Nonfiction recommendations please (edition, cover, albums, textbook)

[cd771]

I'm about to move to a new house and will have a 1:20 commute each way on a train so I'm looking for some great books to read. I love nonfiction....politics, history, biographies, etc. Anyone read any great nonfiction books you could recommend? Thank you.

[kuvopolis]

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It discusses why certain parts of the world conquered others, or advanced further technologically. It begins with prehistory and goes all the way to the present. A good anthropological book.

[cpg35223]

"Longitude" by Dava Sobel. A fascinating book about, all things, the invention of the spring-driven clock, and its importance to navigation. Yeah, I know it sounds like dull, dry stuff, but you gotta trust me on this. The story was so compelling that A&E did a very cool miniseries on it, too.

[cd771]

Thank you for your suggestions. Both sound perfect for me.

[slamont61]

Bill Bryson - several books to choose from. My personal favorite - A walk in the woods, where Bryson recounts his journey as he and a friend walk the Appalachain Trail. Other works include In a Sunbrunt Country - about traveling through most of Austrailia. His master work, several years in the writing, A Short History of Nearly Everything, and I'm a Stranger here myself - on returning to life in the United States after living in Europe for several years.

His last book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is autobiographical.

Enjoy...

[Share]

I have a couple of suggestions for you. I LOVE these books, and I am usually a person who hates reading nonfiction.


A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors (Paperback)

From Publishers Weekly
In another royal exposé, Farquhar, a writer at the Washington Post, duplicates some of the ground covered in Karl Shaw's Royal Babylon, such as Peter the Great's delight in administering torture (he had his son lashed to death) and the way Britain's Queen Mary cajoled her subjects into giving her their household treasures ("I am caressing it with my eyes," she would coyly coo). Written in a provocative tabloid style (with headings like "We Are Not Abused. We Are Abusive," "A Son Should Love His Mother, But..." and "All the Holiness Money Can Buy"), Farquhar publicly washes the dirty laundry of not only European royalty, but also of Roman emperors and popes. Murderers and torturers who slept with their siblings (and other relatives), the emperors of Rome excelled at corruption. The maniacal pedophile Tiberius Caesar (A.D. 14-37) left the corpses of his many victims to rot on the Gemonian Steps, which descended from the Capitol to the Forum, or alternatively enjoyed watching them being thrown from a cliff ("A contingent of soldiers was stationed below to whack them with oars and boat hooks just in case the fall failed to do the trick"). Many popes were no better. Not content with just rooting out Christian heretics by launching a bloody crusade against the Cathars in southern France, Innocent III (1160-1216) declared himself ruler of the world. He sacked Constantinople and massacred every Muslim he could find. Like Royal Babylon, this gossipy string of anecdotes is a popularized rather than an authoritative history and perfect for travel reading.

This next book is an autobiography on Meat Loaf. Even if you are not a fan of Meat Loaf, his life has been amazing, and he writes in a very entertaining, funny and friendly voice. It's like he is sitting there next to you telling you stories from his life.

Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back

Amazon.com
Who'd have guessed that the man credited with bringing rock & roll to a whole new level of garishness would pen such a vastly entertaining, funny, touching, and plainspoken autobiography? But Meat Loaf (christened Marvin Lee Aday) and coauthor David Dalton succeed by skillfully modifying the tongue-in-cheek hyperbole and the bombastic befuddlement of the man's Wagner-crossed-with-the-Shangri-Las music to fit the printed page. Meat Loaf grew up in Dallas, Texas, the son of a schoolteacher (she penned a locally popular textbook on Communism) and an alcoholic cop (who happened to be an acquaintance of Jack Ruby). Meat--he earned the nickname early on--got in touch with his theatrical side as a teen and was soon off on his haphazard way, stumbling from misadventure to misadventure, and taking more than his fair share of knocks along the way. (Literally--he's suffered 17 concussions thus far, which provide an oddly effective narrative device.) He lurched into the middle of the JFK assassination scene, picked up a hitchhiking Charlie Manson, earned a part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and recorded one of the most successful albums of the '70s, Bat out of Hell. His ample fame inevitably tied to his ample frame, Meat Loaf quickly became something of an amped-up Fatty Arbuckle. Then came the colossal excesses and flop follow-ups, capped by a rebound called--you guessed it--Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Yes, it's a familiar framework, but the telling of Meat Loaf's rise, fall, and recovery is never anything less than fresh and absorbing. --Steven Stolder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

I highly recommend both of these books. I hope this helped you.

[kinkytoes]

1. Angela's Ashes
2. Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood (Maryse Conde)
3. I read a book about Elizabeth Báthory many years ago. I can't remember the exact name, but this may be the one: The Bloody Countess (Countess Elizabeth Bathory)
4. Geisha: A Life (Mineko Iwasaki) - The real memoirs of a geisha!
5. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil - Light and fun

Enjoy!

[7G9C4J2]

I've mentioned this in another thread, but if you enjoy biography, I highly recommend "James Tiptree Jr: The Secret Life of Alice Sheldon" by Julie Phillips. Exhaustively researched and highly readable, it is one that I enjoyed tremendously.

Michael Perry is simply one of the best writers I have EVER encountered, and I reread his works frequently just for the pleasure of his perfectly crafted phrasing. Try "Population: 485", "Off Main Street" and "Truck", and you'll be glad you did.

"The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman is another deeply absorbing and meticulously researched work that I really enjoyed.

For humor, I recommend Molly Ivins' works, although if your political viewpoint leans toward the conservative side, you might not find her as amusing as I do.

[sean98125]

I second Michael Perry and Bill Bryson.

[bmwguydc]

Some titles that might be of interest include:

Sisterhood of Spies by Elizabeth P. McIntosh
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust by Heather Pringle
Scorpion Down by Ed Offley
The King of California by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner