Nonfiction offers personal, painful tales

Sacred silence
There are still places in this world where most of us cannot trespass, and one of those is inside the walls of a monastery. Author Nancy Klein Maguire gets readers as close as is possible with "An Infinity of Little Hours" (Public Affairs Books, $26). She follows five men who, back in 1960, entered a rigorous English monastery to join the Carthusians, a Catholic order that is recognized as one of the most austere in the world. The men leave behind their everyday world of dates and dinners out and sports teams and slip into a cell, an intense schedule of daily prayer and hair shirts and fasting, a world that most of us cannot imagine choosing. As the turbulent 1960s churn around them, these men know very little of the world outside their walls.

There is a certain peace that develops from reading about this old-fashioned, simple lifestyle. Because the men so desperately want to tamp down their desire for the world and commit to stay in the order till death, even readers who don't understand their call (most of us) find themselves rooting for them. Not all of them ultimately decide to stay, and near the end of the book, the author talks to the men today to learn what they think of their decisions, decades after making them.

This is not a book for everyone. The religious terminology can be rough slogging even for the devout, and the book's events are quiet ones, not earth-shattering — one candidate has nightmares about not being able to keep the others on pitch in choir. Yet Klein Maguire, herself married to a former Carthusian, does an incredible job of taking readers inside this sanctuary where women are not even allowed. The level of detail is astonishing, and the book does what all great nonfiction does, paints a picture of a world with strokes so well-defined one feels as if he or she has visited it. Reading "An Infinity of Little Hours" is almost like praying.    —G.F.C.

Sweet dreams
If you're looking for a light, sugar-sparked nonfiction book about confectionery, try Steve Almond's wonderfully humorous "Candy Freak." But for a more serious look at the role chocolate played in America's history, unwrap Michael D'Antonio's "Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams" (Simon & Schuster, $25).

Hershey's personal story is as rich as a fudge-filled truffle. He grew up poor and built his chocolate empire through hard work and sheer will. He was devoted to his wife Catherine, but the two were unable to have children and she died young, perhaps of syphillis. He had big dreams for the Pennsylvania company town he founded, Hershey (thankfully a contest-winning name, Hersheykoko, was scrapped). But not everything was sweet there, either: A sit-down strike in 1937 led to a bloody riot.

Hershey's life and that of the company he founded have much to teach interested readers about the history of America and the founding of businesses back in the time when it truly seemed that one good corporation could change the world. No question that D'Antonio, who shared in a Pulitzer Prize at Newsday, is an ace reporter. But for a book drenched in chocolate, entertaining anecdotes are few and far between. Probably the most intriguing tasty tidbit explains why Europeans so often shun Hershey chocolate whereas most Americans raised on it adore it: Hershey's formula for mass-producing milk chocolate quickly introduces a single sour note. A few more tasty factoids like that would have sweetened the pot, but "Hershey" is still worthy of unwrapping.    —G.F.C.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books Editor. Sarah D. Bunting is a writer in Brooklyn. Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn. Omar L. Gallaga is a writer in Austin, Tex. Tracy Edmondson is a writer in Dallas.

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