By Dave Eggers
342 pages; McSweeney's

We already knew Dave Eggers could tell his own story very well—see 2000's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—but he leaves himself out of Zeitoun. Here, the subject is a Syrian-born contractor who should have been lionized for his selfless work in New Orleans during and after Katrina but was instead caged like an animal in a makeshift jail; the book is a masterpiece of compassionate reporting about a shameful time in our history.