoidable; too much time was not used to solve the climate change crisis, so wildfires, rising sea levels, increased storms for some and droughts for others are inevitable now and in the future. However, the worst consequences of climate change are avoidable, just so long as every country can achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Although the world is far from net-zero emissions, Gates mentions the current t
Just Mercy is a first-person account of Bryan Stevenson, a black lawyer, who helps prisoners that did not receive fair trials as part of a non-profit organization. Stevenson writes about various clients that he has worked for over the years and how the justice system has failed them.
The Republican War on Science is a nonfiction novel detailing the falsification of scientific evidence by the Republican Party written by Washington Post reporter Chris Mooney. This book relays several examples of Republicans falsifying, hiding, or cherry-picking scientific information to promote their own purposes, most of which come from the Bush administration. As expected, this book is clearly biased, but that didn’t make the information any less intriguing.
The Battle for Room 314 by Ed Boland, published in 2016, tells the compelling story of his year teaching in an inner-city high school in New York City. As a young man, Boland worked for Project Advance, a non-profit working to place low-income, inner-city students in elite boarding schools and eventually Ivy League universities; however, he begins to feel unfulfilled and wants to widen his impact to help more deserving students.
A must-read for any history fans, Killing the SS by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard shows the hunt to find the worst war criminals in the world and the race against time to bring them to justice. Dugard and O’Reilly bring you back to the end of WWII, following the stories of multiple “Nazi Hunters” who devoted their lives to catching these immoral individuals.
John Urschel played professional football and is completing his Ph.D. at Harvard University in Mathematics. This memoir reveals John’s challenges of living with divorced parents, trying to become a math major and earning a Ph.D., and making it to the National Football League. Mr. Urschel’s biography is heart-warming and shows the ups and downs of his journey of making it to the NFL and earning a Ph.D. Urschel was interested in math at a very young age and loved solving math problems. It wasn’t until later in middle school that Urschel became interested in football.
Free Lunch is an autobiography by Rex Ogle, following him through the 6th grade being a kid from an under-privileged, abuse home in a wealthy school district. He's living with his half baby brother, his stepdad, and his mother. His mom puts him on the free lunch program at school and he's confused, but above all, embarrassed.
