Whats your favorite non-fiction book?

non-fiction and non-political (at least current politics):

Some of my favs that I can think of at this late hour:

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance .... Robert Pirsig
Darwin's Dangerous Idea .... Daniel Dennet
Elegant Universe .... Brian Greene

name a few of yours... we shout get a Lounge Summer reading list going on. Whoa, maybe it's gettting a bit late :)

.....Beginnings~Isaac Asimov....are my top two! :)

Yes, I know you said non-fiction.

Famous Long Ago by Raymond Mungo

the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Recently re-read "The End of Evolution" by Peter Ward. Fascinating and not a little disturbing.
Also "The Farfarers" by Farley Mowat. Very interesting account of early North American settlement.
Interested in the Franklin Expedition? Try Scott Cookman's "Ice Blink." A plausible alternate take on the Arctic disaster.
Or there's something called "The Franklin Conspiracy," where Arctic exploration meets the X-Files, with little success. Strictly for novelty value only.

by H.D. Thoreau (need you even ask? For shame!)and Desert Solitaire (Ed Abbey) are two books that influenced me greatly. I could probably think of some more but it is late and my brain is on political overload from too much time in GD: 2004 primary. I just popped in here for a breather.

Oh yeah, let's throw Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (Hunter S. Thompson, again shame on you if you didn't know that already) in there too for shits and giggles.

is an amazing book and Henry Thoreau is one of my favourite authors. Walden is a not entirely non-fiction though,.....while it's most non-fiction the book is based on one year living at Walden, but in fact he lived there to conduct his experiment for 2 years. :)

Shows what this nation can do when it's united in a cause. Personal stories by the people who lived them.

"Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" Tom Wolfe
"The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius"
"Childhood: Biography of a Place" Harry Crews

Thanks for reminding me. Lets add "Electric Koolaid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe to the list. Cause it rocks!

by Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan rocks. Why oh why couldn't he live as long as Strom Thurmond? And Asimov too while I'm at it. :cry:

Stephen Ambrose. Historical brilliance.

Dr Schumpeter wrote his magnum opus 50 years ago as a warning to Americans that they were killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

The really scary part is that everything Dr Schumpeter predicted is coming to pass, rigged elections, hyperdeficits and the coming collapse of the US...

so thank you. I shoud not look at this post, I'm too much of a book adict as it is.

A narrative history of the USA from 1932-1972 by William Manchester..made me think more than any book I have ever read.

by Diane Ackerman. She's a poet, and the way she evokes the senses shows you what a great writer can do.

The Land Where Blues Began by Alan Lomax. He and his dad were ethnomusicologists who went down to the foreign land of the Mississippi Delta and recorded Leadbelly for the first time, among other famous names. Whites threatened them for talking to black people back in the bad old days.

King Leopold's Ghost- about Belgium's horror in the Congo, the true life person who was the source for Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness, Mark Twain's (and other American intellectuals') protests against the treatment of Africans by those who would have empire, and more.

The Great Fear and The Coming of the French Revolution (two books) by Georges LeFevre. interesting history.

Critical Mass and how it applies to our daily lives and to history.
Very Good and the complete book is on his web site.
http://www.PeterRussell.com

n/t

A superb collection of his essays...political and non-political.

Terry

Way too many to list, but those two are absolute must reads for any educated person.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson.

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid", by Douglas Hofsteder;

"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", by Edward Gibbon;

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", by William L. Shirer;

Richard Feynman's "Lectures on Physics";

"The Mismeasure of Man", by Stephen Jay Gould

Most of my non-fiction reading tends to be in the fields of science and history...

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

Rumor of War by Philip Caputo

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

I find evolutionary psychology to be endlessly fascinating. Reciprocal altruism, etc. Good Stuff!

Dave Marsh, THE HEART OF ROCK AND SOUL: THE 1001 GREATEST SINGLES EVER MADE.

Originally published in 1989, reprinted in 1998.

...set the tone for the "true crime" book. But as he was the lead prosecutor, the inside story is amazing.

I read it in college (UCLA), and West LA is the scene for a lot of the story. That added a large amount of :scared:

as well as funny.

:-)

Terry

That was one HELL of a storm, wasn't it??

Still the deadliest natural disaster in US history...

I had never heard of it and I couldn't believe it! So many stories within the story - I cannot imagine how horrifying that night must have been.

I had no idea about the Galveston Hurricane and the sheer enormity of the death and devastation it caused.

This was Sagan's parting gift to the world. It should be required reading in schools. It is a marvelous testimony to the quest for truth and knowledge.

The best biography I've ever read.

.
.
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BUT - seriously

It would be "Death Dealers" and the other books written by Yves Lavigne, who infiltrated the Hells Angels as a member to get the information for his stories.

