In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.

Enter to win tickets to see Pollan at the Wharton Center.

Read and discuss My Stroke of Insight, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's account of her stroke and remarkable recovery.  She will be speaking at the Wharton Center on March 1.

As the New York Times Review stated:  "Jill Bolte Taylor was a neuroscientist working at Harvard's brain research center when she experienced nirvana.  But she did it by having a stroke. On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great."

Find out why that was the case and discuss your thoughts with the Nonfiction Book Group.

Confirmed! There will be a drawing for book group attendees for a pair of free tickets to Dr. Bolte Taylor's presentation courtesy of the Wharton Center.

The votes are in! BookBrowse.com has announced the 2009 BookBrowse Favorite Awards.  Over 4,000 votes were submitted, and the winners are...

• Overall Winner: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

February's title is: My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor.  A renowned brain scientist, Dr. Taylor recounts her own stroke and remarkable recovery.  She will be speaking at the Wharton Center on March 1.

The first meeting of the Nonfiction Book Group is November 12, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. in the library's Meeting Room.  No registration is required.  Refreshments will be served.

November's title is: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candace Millard, the true story of Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on Earth!

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait,The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron. After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide.The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.