Great Books Around 150-200 Pages

Page Count: 152
What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder.

Page Count: 188
Griffin was a well-to-do white Southerner in the 50s who darkened his skin to see what it felt like to be a black man in the South. His discoveries shocked the nation and revealed the depth of the nation's racial bigotry and intolerance.

Page Count: 192
It's time to move "doing nothing" to the top of your to-do list. Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking, exploring how we can harness boredom's hidden benefits to become our most productive and creative selves without totally abandoning our gadgets in the process. Grounding the book in the neuroscience and cognitive psychology of "mind wandering" what our brains do when we're doing nothing at all--Manoush includes practical steps you can take to ease the nonstop busyness and enhance your ability to dream, wonder, and gain clarity in your work and life. The outcome is mind-blowing. Unplug and read on.

Page Count: 208
This book details the author's life story from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.

Page Count: 148
Paulsen offers this collection of wilderness survival/hunting essays that concentrates on drawing parallels between his own life and the fictional adventures and misadventures of Brian Robeson in Hatchet

Page Count: 152
The story of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, the first city ever destroyed by a nuclear blast in wartime, as told by survivors of the attack.

Page Count: 207
After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving

Page Count: 210
Stewart beautifully captivates the imagination with letters to his niece about why math matters. He gets you thinking about how has is in every basic item of our daily lives.

Page Count: 192
The book is basically about Morrie Schwartz, a history professor at Brandeis University, who has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and is dying. A former student, Mitch Albom, who had become a fairly well known sports writer, heard about his teacher from an interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline and decided to pay a visit.

Page Count: 188
As a child, Alethea Black drifts between her father, a brilliant mathematician who is also her best friend, and her mother, a frank and outspoken woman on fire. After her father's death, Alethea is left unmoored, a young woman more connected to life's ethereal mysteries than to practical things such as doing laundry or paying taxes. And then, just when life seems to be getting back on track, she's suddenly racked by crushing fatigue, inexplicable pain, and memory loss. With her grasp on reality fading, and specialist after specialist declaring nothing is wrong, Alethea turns to her own research and desperate home remedies. But even as her frantic quest for wellness seems to lead to confusion and despair, she discovers more about her own strength than she ever could have imagined--and becomes a woman on fire herself.