There are at least two other books by Yves that I have read on this "adventure", but the titles escape me at the moment

gonna sneak in some fiction titles below

THE MINOTAUR . . . STEPHEN COONTS . . . XLNT/STEALTH PLANES/GOVT. MOLES . . . . . .
FATAL CURE . . . . ROBIN COOK . . . XLNT HOSPITAL DEATHS %
SLANT . . . . . . GREG BEAR . . . XLNT YR.2052 -- READ AGAIN !!!
ACCEPTABLE RISK . ROBIN COOK . . . XLNT POSSIBLE LSD/PRIMATE REVERSAL . . . . .
MR. MURDER . . . . DEAN KOONTZ . . . XLNT AUTHOR CLONED PHSYCO/MURDER . .
RED SKY AT NIGHT . JAMES W. HALL . . . XLNT DOLPHIN MURDERS/ENDORPHINS .
STRONG MEDICINE . . ARTHUR HAILEY . . . XLNT PHARMACEUTICAL FALSEHOODS
COUNTDOWN . . . . . DAVID HAGBERG . . . XLNT TERRORIST POSS. NUKE WAR
VITAL SIGNS . . . . ROBIN COOK . . . XLNT FERTILITY CLINIC SCAM
THE PRESENCE . . .JOHN SAUL . . . XLNT SEED 15MIL OLD FOR HUMAN RACE

sorry bout the caps,

but I pasted it from excel,and durned if I wanna type it allover again,

:shrug:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (An Indian History of the American West)(Dee Brown)

Ghost Rider (Neal Peart)

Last Chance to See (Douglas Adams)

Six Not So Easy Pieces (Richard Feynman)

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Richard Feynman)

A River Runs Through It (Norman MacLean)

Fate is the Hunter (Ernest K. Gann)

There are lots of other favorites of mine, but those are the first that come to mind.

av8rdave

The title says it all. It's a great adventure story, a great coming of age story, a great travel story, and it's all true.

Other favorite nonfiction books I've read recently:

"The Metaphysical Club," by Louis Menand. An excellent intellectual history of the US between the Civil War and World War I.

"American Aurora," by Richard Rosenfeld. An unusual history of the chaotic period of John Adams' presidency, when the factionalization of American political discourse became established.

"Cicero," by Anthony Everitt. A very good summary of the end of the Roman Republic as well as a life of Cicero, the last Roman Republican.

"The Clinton Wars," by Sidney Blumenthal. A partisan, but I think fair, take on the second Clinton term, including, of course, impeachment. Very compellingly written, too.


Other all-time favorites:

"The Mysterious William Shakespeare," by Charlton Ogburn. A devastating critique of the Stratford theory of Shakespeare's identity, and a brilliant defense of the Oxford theory.

"The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini." Probably more ficititious than he'd want us to know. It was a lot of fun to read.

"The Voyage of the Beagle," Charles Darwin. Charming natural and personal history.

The book is so much better than the movie.

He's done flawless, incomparable biographies of Shackleton, Nansen, Scott & Amundsen...the man is one of the best biographers of polar explorers imaginable.

..."The Armies of the Night" by Norman Mailer.

those are all great

Ain't Nobodys Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country
by: Peter McWilliams

Fantastic book, currently available for less than $10, or you can read it online for free! http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/toc.htm

You know that he died because a judge refused him medical marijuana and he choked on his vomit.

This is a book that I bought multiple copies of in hardcover to give out as gifts. I think I need to stock up on the trade paperback editions and do that again! It never hurts to have more of these books in circulation, and it's a small enough honor to the estate of a great American.

Also "The Secret Knowledge of Water" by Craig Childs (just wonderful)

"The Food of the Gods" (excellent!)

"The Chalice and the Blade".

I'm stopping now.

The category was non-fiction.

Miles Davis' autobiography. It has some of the funniest stories about old jazz guys doing crazy stuff, and Miles managed to use the word "motherfucker" in new and exciting ways. My favorite story though is how during his electric period he would play shows at the Filmore but would always show up late if he was supposed to go on before the Steve Miller Band because he refused to open for "that no-talent motherfucker."

i've read it so many times and always enjoy it.......it's more than a book, it's Miles talking to you in an endless conversation.....

by Robert Caro, who's also written the excellent multivolume (up to three books now) biography of LBJ.

Its a fascinating book on so many levels. You learn about why New York is the way it is and how it got that way, how decisions are made in bureacracy, how power is wielded, and you get some of the greatest stories ever told.

The book itself is worth the vignette about how Vincent R. Impellitteri became Mayor of the City of New York. As I remember, for the election, Tammany had a Jew from the Bronx for Comptroller, an Irishman from Brooklyn for Mayor, and to round out the ethnic/borough balance, they needed an Italian from Manhattan for Deputy Mayor. But they couldn't think of any who weren't objectionable. So they looked in a directory of Tammany Democrats, found a man who's name sounded impeccably Italian, and called him up. He was Vincent R. Impelliterri and he had been the secretary for a Judge named Schmuck for 30 years. They asked him if he wanted to be deputy mayor and he said sure.

Mayor O'Dwyer had to resign in a scandal, and the rest is history.

Is there such a genre?

hehe

Anything to do with forensics or true crime...no specific favorites.

More Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin.

by Robert Hughes. The story of the founding of Australia. By far the best history book I've ever read.

Fascinating read and very relieving if you've ever had strange, psychic sorts of things happen to you.

Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan

Geography of Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler

Ecology of Fear - Mike Davis


I agree with the previous posts, you should definitely read Sagan. If you want to know why our cities, towns, suburbs, homes and thus our lives, have become increasingly unattached, hollow, anxious, depressing, unfulfilled, etc... read this book. If you want to know why California is what it is, physically and culturally, read Davis. He is the authority on CA, especially SoCal.


:dem:

a wonderful memoir about his life and also a really fascinating account of his campaign for the presidency of Peru back in 1990....a brilliant book.....

"What Falls Away". I was blown away by how wonderful a writer she is. I also came away thoroughly convinced that Woody Allen is indeed a child molester. Lots of stuff in her book about that situation that the public never heard. She is a strong woman who has had a fascinating life.