Best Nonfiction

[Pomfrey]

'The Intelligence and Deception of the D-Day Landings' by Jock Haswell. Best-written nonfiction I've ever read.

[cosnik]

Last Chance to See

by Douglas Adams

you cannot touch this

[Datepalm]

I'm very fond of A Peace to End All Peace, By David Fromkin, about the diplomatic wrangling around the Middle east circa ww1. The Proud Tower (a series of essays about the 20ish years before ww1) is my favorite Barbara Tuchman, and I recall enjoying Tournament of Shadows, about "the great game" in central asia a lot.

[palemantle]

I thought Ghost Wars by Steve Coll was brilliant.

[Isis]

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War -- Nathaniel Philbrick

Philbrick also wrote a fantastic book called In the Heart of the Sea, which was about a whaling boat - apparently it inspired Moby Dick. It's brilliant and I thoroughly recommend it.

[BrosBeforeSnows]

I felt the need to resurrect this thread because I recently started reading Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, and it's pretty hardcore. WWII really interests me, as does much of the macabre (hence my avatar) but the death and destruction in this book is truly mind-boggling. It makes Westeros look like Disneyland. The mass-cannibalism that went on in Ukraine during the early 30s is absolutely unimaginable. Granted, there's a lot of numbers and hard facts in this book, but if it wasn't filed under "non-fiction", you'd never believe half of it was true. Has anyone else read this? I've read many books about WWII, and the pre-war period, but none have stuck with me like this (and I'm only about 100-150 pages into it). It's totally insane. Warning: not for the casual reader. You've got to have a pretty serious interest in the pre-war and wartime developments on the Eastern Front during WWII to stick with this one.

[TheDanish]

I'll have to throw another vote behind GGS, if only because it's one of the few nonfiction books I've read that isn't geared toward academic readers.

[Nails77]

I've read a couple recently that take place during WWII that are worth mentioning. First is Unbroken which is the best book I've read this year. Follows an amazing main character through childhood and into his years as a prisoner of war in Japan. Second is Lost in Shangri-La which is about the effort to rescue plane crash survivors in a remote valley in New Guinea. This one wasn't as riveting as Unbroken but still a good, quick read.

[Datepalm]

I felt the need to resurrect this thread because I recently started reading Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder,

This is definitely somewhere on my to-read list.

Read a bit of non-fiction lately, some fascinating, some so-so:

I'm a third or so of the way through Tony Judt's Postwar - Europe 1945-2005, which is, well, enormous. Nothing is hugely detailed, obviously, but what i'm particularly interested in is Europe and the European Union as a whole (Europeans seem to think of the EU as this staid, boring, fussy bureaucracy, which I suppose is true, but for all that I still think the mere idea is pure sci-fi) and he does a lot of picking out multi-country trends.

King Leopold's Ghost, about the Belgian occupation of the Congo around the turn of the (20th) century is fascinating and gruesome.

The Vertigo Years, about the 15 years before WW1, I also really enjoyed - firmly focused on society, morals, arts, etc, rather than politics or 'events' as such - but i've always had some fascination with that period.

Lost City of Z (Amazonian exploration) and Death in the City of Light (Serial killer in WW2 Paris) were both well written, but too narrow and biographical for my interests and mostly left me wanting to know more about the 'background'. (OTOH, I like the kind of sideways glimpse of daily life conditions and concerns that get picked up in these books along the way, where as thats exactly the things that I always seem to miss the most in 'proper' histories of some period.)

[RobMRobM]

When I think nonfiction, I think Tom Wolfe - The Right Stuff, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and the essay The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening are my favorites.

I'm also a big Tracy Kidder fan. Plus one for Soul of a New Machine upthread but my favorite is House - a deceptively simple tale of a professional couple in Western Massachusetts who want a house built on land donated by the wife's family, hire a potentially talented architect for his first solo commissioned work, and hire some craftpeople to build it for $150,000. The interactions among the various players - the couple who want a kick ass house for a good price, the architect wanting a kick ass house to show to other potential clients, and the craftspeople trying to make a buck and dealing with a newbie architect - are brilliant.

Also like David Eggar's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - as he moves to San Fran, starts a writing carreer and raises his kid brother after his parents die within months of each other.

Plus one for Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker and for anything by David Sedaris.

Love this thread. Rob

[Just a peasant]

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families:Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. - It totally affected my life. Very hard to read but it must be read.

The Black Dog of Fate - by Peter Balakian. I am not Armenian but I loved this book.

1776 - by David McCollough. I live down the street from John Adam's home and I had to read it.

[Zoë Sumra]

I've been reading Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, about North Korea. Fascinating stuff.

[Liffguard]

Most of my non-fiction reading is either pop science or health & fitness (with a bit of history/politics sprinkled here and there). I've already plugged The Blind Watchmaker on this thread. The best health & fitness book I've read recently would be Never Let Go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living and Learning by Dan John. It's partly a training manual and partly a memoir. There's no real structure to it or any particular message or idea to sell, just the meandering thoughts of the author interspersed with essays, articles and personal anecdotes. It's filled with fantastic little nuggets of information and I got more from these little tips and tricks than I have from many more "comprehensive" programs. It's definitely a book I'd recommend to anyone even remotely interested in physical training.

