10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2013

One of the problems with recruiting intelligent, creative people to your fledgling religion is that they may one day revolt and do their best to take you down. Wright is hardly the first writer to negatively detail the history of, and alleged abuses committed by, the Church of Scientology, the religion established by sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard whose celebrity members include Tom Cruise and John Travolta. But he is the first to do so with such high-caliber ammunition, thanks to the cooperation of Crash director and former Scientologist Paul Haggis. The result is an engrossing read for anyone interested in the church — and an absolutely essential one for anyone thinking of joining it. —Clark Collis

Of Benjamin Franklin we know a great deal; of his sister Jane, very little. ”The facts of [her] life are hard to come by,” Lepore admits of her subject. ”Her obscurity is matched only by her brother’s fame. If he meant to be Everyman, she is everyone else.” Benjamin apprenticed with a printer; the equally bright Jane married at 15 and bore 12 children. Lepore’s remarkable book reveals an unseen side of Benjamin, but its real accomplishment lies in its depiction of the daily lives of 18th-century women. This is history as we never see it in glossy textbooks. —Tina Jordan

Min’s landmark 1994 memoir, Red Azalea — about growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution — unfolds almost like a terrifying dystopian novel. The Cooked Seed, her first memoir since, picks up after she immigrates to Chicago, where the stakes are no lower as she fights for a visa, learns English from Mister Rogers, claws her way out of a bad marriage, and tries to raise her daughter with an American spirit and a Chinese determination. It’s the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother wanted to be. Min’s story serves as both a love letter to her adopted country and a poignant wake-up call to Americans who take their freedoms for granted. —Stephan Lee

From the air, Greenland’s expanses of ice look like beautiful ”frothy meringue,” but in reality, the island is an Arctic wasteland coated with glaciers. In 1942 a U.S. military cargo plane flying over the country became disoriented, its pilots unable to distinguish between the sky and the edge of the ice cap — a condition known as ”flying in milk” — and crash-landed on the ice. After two aborted rescue missions, the surviving crew members had to fend for themselves for months. Zuckoff elegantly and expertly juxtaposes their tale with the modern-day recovery of the second rescue plane. —Tina Jordan

You might have heard Michael Paterniti’s The Telling Room called ”that book about cheese.” And yes, Paterniti devotes many rapturous sentences to extolling the glorious Páramo de Guzmán, a curiously sharp sheep’s-milk cheese from Spain’s Castile region. But really, it’s not so much a book for foodies as it is for people who love a great yarn. Paterniti joyfully sinks his teeth into the saga of Ambrosio Molinos, a larger-than-life cheese maker whose dairy concoction inspired small-town jealousy and a devastating betrayal that takes on the sweeping grandeur of myth. This story is all about a craftsman putting his heart and soul into his product — which applies not just to Molinos but to Paterniti as well. —Stephan Lee

When Charlie Cullen worked a shift, patients died. Lots of them, over the years. The reclusive nurse, it turned out, may have administered lethal injections to as many as 400 people, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history. Graeber’s account — seamlessly crafted from interviews with co-workers, families of the victims, the detectives straight out of a pulp novel who cracked the case, and even Cullen himself — goes way beyond standard serial-killer fare: It’s a scathing indictment of a greedy medical system that, wary of possible lawsuits, didn’t want to deal with a ”problem” employee like Cullen and just kept kicking him from one hospital to the next. —Tina Jordan

In 2003’s Dark Star Safari, Theroux chronicled his trip down through the eastern slice of Africa from Cairo to Cape Town. A decade later, he begins where he left off and completes the journey’s second leg, winding his way up the continent’s southwest coast. It’s all nice and sweet except that the trip is an unmitigated catastrophe. Theroux repeatedly encounters the same disheartening indicators of poverty, sickness, and social decay on his trek, and his vision of the land that birthed humanity is anything but rose-colored. With its urgent, anguished prose, Theroux’s travel writing isn’t meant to sell plane tickets but to reveal to you something you would never otherwise see. —Keith Staskiewicz

Mother-daughter memoirs are never hard to find, but this debut by Domenica Ruta is a dark, jagged gem. Kathi, the mother-monster who looms large over every page, would be a revelation to any writer in need of a fascinating character, but for Ruta, growing up with her was a very real nightmare. Among Kathi’s parenting choices: giving Ruta marijuana for Christmas, treating her headaches with Oxycontin, encouraging her to get pregnant in high school, selling drugs to pay for her top-tier education, and leaving her with a known pedophile. But Ruta cuts through the horror and chaos of her story with lucid insights, gorgeous writing, unexpected humor, and a glimmer of hope. —Stephan Lee

In his meticulously researched biography of choreographer and director Bob Fosse, Sam Wasson weaves an enthralling narrative of a mercurial life lived on a marquee. If you want juicy gossip on Chicago, Cabaret, or Fosse’s infamous sexual appetite, it’s all here. But it’s the little details of Fosse’s insecure side that really captivate, like his timid first days in dance school. Be you Broadway newbie or know-it-all, Wasson’s stories are mesmerizing. For the first time, it’s not Fosse’s dance steps that dazzle — it’s the beguiling man behind the moves. —Marc Snetiker

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans on Aug. 28, 2005, there were 244 patients alive at the city’s Memorial Medical Center. Five days later, 45 had died. What happened? Marshaling detail from hundreds of interviews — and raising critical questions about bioethics, race, class, and for-profit hospitals — Fink takes us through the storm and its aftermath hour by hour. The hospital, without power, was brutally hot and permeated with the stench of death and raw sewage. The staff said that those who died simply couldn’t survive such horrific conditions. But the Louisiana attorney general, believing that some patients had been euthanized, arrested a doctor and two nurses (all charges against them were later dropped). ”It is hard for any of us to know how we would act under such terrible pressure,” writes Fink. When you finish her riveting account, though, you’ll know exactly what happened at Memorial — and why. —Tina Jordan