The National Book Foundation has revealed its Longlist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Finalists will be revealed on Oct. 14.
Below, we’ve collected free samples of all the books on the longlist for your reading pleasure after the jump. The finalists will be announced on Oct. 14. Here’s more from the release:
Among the Nonfiction Longlist are several that evoke the writer’s place and role in the exploration of ideas, and books that explore the natural environment. The authors are journalists, novelists, historians, poets, and naturalists. Included are a 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and a 1983 National Book Award Finalist for First Novel. All ten are appearing on the National Book Awards Nonfiction list for the first time.
Free Samples of the 2015 Longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction
- Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History (Crown/Penguin Random House)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel and Grau/Penguin Random House)
- Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press)
- Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group)
- Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (Atria/Simon and Schuster)
- Susanna Moore, Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan)
- Michael Paterniti, Love and Other Ways of Dying (The Dial Press/Penguin Random House)
- Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt and Company/Macmillan)
- Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light: A Memoir (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Michael White, Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir (Persea Books)