Falmouth Narrative Nonfiction Book Club

“Social history is, most elementally, food history. Jane Ziegelman had the great idea to zero in on one Lower East Side tenement building, and through it she has crafted a unique and aromatic narrative of New York’s immigrant culture: with bread in the oven, steam rising from pots, and the family gathering round.” — Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World

97 Orchard is a richly

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A memoir and portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao's Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom.

"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers, and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created...

"Were the D-Day landings saved from failure because of a lone secret agent? Agent Garbo tells the astonishing story of a self-made secret agent who matched wits with the best minds of the Third Reich -- and won. Juan Pujol was a nobody, a Barcelona poultry farmer determined to oppose the Nazis. Using only his gift for daring falsehoods, Pujol became Germany's most valued agent -- or double agent: it took four tries before the British believed he was...

In this true-life adventure, a team of rugby players survive a plane crash deep in the desolate, snow-covered Andes Mountains, where they must overcome incredible odds to stay alive.

The daughter of Alva Myrdal offers a portrait of the public triumphs and private difficulties of her mother's influential life. Myrdal was an advocate for women's rights and peace, an ambassador, Swedish cabinet minister and Nobel Prize winner. Her husband, Gunnar, was a noted economist, a Swedish minister and also a Nobel Prize winner.

Recounts the life and political achievements of the seventeenth-century feminist, noting her successful reform efforts in spite of the limitations placed on Puritan women and multiple charges of heresy and sedition.

"Tells the story of the energy boom's impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia--and one woman's transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist. Stacey Haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking industry comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors' mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based...

"The true story of the world's most prolific art thief--a spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years--in museums and cathedrals all over Europe--Breitwieser,...