Here's part five of the Boing Boing Holiday Gift Guide, a roundup of the bestselling items from this year's Boing Boing reviews. Today's installment is nonfiction books.
Don't miss the rest of the posts: kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets and comics. Tomorrow I'll wrap it up with DVDs and CDs.
Good Calories, Bad Calories
(Gary Taubes)
Gary Taubes, whose NYT article on Atkins rekindled the low-carb eating movement, sums up his reserarch on low-carb eating
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Transit Maps of the World
(Mark Ovenden)
Sheer subway-porn
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Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers
(Henning Nelm)
Classic book about conjuring has many lessons for writers
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Laika
(Nick Abadzis)
Graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog
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Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs
(Laura Lindgren)
Haunting book of Victorian pathological curiosities
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Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
(David Koenig)
The secret history of Walt Disney World
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In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
(Michael Pollan)
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
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Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations
(Stephen M. Kosslyn)
Cognitive science vs. crappy PowerPoint slides
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Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
(Clay Shirky)
Clay Shirky's masterpiece
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The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
(Matt Mason)
To get rich off pirates, copy them
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Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
(Suketu Mehta)
Exhausting and beautiful love-note to Mumbai
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Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
(Lisa Katayama)
Make Magazine meets Hints From Heloise by way of postwar Japan
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China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future — and the Challenge for America
(James Kynge)
Book captures the grand sweep of changes in the most populous nation on Earth
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Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy
(Abby Banks, Timothy Findlen, Thurston Moore)
Communal homes of the anarcho-syndicalist lifestyle
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The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
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Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture
(DJ Spooky)
Essays on the future of music edited by DJ Spooky
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Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
(Bill Ivey)
How the DMCA, Clear Channel and copyright extension are killing culture
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The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It
(Jonathan Zittrain)
How to save the Internet from the Internet
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The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey
(Emmanuel Goldstein)
Best of 2600 Magazine anthology
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A People's History of American Empire
(Howard Zinn)
Fantastic comic-book adaptation of Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States
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Secrets of the Mouse: An Unofficial Behind-the-Scenes Guide to Disneyland Park
(Alan Joyce)
Insider Disneyland guide
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Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
(John Medina)
Oliver Sacks meets GETTING THINGS DONE
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My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
(Jessica Mills)
Kick-ass punk-parenting book
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True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
(Farhad Manjoo)
The science, history and economics of self-deception
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The Quirks & Quarks Guide to Space: 42 Questions (and Answers) About Life, the Universe, and Everything
(Jim Lebans)
Bite-sized answers to the massive questions of inquisitive astronomical ponderers
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Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
(Cory Doctorow)
Collection of my infamous articles, essays, and polemics. championing free speech and universal access to information
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The Baby Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours a Night
(Suzy Giordano)
The best parenting book I've read
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How Children Learn
(John Holt)
Cllassic of human, kid-centered learning
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The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies
(Patrick Buckley, Lily Binns)
Nerdy cookbook for kitchen hackers
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Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin
(Kenny Shopsin, Carolynn Carreno)
Memoir and cookbook from Shopsin's, the best, most eclectic eatery in Greenwich Village
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How Children Fail
(John Holt)
Angry lessons from failures to teach
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Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
(Emmanuel Guibert)
Extraordinary graphic novel memoir of a US GI who arrived in Europe at the end of WWII and stayed
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Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
(Michael Lewis)
A timely moment to revisit 20-year-old memoir of the rise and fall of a financial bubble
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The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
(Jonathan Hennessey)
US Constitution in graphic novel form
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Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
(Chip Kidd)
The lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966
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Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
(Leslie T. Chang)
Amazing memoir by American-born Chinese journalist
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Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
(Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins)
The "Understanding Comics" of copyright, in a new edition
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The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx
(Stefan Kanfer)
A book of fine grouchovian material that contains at least five guaranteed laughs on every page
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Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science
(John Grant)
The history, cause, effect and state of bad science
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