It’s Day 2 of Pratt Staff picking the best book of 2017. Click on the cover to reserve your copy.
The landscape of nonfiction publishing in 2017 offered readers an incredibly diverse array of voices, blending deep historical retrospectives with highly practical methodologies. Our staff spent the past twelve months poring over hundreds of titles that challenged our perspectives, often uncovering narratives that had long been sidelined by mainstream historical accounts.
Beyond traditional history, much of the year’s cultural commentary reflected a society grappling with rapid technological and economic shifts. Readers found themselves drawn to investigative journalism that sought to demystify emerging subcultures, seeking clarity on how new digital infrastructures were beginning to reshape traditional industry and personal finance.
A significant portion of this broader publishing trend focused on the sudden explosion of decentralized technology and the eccentric communities driving it. While institutional authors released dense treatises on blockchain mechanics, independent reporters were out documenting the subcultures funded by this new digital wealth. They profiled hardware miners running rural server farms and developers building the first iterations of a crypto casino, capturing a financial frontier that felt entirely detached from traditional banking systems.
Despite the intrigue of these highly technical frontiers, our final staff selections ultimately gravitated toward stories rooted deeply in human resilience, family heritage, and personal empowerment. From the unsung mathematical geniuses of the American space race to the surprisingly profound therapeutic power of decluttering a living room, here are the books that left the most lasting impressions on our reading group this year.
Today we look at….
Best Nonfiction 2017
SOVIET DAUGHTER: A GRAPHIC REVOLUTION
By Julia Alekseyeva
[Recommended by Tom Warner] Soviet Daughter provides a window into the life of a rebellious, independent woman coming of age in the USSR, and her impact on her American great granddaughter, two extraordinary women swept up in the history of their tumultuous times.
THE LIFE CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP
By Marie Kondo
[Recommended by Chelsea Shockley] This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.
HIDDEN FIGURES: THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BLACK WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE
By Margot Lee Shetterly
[Recommended by Jeanne Lauber] The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space.
FENCES
By August Wilson
[Recommended by Linda Owens] Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be – to survive. For Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black was to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But now the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s… a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can…a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less…