AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
We get it - not everyone is into novels and fantasy and horror and romance and all of that. Maybe it's a solid dose of reality you crave when you crack open a book - history, facts, analysis. You want to learn. You're not alone, my friend. Some of our colleagues here at NPR are avid readers of nonfiction, and they have some recommendations for you from our Books We Love list.
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ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Hi. I'm Anastasia Tsioulcas. I'm a correspondent on NPR's culture desk, and I loved "Restrung: A Memoir Of Music And Transformation" by Vijay Gupta.
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TSIOULCAS: His book is a raw, emotional chronicle of his life as a child prodigy violinist, laboring to prove his worth to his remote, impossible-to-please parents. Whether or not you can relate to the particulars of his life experiences, a lot of his emotions are universal. Gupta ultimately transforms his own life through making music with people who need community the most. He's the founder of a nonprofit called Street Symphony, which brings live music to people experiencing addiction, homelessness and the incarceration system in and around Skid Row in Los Angeles. His story's courageous and very life-affirming, and you just may walk away singing.
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DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: I'm Darian Woods, co-host of The Indicator From Planet Money, and I read a book about somebody who is key to modern artificial intelligence, who maybe doesn't have as much of a profile as some of the other players. His name is Demis Hassabis, and this book is Sebastian Mallaby's "The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind And The Quest For Superintelligence."
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WOODS: Every few pages, I just needed to tell whoever was around me what I just learned. It is a profile of Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, but it also goes through the technology of AI as well, so you're learning a lot about these tools that a lot of us are using. This book covers the dawn of modern AI. It spills the tea on Silicon Valley gossip, and it does a fantastic job at conveying the beauty of scientific discovery.
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MATTHEW CLOUTIER, BYLINE: Hey. I'm Matthew Cloutier, producer for TED Radio Hour, and my summer pick is Robert Moor's "In Trees: An Exploration." There's been a lot of tree writing lately, and Moor's contribution is maybe the most philosophical. Something obvious about trees - they don't really move. Each one makes the most of its patched firth. Moor asks, how can we? What makes trees wise?
He puts our human growth into tree speak, discovers we can grow new branches, even with age. He winds up in a sequoia with David Attenborough and realizes our reverence for nature needs a bit of pruning too. The book is a safe bet for nature lovers, but there's a broader appeal. Everywhere I'm seeing the post-apocalyptic. Moor offers a corrective. We as individuals and a species can know our gnarls and grow better. And for a guide, find yourself a tree. The hugging is optional.
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JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: I am Joanna Kakissis, the Ukraine correspondent for NPR, and I want to tell you about a very compelling book of narrative nonfiction called "The Theater" by James Verini. The book is set in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where in early 2022, a Russian siege killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Many locals sheltered at the Mariupol Drama Theater, which served as a refuge during this terrible siege. And then on March 16, the Russians bombed this theater, killing hundreds inside. It was the single worst attack on civilians during this war.
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KAKISSIS: Verini tracked down as many survivors of the theater bombing as he could find, and he reconstructed with painstaking detail what happened before, during and after this bombing. This book is masterfully written, and its focus is on the people who lived through this terrifying attack, and I will never forget them.
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RASCOE: Those nonfiction recommendations, again, were 'The Theater," "In Trees," "The Infinity Machine" and "Restrung." For more Books We Love, you can head to npr.org/books.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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