Holiday books: The best nonfiction

Life on the prairie was much more brutal than Laura Ingalls Wilder ever revealed in her "Little House" books. Pa sneaked the family out of town to avoid paying rent; he and Ma had a son who died as a baby. "Pioneer Girl" is Wilder's memoir and the genesis of her Little House books as well as novels by her daughter. Here, enhanced with photos and annotations, it becomes a wonderful work of scholarship.

Roz Chast's comic-book memoir is fueled by powerful emotions: aggravation, frustration, fear, duty and love. Her parents are a mess of phobias and superstitions, and as they grow old and frail, they rely heavily on Chast, yet push her away, while Chast leaps to their aid and tries to avoid them. Funny, sad, poignant and oh-so-true.

Ronald C. Rosbottom's book about Paris under Nazi occupation is an elegantly written account of a terrible time. Some Parisians profited, some died, some acquiesced, some quietly plotted sabotage. Rich with details culled from letters, interviews and diaries.

Are they true, these secrets that strangers write on postcards and send in, anonymously, as part of the "Post Secret" project? In 10 years Frank Warren has received 1 million of them, from all over the world. This collection is seductive, compelling, disturbing and irresistible, packed with confessions that include sexual deviancy, secret passions, crimes, phobias, suicidal thoughts and religious doubts. True or not, they are glimpses inside the complex world of the human psyche.

This book — a companion to the PBS series — is loaded with anecdotes, photos and engaging details. The stories of Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor — the Panama Canal, the assassination attempt, the terrible Amazonian expedition, the polio, the romances and all — are told here in clear, simple prose.

Andy Warhol was a prodigious observer of his own life and of the world around him. Every day for 20 years he dictated a diary entry, dishing about Bianca and Jackie and Liza, fussing about his health and compulsively noting the cost of cab fare.

Angela Pelster's tender and beautiful essays are hard to categorize — more like poetry, sometimes, than prose. In "Limber," she traces her Canadian world through trees — figs and oaks, cinnabars and maples. Along the way, she works in tree frogs, Tim Hortons doughnuts, a dying chickadee, the moon.

This "classic guide to intelligent reading" tackles the basics of understanding books of all kinds — histories and novels, plays and philosophy.

A cold splash of reality for Anglophiles who imagine themselves riding in their coach-and-four through Victorian London. Ruth Goodman tells about the rib-crushing corsets, the soot toothpaste, the child labor, the rats and filth, the early death.

The doomed crew of the USS Jeannette headed to the North Pole in 1879, determined to discover the balmy paradise at the top of the world. Instead, they were trapped, marooned, nearly frozen to death.

Three hundred days into the siege of Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich smuggled in the score of his Seventh Symphony. His ode to his city was performed by an orchestra of starving musicians with "stick-insect limbs" and a conductor nearly too weak to stand.

Wonder Woman strode onto the comic book scene in 1941, created by William Marston to fight for "peace, justice and women's rights." Jill Lepore has brought her love of scholarship and research, as well as her engaging voice, to this readable book.

This book traces the years between Mark Twain's birth in 1835 and death in 1910. Illustrated with paintings, photographs, book jackets, newspaper clippings and other ephemera, it puts him squarely in the context of his time.