Great non-fiction books

[TheFifthElement]

We talk a lot about fiction on this forum, and I wondered if it might be nice to share some great non-fiction books? Aside from reading longer works of fiction, I'd like to read more non-fiction, 'cos I have a lot of reading time and I figure if I devote just a little of that to non-fiction I might actually become more knowledgable. Please share your great non-fiction reads here, and tell us a little about why they're great. Thanks :)

My best non-fiction read this year has been The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. It's a series of case studies of people who have suffered unusual brain conditions, such as in the case of the man who mistook his wife for a hat (he was unable to recognise faces) the man who got stuck in history, the woman who lost the sense of her body, and so on. It's a fascinating and quite scary read. Makes you realise that just being able to function normally is something of an achievement.

Any suggestions for great non-fiction reads?

[Emil Miller]

I have just been reading a newspaper article called 'New Fronts in the war of the Drones'. It deals with the increasing use of unmanned aircraft by the US military as outlined in a book by Tom Shanker and Eric Schmidt, two New York Times writers, that has only recently been published. The Book itself is titled 'Counterstrike ' and details the unheralded success of US intelligence operations against al-Qaeda that has resulted in its leadership being greatly damaged by the assassination of senior Jihadist personnel by these aircraft that are controlled from the USA as a part of CIA operations against Muslim extremists in various countries.
After 9/11, the Bush administration, appearing to have learned little from the US defeat in Vietnam, adopted a gung ho strategy that caused a lot of damage but not much of it to the enemy. The penny finally dropped when in 2005 they decided on a policy of massively increasing the intelligence resources and undertaking wide ranging covert operations against America's foes.
The reviews of the book on Amazon rate it highly as an informative and exciting piece of reportage and it appears to be a non-fiction book well worth reading.

[Gregory Samsa]

"Albert Speer: His Battle with Trut" by Gitta Sereny is amazing.

[Austin Butler]

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford. It's about football (soccer) firms (gangs) in England. Usually after each match they march through whichever city they are in, rioting, harassing, and destroying almost everything in their way. But it's more than that. Buford becomes fascinated with them and slowly ingratiates himself into their ranks as he follows them from match to match, country to country. It's a fascinating and horrifying book on crowd mentality.

[cafolini]

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford. It's about football (soccer) firms (gangs) in England. Usually after each match they march through whichever city they are in, rioting, harassing, and destroying almost everything in their way. But it's more than that. Buford becomes fascinated with them and slowly ingratiates himself into their ranks as he follows them from match to match, country to country. It's a fascinating and horrifying book on crowd mentality.

Excellent book. And I think the hypotheses have a lot to do with truths about many events. Perhaps the most violent of all the soccer thugs today are in Argentina, where a book of this nature could evolve to show that the thugs are also bodyguards to maffias of all kinds that go beyond club boundaries in many respects. Worth reading.

[Seasider]

Boswell's Life of Johnson is a great book I think. So is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Of more modern, well relatively, I think The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer earns a place in the list

[PoeticPassions]

A recent read that I thought was magnificent: Rory Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes. It reads more like a novel, and outlines Rory's time spent in Iraq, as the Deputy Governorate Co-coordinator in one of the provinces. I couldn't put the book down.

I still have not read his first book, The Places in Between, which has received more critical acclaim than The Prince of the Marshes. I look forward to reading it as well...

[mal4mac]

A recent read that I thought was magnificent: Rory Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes. It reads more like a novel, and outlines Rory's time spent in Iraq, as the Deputy Governorate Co-coordinator in one of the provinces. I couldn't put the book down.

I still have not read his first book, The Places in Between, which has received more critical acclaim than The Prince of the Marshes. I look forward to reading it as well...

Are you in the UK? Since he became an MP he's often on TV/radio talking about such matters, and making more sense than most tories.

Should have been given Fox's job.

His Wikipedia page reads like a Boy's Own story rejected for being unbelievable.

For his gap year he was an officer in the Black Watch...

From 2000 to 2002 he made a series of treks in rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses...

[Buh4Bee]

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

[Stewed]

Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, by Patrick French, Naipaul's biographer. Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians is similar, and extremely funny. The French book, though, was moving and structured in the way a good novel is.

[_Shannon_]

Dispatches by Michael Herr, Generation Kill by Evan Wright, Home Town by Tracey Kidder, Mountains Beyond Moumtains by Kidder again...I am sure there are more- those are just the first that leap to mind. I love me some literary non-fiction!

[qimissung]

Nickled and Dimed in America.

[mortalterror]

Dispatches by Michael Herr

Nice!

[anishastrologer]

a room of one's own by virginia woolf, mary wollstonecraft's a vindication of the rights of women and a vindication of the rights of men. then there is sandra gilbert and susan guber's the madwoman in the attic. these are some good non-fictions to learn about the place of women in society from 18th century to 20th century and also their portrayal in literature.

[PoeticPassions]

Are you in the UK? Since he became an MP he's often on TV/radio talking about such matters, and making more sense than most tories.

Should have been given Fox's job.

His Wikipedia page reads like a Boy's Own story rejected for being unbelievable.

For his gap year he was an officer in the Black Watch...

From 2000 to 2002 he made a series of treks in rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses...

I'm not in the UK, but I read up on Mr. Stewart after I read his book, so I know a lot about his background. What amazes me more is that I absolutely loved his book, though I generally do not agree with his politics or even some of his opinions... and that is rare for me.

I kind of wish I had his life/experiences though.

[kasie]

Jaron Lanier - You Are Not a Gadget - the book for you if you loath seeing people using mobile phones everywhere, all the time. Lanier is a digital whizz-kid (not such a kid actually as he has been in the computer business from its early days) who sees the dangers of a digitalized society and offers some positive suggestions to avoid the crisis in communication that ironically has arisen from the very ease of getting in touch through e-mail and text as well as phones. Not an easy read - at least for a technical dunce like me - but worth persevering, in small sections, for me.