Must.Read.Non.Fiction (novels, diaries, letter, human)

[southwest88]

Scatter, adapt, and remember : how humans will survive a mass extinction / Annalee Newitz, 1969-, c2013, Doubleday, 576.84 NEWI 2013.

Subjects
• Survival.
• Extinction (Biology)

Notes
• Are we all going to die? -- A history of mass extinctions. The apocalypse that brought us to life ; Two ways to go extinct ; The Great dying ; What really happened to the dinosaurs ; Is a mass extinction going on right now? -- We almost didn't make it. The African bottleneck ; Meeting the Neanderthals ; Great plagues ; The hungry generations -- Lessons from survivors. Scatter : footprints of the diaspora ; Adapt : meet the toughest microbes in the world ; Remember : swim south ; Pragmatic optimism, or, Stories of survival -- How to build a death-proof city. The mutating metropolis ; Disaster science ; Using math to stop a pandemic ; Cities that hide ; Every surface a farm -- The million-year view. Terraforming Earth ; Not in our planetary backyard ; Take a ride on the space elevator ; Your body is optional ; On Titan's beach.

Summary
• "In its 4.5 billion-year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?"--Dust jacket flap.
Length
• 305 pages : index, photos, graphs, maps, chapter notes.

Interesting reading, a survey of extinction events on Earth, timelines, & how humanity might manage to survive the next disaster. An upbeat look @ a potentially depressing event. A primer for skyhook, meteor strikes, NEO & interplanetary scenarios, right up to uploading our consciousness or biosculpting our offspring to survive hostile environments. A handy reference for some of our wilder imaginings here on the cyberfrontier.

[TamaraSavannah]

Non fiction?

I tend to read autobiographies, personal quests (ie, rowing across the Atlantic, "Castaway", "Runaway"), biology, oceanography, and war history. Occasionally, criminal profiling but I'm sort of out of that field for right now; I'll eventually pick up another such book.

Tend to for as I said in another thread, I read everything, but books like that.

[AZgarden]

"The Great Influenza" by John Barry. Details the epidemic in the year 1918 in graphic detail. It killed more people than WWI did.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by PhxBarb

"The Great Influenza" by John Barry. Details the epidemic in the year 1918 in graphic detail. It killed more people than WWI did.

That was a really interesting book!

[Mikala43]

Originally Posted by PhxBarb

"The Great Influenza" by John Barry. Details the epidemic in the year 1918 in graphic detail. It killed more people than WWI did.

Completely off topic, but I have looking for a reference and I have been unable to find it, though I KNOW I read it somewhere.

There were 3 waves of illness. Did you read anything about people who got sick twice (different waves)?

Normally once would confer immunity, but I swear i had read some actually got sicker the 2nd time around....

[Mikala43]

I'm looking for a good American history book. I just read part of the Bill Bryson's Made in America, which the library took back before I could finish it. I enjoyed it, but found the history portion much more riveting than the history of the language.

The history I was taught was much different, the idealized view of the founding of our country. I had no interest in that, but love reading what seems to be a more accurate rendition.

This is probably the result of my limited schooling, but would love some recommendations!

TIA

[Mahayana]

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun.

Eight hundred pages to be slowly savored and pondered on, truly a superb work!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true

A taste from Barzun's preface:

IT TAKES ONLY a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming
to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the
culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time. Believing this to be
true, I have thought it the right moment to review in sequence the great
achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium.

This undertaking has also given me a chance to describe at first hand for
any interested posterity some aspects of present decadence that may have
escaped notice, and to show how they relate to others generally acknowledged.
But the lively and positive predominate: this book is for people who
like to read about art and thought, manners, morals, and religion, and the
social setting in which these activities have been and are taking place. I have
assumed that such readers prefer discourse to be selective and critical rather
than neutral and encyclopedic. And guessing further at their preference, I
have tried to write as I might speak, with only a touch of pedantry here and
there to show that I understand modern tastes.

[southwest88]

Writer, sailor, soldier, spy : Ernest Hemingway's secret adventures, 1935-1961 / Nicholas E. Reynolds, c2017, HarperCollins Publishers, 813.52 REYN.

Subjects
• Hemingway, Ernest, -- 1899-1961.
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
• Spies -- United States -- Biography.
• Espionage, American -- History -- 20th century.
• Espionage, Soviet -- History.

Notes
• Awakening: when the sea turned the land inside out -- The writer and the commissar: going to war in Spain -- Returning to Spain: to stay the course -- The bell tolls for the republic: Hemingway bears witness -- The secret file: the NKVD plays its hand -- To spy or not to spy: China and the strain of war -- The crook factory: a secret war on land -- Pilar and the war at sea: a secret agent of my government -- On to Paris: brave as a Saladano -- At the front: the last months of the Great War against fascism -- "The creeps": not war, not peace -- The Cold War: no more brave words -- No room to maneuver: the mature antifascist in Cuba and Ketchum -- Calculating the hidden costs.

Summary
• A former CIA officer and curator of the CIA Museum reveals the untold story of Ernest Hemingway's secret life as a spy for both the Americans and Soviets before and during World War II, and explores how his espionage activities influenced his literary work.

Length
• xxi, 357 pages : index, end notes, photos

Hemingway thought of himself as an anti-Fascist, beginning with the Spanish Civil War. That took him in odd directions, Spain, Paris, China (he met Chiang Kai-shek & Chou En-lai), Cuba. He was furious that the US & Europe didn’t do more for the Spanish Republic, a feeling that stayed with him. There was more to him than just the literary lion. Very interesting reading. He worked hard, he partied hard. Physically brave – but more @ home with guerrillas than with regular military. He ran through relationships – men & women, marriages, mistresses. & finally, his body gave out – he’d made too many demands of it over the years.

[Mahayana]

Southwest 88: "& finally, his body gave out – he’d made too many demands of it over the years."

Actually he committed suicide with his shotgun.

[southwest88]

Originally Posted by Mahayana

Southwest 88: "& finally, his body gave out – he’d made too many demands of it over the years."

Actually he committed suicide with his shotgun.

Yep, the proximate cause. He'd tried off & on, there @ the end - & even his normal life was a series of plane wrecks, unnecessarily exposing himself to sniper fire in France in WWII, risking himself in Spain with the Republicans. He'd fought depression throughout his adult life, to the point that he was committed to hospital & treated for it - electroconvulsive shock therapy, which apparently was the thing @ the time.

It did work somewhat - it helped take the edge off his depression. However, it also fogged his memory (he seems not to have taken notes for his writing), & he found that he couldn't write - it took forever, & the clarity & precision of language just wasn't there anymore. He drove himself to produce reams of paper in draft - but that wasn't what was wanted. That ate @ him, & the problems with Castro in Cuba, his rising paranoia about his anti-Fascist writing & partisanship in Spain & WWII. Yah, he drank too much, he probably overdid everything all the time.

Nonetheless, there was more to him than just the macho posturing. I sympathize with him - or say that with more complete information, I can understand the demons he was fighting, internally & that dogged his steps. He'd become a literary legend, won all the prizes. What do you do once you're become an icon? It's a tough act to follow.