Question 7 is a boundary-blurring work of nonfiction in which love, family history, war, and science are linked as a single chain. Moving from Japan's Inland Sea to a river in Tasmania, it shows how a life is shaped by chance and by the stories of others.

A chain of chance opens private history onto world history.

Fire Weather is reportage centered on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, tracing the links between the oil industry, climate change, and the relationship between fire and human society. By putting fire itself at the center, it layers the history behind the disaster with the pressures of the present.

The wildfire emerges as a knot tying together city, industry, and climate.

Super-Infinite is a biographical work of nonfiction built around the life and poetry of John Donne, where love, faith, politics, and loss are tightly intertwined. It recasts Donne as a figure who was both a scholar and a cleric, and it brings the modern force of his writing into sharp focus.

A biography that rereads the many-sided life of poet John Donne for contemporary readers.

Investigative reporting that reveals the impact of the rise of the Sackler family and their pharmaceutical companies on America's opioid crisis through internal documents, court records, and victim testimony. A detailed depiction of corporate responsibility, weak regulation, and the harm that wealth and power cause to society.

Investigative reporting that reveals the impact of the rise of the Sackler family and their pharmaceutical companies on America's opioid crisis through internal documents, court records, and victim testimony.

A biographical work that compiles the history of the Beatles in a chronological and essay style, depicting changes in their songs and activities, as well as the lives and historical backgrounds of each member, interwoven with anecdotes and criticism. This book provides an overview of the Beatles' position and influence in cultural history with a light touch.

A biographical work that compiles the history of the Beatles in a chronological and essay style, depicting changes in their songs and activities, as well as the lives and historical backgrounds of each member, interwoven with anecdotes and criticism.

A work of nonfiction that reconstructs the lives of the five women long remembered only as Jack the Ripper's victims. It foregrounds their own lives and social backgrounds rather than the killer's legend.

A famous murder case retold from the perspective of the women who were overlooked.

This historical nonfiction account reconstructs the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 through technical failure, Soviet secrecy, decisions on the ground, and the experience of victims. It moves beyond the explosion itself to evacuation, information control, and political consequences, showing the dangers created when nuclear technology meets state power.

The reactor explosion was a failure of technology and also a failure of a state that closed off information.

A biography by David France that uses How to survive a plague to explore aids activists and research, with aids (disease) in view.

A story where aids activists meets research.

A biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio that traces the interplay of creativity, political ambition, and a descent into war fever.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett paints a vivid portrait of d’Annunzio as artist, self-mythologizer, and political precursor.

A historical nonfiction work that interweaves post-World War I Britain with the early Everest expeditions and reflects on the spirit of a generation shaped by war.

Mallory and his generation are viewed through the twin lenses of mountaineering and war.

A historical study that reexamines the Great Chinese Famine of 1958 to 1962 and traces how policy, bureaucracy, and information control produced mass death.

A definitive archival study of Mao-era famine.

A report that reveals North Korea through the lives of six citizens. The weight of family, control, and famine lingers long after reading.

A country is seen through individual lives.

Leviathan or, The Whale is a nonfiction that explores the whale and the world of Melville and offers substantial reading.

It leaves a quiet afterglow through the whale and the world of Melville.

A history nonfiction book that uses a real Victorian murder case to show both the search for the culprit and the social atmosphere around it. More than the crime itself, the book is compelling for the way it watches and imagines the world around the case.

Beyond the hunt for a killer lies the face of an era.

A reportage account of the Green Zone in post-invasion Iraq, told from the perspective of a reporter who worked there. It vividly captures the confusion, bureaucracy, and disconnection from reality inside the protected zone.

The safer the zone, the more unstable reality becomes.

A history book that treats Shakespeare's year of 1599 as both a dramatic breakthrough and a political moment. By tracing the backdrop to the plays, it also makes the works themselves feel clearer.

One pivotal year opens up Shakespeare's whole career.

A biography of B. S. Johnson built from papers and interviews, presenting both the writer’s experimental energy and the loneliness and collapse that marked his life.

The portrait of an experimental writer comes into focus through biography.

Through testimony and observation, the book uncovers the memories of people who lived in East Germany and of those who served its secret police. Multiple voices reveal how institutional violence distorted everyday life.

A gathering of voices that recall life on the other side of the Wall.

A biography of Alexander Pushkin that follows his writing, politics, and private life. It carefully shows how imperial Russia shaped both his work and his character, and it moves beyond the myth to recover the person behind the poet.

A portrait of Pushkin that reads the myth through both his era and his humanity.

A history of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the compromises that shaped the postwar world.

A history of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the compromises that shaped the postwar world.

A major history that reinterprets Nazism as a political religion and presents the road from post-World War I disillusionment to the collapse of the Third Reich as a single arc. It reads social structure, ideology, and violence as one historical system.

It reads the Third Reich not only as terror, but also as a history of institutions and belief.

The second volume of David Cairns's biography of Hector Berlioz, covering the composer's life from 1832 to 1869.

Berlioz's life and music from 1832 onward.

A narrative history of the Battle of Stalingrad and the human cost of the Eastern Front.

War seen from the ground level.