Ian Frazier + John McPhee

Frazier's new Travels in Siberia is a series of essays about just that: a span of ten years during which the humorist and longtime New Yorker writer wandered occasionally in the inhospitable slab of Asia. Fellow New Yorker staffer McPhee, who has covered an incredible number of subjects over the years, looks at "lacrosse, photography, food, geology and fact-checking" in his latest nonfiction book, Silk Parachute.