Books like Long time leaving by Roy Blount Jr.

A humorous, sharp‑witted memoir by Nora Ephron that explores aging, family, and the quirks of middle‑aged life.

Carrie Fisher reflects on her teenage years, early fame, and the impact of her love for science‑fiction, captured in unpublished journals that reveal her humor, vulnerability, and personal struggles.

Bill Bryson retraces a journey across Britain, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, uncovering the country’s quirks, charms and changes with humor and keen observation.

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarching crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.From the Hardcover edition.

Louis Theroux explores diverse American subcultures, from claims of alien killings to a neo‑Nazi family’s white‑power folk band, weaving travel and social commentary into a candid portrait of contemporary U.S. eccentricities.

Jon Meacham revisits pivotal moments in U.S. history—ranging from the Civil War to civil rights—to show how America’s "better angels" have prevailed against division and fear.

Phoebe Robinson’s sharp‑witted essay collection tackles gender, race, dating, and pop culture with humor and honesty, urging readers to laugh at life’s quirks while challenging societal norms.