About the Book

Trust a librarian to help you find books you’ll want to read

Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction is a librarian’s A-list of nonfiction books organized by subject area—just like a library. Linda Maxie (Library Lin) combed through 65 best books lists going back a century. She reviewed tens of thousands of books, sorted them according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system, and selected an entire library’s worth for you to browse without leaving home.

Here you’ll find:

  • Summaries of outstanding titles in every subject
  • Suggestions for locating reading material specific to your needs and interests

In this broad survey of all the nonfiction categories, you will find titles on everything from the A-bomb to Zen Buddhism. You might find yourself immersed in whole subject areas that you never thought you’d be interested in.

….A thoughtful, thorough survey of the best nonfiction found in today’s libraries.”

Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Linda Maxie is a retired librarian from Virginia’s southern Piedmont region who is writing Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction Books series. During her decades of library work, Linda got a lot of experience playing matchmaker for readers and books. Her obsession with quality led her to refine a method for choosing top books on any topic. When she’s not researching, she’s out roaming with her husband, Roger and their rescued cur dog, Dusty Kardashian.

 

Library Lin

Books on the History of Russia and Eastern Europe

Books on the History of Russia and Eastern Europe

947. Books on Russia & Eastern Europe Further Reading: Yaffa Eliach There Once Was a World, 1998. Historian Yaffa Eliach was asked to contribute to a memorial for Holocaust victims. Instead, she decided to write this history of the lives of Eastern European and...

Patience & Fortitude by Nicholas Basbanes: A Book Review

Patience & Fortitude by Nicholas Basbanes: A Book Review

Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy by Nicholas A. Basbanes My rating: 4 of 5 stars I love books. I really do. And I love bookstores and libraries and...

Books about Shakespeare

Books about Shakespeare

822. Books on English drama Further Reading: While looking up award-winning and recommended books on English drama, I was surprised and dismayed to discover the only ones honored were on Shakespeare. While Shakespeare's phenomenal, he is far from being the only...

Selected Reviews

Americans read, on average, just four books a year. For many, printed text has gone the way of buggy whips and copper pennies; the average youth of 18 spends 9.5 hours a day on electronic devices and just 46 minutes a week outdoors. Library Lin’s Curated Collection is a dazzling antidote to all of this, an inspired compilation that celebrates what all the sages and wise women of history have always known. A great book is a universe of wonder, an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an opening to mythic realms beyond all imaginings.

Wade Davis, author of Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story of Columbia

I am thrilled that my volume has earned a small place in Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative NonfictionLinda Maxie’s compendium exudes both qualities I treasure in accomplished librarians: unbounded expertise and unstinting generosity in sharing it. Any curious reader will find her guidance to the best in nonfiction not only helpful but inspiring.

James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die.

Unique and inherently fascinating, impressively comprehensive and exceptionally well organized and presented, “Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction” will be of immense interest to dedicated bibliophiles, inquisitive booksellers, library science professionals, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in cataloging, bibliographies, and indexes. Especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library collections, it should be noted that “Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction” is also readily available in a digital book format.

Midwest Book Review

This impressive book—a veritable portable public library—offers an amazing wealth of nonfiction reading recommendations on virtually every subject.
 Whether one’s fancy is caught by The Feminist Companion to Literature in English or The People’s Chronology: A Year by Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present, there’s something here to delight every reader. Maxie’s careful, thoughtful, and thorough work is a paean to the breadth of human knowledge and to the libraries, the “gardens of thought” that foster and preserve it. The only TBR list you’ll ever need.
BlueInk Review, June 2022

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