SEVEN “CELEBRITY” FOSSILS provide an intriguing window into the world of paleoanthropology. Engaging writing! B PLUS

SEVEN SKELETONS
Viking
2016

INTENSELY READABLE HISTORY of four lives linked by the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. Brilliant, wise. B PLUS

EAST WEST STREET: ON THE ORIGINS OF “GENOCIDE” AND “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY”
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
2016

A LOVE LETTER TO LATIN, and to learning new things after fifty, is also a charmingly frank memoir. B PLUS

LIVING WITH A DEAD LANGUAGE: MY ROMANCE WITH LATIN
Penguin Publishing Group
2016

AN UNFLINCHINGLY HONEST MEMOIR of life with quadriplegia combines raw personal experience, cultural theory. A MINUS

A BODY, UNDONE : LIVING ON AFTER GREAT PAIN
New York University Press
2016

A HISTORY OF PSYCHEDELIC DRUG culture (and the larger counterculture) eccentrically orbits The Grateful Dead. B PLUS

HEADS
Da Capo Press
2016

A STINT IN “EX-GAY” THERAPY, described with wrenching honesty and a wealth of compassion. B PLUS

BOY ERASED
Penguin Publishing Group
2016

CANDID, SMART MEMOIR in essays from a writer/actor/mom has a lot of laughs, a few “yikes!” moments. SOLID B

MISS FORTUNE: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON HAVING IT ALL FROM SOMEONE WHO IS NOT OKAY
Penguin Publishing Group
2016

FASCINATING, THOUGHTFUL MEMOIR of a childhood spent in the Transcendental Meditation community in Iowa. B PLUS

GREETINGS FROM UTOPIA PARK: SURVIVING A TRANSCENDENT CHILDHOOD
HarperCollins
2016

A FOOD LOVER’S MEMOIR of his celiac diagnosis, its impact on his life. Thoughtful if a bit over-impassioned. SOLID B

IN MEMORY OF BREAD
Clarkson Potter Publishers
2016

TERRIFYING TEXAS MURDERS of the 1880s, brilliantly revisited by an incomparable true-crime writer. B PLUS

THE MIDNIGHT ASSASSIN
Henry Holt & Company
2016