Pollan, best-known for “The Omnivore’s Dilemma, starts off this new work of non-fiction with a simple question: Why, in an era in which most people go out of their way to avoid cooking, has the chef become a celebrity and the cooking show a guilty pleasure?

To answer that question, Pollan turns his journalist’s sensibility and straightforward, thoughtful powers of analysis to examining just why cooking should matter, speaking to those who still perform traditional cooking tasks and attempting to learn them himself.

 Beautiful Boy is a memoir about meth addition told from the point of view of the addict's father. As any parent could imagine, watching one's talented, athletic, and smart child fall into a horrible addiction is heart-wrenching. David Sheff is a parent who many of us strive to be—loving, engaging, and well-educated--but this does not prevent his son from becoming an addict.

Journalist Mitchell Zuckoff knew there was a story that must be told when he set out in 2012 on a recovery mission to the isolated polar cap of Southeast Greenland. There, almost exactly sixty years before, in the winter of 1942, three downed planes were part of a unbelievable story of survival and heroism, a compelling mystery that he was now a part of.

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction is awarded to The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.  About the hidden world of North Korea with all of its misery, this novel is part political thriller, part romance, and part coming-of-age. 

For a list of all of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners in each category, click here.

Fiction

Lunatics by Dave Barry

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

Nonficiton

8 by Dustin Lance Black

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

American Sniper by Chris Kyle

Why Read Moby-Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick

There are many things to love about Tim Kreider's collection of essays; they are beautifully crafted, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny.  But, best of all, they are wonderfully original.  Kreider, known for his satirical cartoons, writes about his life in such a way that enables us to see the absurdity and sublimity of our own lives and of humanity in general.  I recommend reading even just a few of these essays; they will give you a fresh prospective on life and make you laugh.