2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Non-Fiction

The Hank Show : How A House-Painting, Drug-Running DEA Informant Built The Machine That Rules Our Lives

The world we live in today, where everything is tracked by corporations and governments, originates with one manic, elusive, utterly unique man--as prone to bullying as he was to fits of surpassing generosity and surprising genius. His name was Hank Asher, and his life was a strange and spectacular show that changed the course of the future.

Kitchen Confidential

Almost two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat before You Read This,” by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now classic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation, a megabestseller with over one million copies in print. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Mott Street : A Chinese American Family's Story Of Exclusion And Homecoming

Mott Street follows Chinese American writer Ava Chin, who grew up estranged from her father, as she seeks the truth about her family history--and uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience past and present. Chin's ancestors became lovers, classmates, sworn enemies, and, eventually, through her birth, kin--all while converging at a single Chinatown address.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

He was a grifter of the first degree, a smooth-talking con artist, a Machiavellian manipulator. He was also a sexual predator, luring women with his aura of fame and power. As grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, D. C. Stephenson’s ambitions did not stop with the organization he shepherded from its Southern roots to dominance in the Midwest. Bullying and buying the loyalty of businessmen, judges, and politicians was not enough for Stephenson.