Nonfiction November 2025: Book Pairings

 

Week 3 (11/10-11/16) Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. Maybe it's a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or maybe it’s just two books you feel have a link, whatever they might be. You can be as creative as you like! (Hosted by Liz at Adventures in reading, running and working from home).

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (fiction)

Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine K. Albright (nonfiction)

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

— Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis presents an alarming look at the growth of fascism in America in his fiction book, It Can't Happen Here. Madeleine K. Albright outlines the signs of fascism in her nonfiction book, Fascism: A Warning.

Germinal by

Émile Zola (fiction)

Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond (nonfiction)

Germinal is a novel by the French writer, Émile Zola, first published in 1885. It tells the story of the wretched poverty of mine workers in Northern France.

Sociologist Matthew Desmond looks at the reasons why one in eight children lives in dire poverty in the richest country in the world, why corporations who make huge profits pay meager wages, and why people live and die on the streets in his book, Poverty by America.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (fiction)

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (nonfiction)

A new regime begins in Ireland, and small terrible things begin to happen to ordinary people. Scientist Eilish Stack is horrified to find that her husband, the father of her four children, has been carted off by the secret police. And that's just the beginning in the novel Prophet Song.

Author Hannah Arendt looks at the beginnings and characteristics of totalitarian governments, focusing on two totalitarian governments in our time, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, in her nonfiction book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.