'That's Disgusting!' The Reasons Why We Get Grossed Out

Every single day, we are disgusted. It just happens. We blanch at unpalatable foods. We feel revulsed by corruption and intolerance. We’re grossed out by snails, worms and cockroaches.

Read more new and notable nonfiction this January. 

And while most of us are content to live with disgust without trying to understand why it exists, there are compelling reasons to cozy up to our disgust and get to know it well, all of which are explored in Rachel Herz’s thoughtful and entertaining book That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion. Herz, a professor at Brown University and ...

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John Hodgman on Baseball, Wine and the Apocalypse

John Hodgman knows his stuff. In fact, the humorist and Daily Show regular knows pretty much all the stuff there is to know, and in That Is All—his third and final volume of Complete World Knowledge—he shares everything, from the terror of the apocalypse to the previously unknown history of the Triscuit.

Love the ramblings of pop-culture gurus? You may also like Chuck Klosterman's The Visible Man.

It’s amazing reading, not leastwise because Hodgman made it all up from whole cloth. Hodgman graciously took a few moments away from living the life of a “deranged millionaire ...

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Marc Eliot Rides with Steve McQueen

When most people think of Steve McQueen, they picture a blonde, blue-eyed action figure with chiseled features who’s largely inseparable from his starring roles in such films as The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt.

Did you hear? Guns n' Roses' Duff McKagan has a new memoir out, It's So Easy.

Marc Eliot, the author of bestselling biographies of such Hollywood icon as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Clint Eastwood, sees a singular talent caught between a rough childhood and his restless pursuit of artistic perfection. In Steve McQueen: A Biography, he presents a compelling picture of a searching mind ...

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Why Steve Jobs Mattered...Even to a PC User

Full disclosure: I am cross-platform. I own a MacBook and an iPod, but I do most of my work on a Dell PC, and I take calls and send texts on an Android phone. I don’t know what Steve Jobs would have made of me as a person, but it’s easy to imagine the late Apple Inc. co-founder looking askance at my mismatched collection of hardware and operating systems and slowly, sadly shaking his head.

Read more books about culture's heavy hitters, including Roger Ebert's 'Life Itself.'

But I do know what I made of Jobs ...

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Dr. Ozzy Will See You Now

Ozzy Osbourne has been called a lot of things over the years, from a rock ’n’ roll madman to a new kind of family man…but before now, no one has called him “Doctor.” The rocker has survived events that kill most people—he’s lived through alcohol and drug abuse, was once struck by an crashing airplane, and was even declared dead on two occasions—and yet he keeps on going, riding the crazy train to possible immortality.

Original Guns n' Roses member Duff McKagan has a memoir out, It's So Easy.

In Trust Me, I’m Doctor ...

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Life, the Shatnerverse and Everything

The life of William Shatner is quite literally an open book. The Canadian actor, author, singer and—let’s face it—intergalactic man of action has appeared on television for so long that he’s practically a built-in component in new TV sets. He has sat down to countless interviews broadcast and printed, real and imaginary. And he has co-authored three autobiographies, of which the latest, Shatner Rules, may be his most revealing.

Did you hear? Ellen DeGeneres has a new memoir out, Seriously...I'm Kidding.

In this “guide to understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large” that ...

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David Matthews: ‘Kicking Ass and Saving Souls’

“Bullshit.” So begins the epilogue of Kicking Ass and Saving Souls, David Matthews’ astounding biography of Stefan Templeton, his friend since childhood and a true-life action figure. Matthews entertainingly, and oftentimes critically, relates it, Templeton’s life is a white-knuckled read from his early days in West Baltimore to his current calling as a humanitarian aid worker.

Over the course of the book there are close calls with Yakuza thugs and hungry sharks; there are karate brawls and daring jewel heists; and there are moments of selfless heroics. In other words, there’s enough unbelievable action in Kicking Ass to ...

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Hungry Like the Wolf

British author Glen Duncan has made a career of avoiding easy capture. He makes unexpected feints from one book to the next—from political thrillers (A Day and a Night and a Day) to supernatural morality tales (I, Lucifer) to autobiographical accounts of his Anglo-Indian upbringing (The Bloodstone Papers)—but in his latest novel The Last Werewolf, Duncan transforms into something else entirely. In becoming Jake Marlowe, a killer with a philosopher’s soul and a libertine’s passion for life, Duncan takes yet another literary detour…and in the process, he tells one hell of a sexy and thrilling ...

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Make It Rain, Russell Simmons!

With America’s unemployment rate hovering at 10 percent, odds are that many reading these words are beginning this New Year in an old set of pajamas and a malingering state of numb panic. Bills are mounting, hope is fading, and your personal hygiene is straying close to Howard Hughes-in-Vegas levels. It’s time you've asked yourself: What would Russell Simmons do?

Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam records and a man with a net worth exceeding $300 million, has co-authored (with Chris Morrow) a book for these low times in Super Rich, a “guide to having it all ...

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2010 Best Books: Daniel Lanois

Daniel Lanois covers a lot of territory, both physically and artistically, in his engrossing autobiography. The multiple Grammy-winning producer of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball, and nearly every U2 record since 1984 shares the expected stories about the making of those records, his longstanding collaboration with Brian Eno, and even some brief encounters with the likes of Rick James and Raffi, but the more fascinating aspects of the musician’s life take place outside of the music magazines. In relating the facts of his near-impoverished Quebec upbringing, told in pieces around numerous jumps to ...

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Lewis Black Takes on Christmas

Lewis Black isn’t one for silent nights and heavenly peace. The comedian, actor and playwright has made his name at full volume, delivering hilariously funny and blisteringly loud monologues on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and in a series of acclaimed HBO specials, parts of which you could hear in the next room even with the sound turned down. In 2008’s Me of Little Faith, Black directed his ire at the whole of organized religion, but with his new book I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas, he narrows his focus to a handful of religious holidays ...

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