[Ormond]

I have generally enjoyed any of the nonfiction I've read by Antonia Fraser (such as Cromwell and The Weaker Vessel).

I also like Karen Armstrong's books. I'm reading her Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World right now and previously read and really enjoyed A History of God and The Battle for God.

A somewhat obscure nonfiction book I was really fascinated by is Anthony Arthur's The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster.

[Iskaral Pust]

I read a lot of non-fiction around economics, investment behavior, etc. The pick of the bunch are:

Nudge - Thaler & Sunstein (for insight and broad impact)

The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb (for insight and personal impact)

Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner (for changing perspective and entertainment)

There were a lot of books published about the financial crisis of 2008, but The Sellout by Gasparino and Too Big To Fail by Sorkin were by far the best informed.

Michael Lewis is pretty entertaining. He often weaves a good character story without being very strong on the actual information/events, so I think of him as a story-teller using non-fictional settings.

I've heard good things about Malcolm Gladwell but have not tried him yet.

[the maid of woodlynne]

...Death in the City of Light (Serial killer in WW2 Paris)... well written, but too narrow and biographical for my interests and mostly left me wanting to know more about the 'background'. (OTOH, I like the kind of sideways glimpse of daily life conditions and concerns that get picked up in these books along the way, where as thats exactly the things that I always seem to miss the most in 'proper' histories of some period.)

I've been meaning to check out Death in the City of Lights - it came up as a recommendation bc I recently picked up Devil in the White City (serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair) and found it compelling. It's just as much about the architects who built the Fair as the serial killer. Gives a very good sense of the the city surrounding the murders and shows just how easy it was for this man to prey on Chicago.

Judging by your comments it seems like Death in the City of Lights is a safe bet for me. Thanks!

[Isis]

I've heard good things about Malcolm Gladwell but have not tried him yet.

Blink is an interesting read (and you can whip through it in a few hours) and good for inspiring debate and making you think (about thinking).

[Datepalm]

I've been meaning to check out Death in the City of Lights - it came up as a recommendation bc I recently picked up Devil in the White City (serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair) and found it compelling. It's just as much about the architects who built the Fair as the serial killer. Gives a very good sense of the the city surrounding the murders and shows just how easy it was for this man to prey on Chicago.

Thanks!

Yup, thats exactly the book it reminded me of. It's got that mix of biography and investigation and public reaction, though I think it's a bit less about Paris than I recall Devil being about Chicago, (but its not missing entirely. Theres a nice, if small, 'subplot' about Sartre.)

[Spring Bass]

1. 1491 by Charles Mann. This is one of those books where it completely re-shapes your view of history. It's about the pre-Columbian societies in the Americas, and absolutely fascinating - so much of it was stuff that wasn't taught to us even in AP-level History Classes.

2. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Already mentioned for good reasons. I quibble with some of Diamond's conclusions, but his overall point was quite interesting, and got me thinking about the role of certain factors - such as domesticable animals and crops - played in history.

3. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This may have been the most important book about history in my intellectual development, cultivating an interest in history that has never left me. I don't agree with all of it, but there's no question that it's an eye-opener. I would strongly recommend it to any American readers, although Loewen inserts some of his fears about Peak Oil in a chapter about the concept of "progress" in the revised 2008 edition.

4. Freakonomics. Fascinating, funny book looking at the economics involved in our daily lives.

5. The Prize by Daniel Yergin. One of the best histories of oil out there.

6. Mexico: A Biography of Power by Enrique Krauze. The best english-language history of Mexico that I've ever read.

7. Persian Fire by Tom Holland, about the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians (including the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis).

8. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. One of his best books, about skepticism. It also introduced Sagan's "dragon in my garage" example, which I've always preferred over Dawkin's "flying spaghetti monster".

9. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. This is easily my favorite book about evolution, and one of the more readable ones out there.

10. The Master Switch by Tim Wu, about the development of monopolies on electronic media (radio, television, telephone, film) throughout the twentieth century. While I disagree with his conclusions about the modern era and new "digital monopolies", the historical section of the book (from the late 19th century to the mid-to-late 20th century) are excellent. He points out how once-independent radio ended up stifled (particularly FM Radio), how television was distorted into a "broadcast model" drawing its inspiration from radio, and how the film industry ended up under a very censorious regime from 1934 to the 1960s.

[Datepalm]

1. 1491 by Charles Mann. This is one of those books where it completely re-shapes your view of history. It's about the pre-Columbian societies in the Americas, and absolutely fascinating - so much of it was stuff that wasn't taught to us even in AP-level History Classes.

2. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Already mentioned for good reasons. I quibble with some of Diamond's conclusions, but his overall point was quite interesting, and got me thinking about the role of certain factors - such as domesticable animals and crops - played in history.

I kind of thought those two are contradictory, tbh, in essense if not in fine detail.