2021 National Book Awards Longlist: Nonfiction
Here are the available audiobooks for the 2021 National Book Award longlist for Nonfiction! This longlist includes emerging and established writers, and represents an exceptionally wide range of subjects and genres, from American culture and politics, environmentalism, history, current social issues, to works of memoir, and beyond. The Finalists in all five categories will be revealed on October 5.
How the Word Is Passed
A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
By Clint Smith
Narrated by: Clint Smith
Length: 10 hours 6 minutes
How the Word Is Passed
“Smith has crafted a resource, narrative and detailed explanation into how we teach the legacy of slavery. He recounts visits from everywhere from NYC to the Whitney Plantation, integrating stories of people and visitors today. This book is lays a beautiful written foundation for interrogating the history we've been taught. Particularly phenomenal as an audiobook, Smith's skills as a poet and writer shine bright!”
Eliza, Wellesley Books
All That She Carried
The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
By Tiya Miles
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.
WINNER: PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book... Read more »
The Free World
Art and Thought in the Cold War
By Louis Menand
Narrated by: David Colacci
Length: 34 hours 54 minutes
"Narrator David Colacci approaches this opinionated, engrossing audiobook with a practiced voice that lets its numerous stories tell themselves without fanfare...this audiobook is a monumental work." -- AudioFile Magazine
In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural...
The Sum of Us
What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
By Heather McGhee
Narrated by: Heather McGhee
Length: 11 hours 8 minutes
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.
WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE... Read more »
Covered with Night
A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
By Nicole Eustace
Narrated by: Laural Merlington
Length: 14 hours 33 minutes
On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two white fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today, this act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and... Read more »
The Ground Breaking
An American City and Its Search for Justice
By Scott Ellsworth
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 10 hours 2 minutes
2021 National Book Award Longlist
2022 Carnegie Medal Nonfiction Longlist
One of The New York Times' “11 New Books We Recommend This Week” | One of Oprah Daily's “20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This May” | One of The Oklahoman's “15 Books to Help You Learn About the Tulsa Race Massacre as the 100-Year Anniversary Approaches” |A The Week book of... Read more »
Tastes Like War
A Memoir
By Grace M. Cho
Narrated by: Cindy Kay
Length: 9 hours 24 minutes
Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother... Read more »
Running Out
In Search of Water on the High Plains
By Lucas Bessire
Narrated by: John Chancer
Length: 6 hours 19 minutes
Running Out
“A deep look into the complex problem of aquifer depletion in the Plains. A native of southwest Kansas, and an anthropologist by training, Bessire seeks to unravel why depletion continues despite many stakeholders actively working toward different outcomes. He puts depletion in its historical context finding to it be the latest in a series of depletions- colonization, genocide, over hunting. He also learns that despite many farmers seeking solutions, current economic structures reinforce the practice of depletion. Part memoir, he uses his grandmother’s research as a jumping off point; and despite a previously strained relationship, he leverages his father’s rights as a landowner to gain access to various water governing bodies and grows closer to him in the process. At 180 pages this is a short but powerful book, I highly recommend it.”
Amy, A Great Good Place for Books
A Little Devil in America
Notes in Praise of Black Performance
By Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 9 hours 38 minutes
A Little Devil in America
“I loved Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America. This essential book explores a handful of Black performers—some world-famous, others everyday people—across a wide variety of disciplines, seamlessly woven into snippets and stories from Hanif’s own life about Black culture and the performance of Blackness. JD Jackson’s low and easy narration is the perfect complement. Hanif’s commentary on tenderness and rage is especially moving.”
Mary, Raven Book Store