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.

“…. Maxie’s collection provides a reading list for learning about the world, its leaders, and the extraordinary challenges ordinary people face, providing both a valuable reference and an interesting read all on its own.”

BlueInk Review

About the Author

Linda Maxie is a retired librarian with a passion for matching the right book with the right reader. After earning an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she spent her library career obsessively poring over book reviews to build outstanding collections to connect her patrons with perfect books. After retirement, she continued her quest with Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction (LCCN), a portable library of outstanding nonfiction covering the entire Dewey Decimal Classification system. She follows that effort with this volume of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. She lives in Virginia with her husband Roger, and their rescued mixed-breed canine, Dusty Marie.

Library Lin

Latest Release

People are fascinating, but finding the best biography, autobiography, or memoir can be tough with so many to choose from. Linda Maxie (Library Lin) examined hundreds of recommended books about people to offer guidance on which books to select.

In this survey, you will find

  • Forty subject-specific chapters of recommended biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs;
  • Classic biographies that have withstood the test of time;
  • Recent titles featuring people living impacted by current events;
  • Inspiring biographies and memoirs of all sorts;
  • Suggestions for further reading.

Why waste time searching for books to read when you could have hundreds of excellent titles with their summaries at your fingertips? Let Library Lin be your guide to artists, world leaders, athletes, actors, royalty, activists, and so many more.

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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