Do you know of any non-fiction page-turners?

With fiction, there’s just something about the made-upness of it that I can’t stand, so I have a hard time finding good, well-written books in the library. I know there are non-fiction lists available, but they don’t cull out the bad ones, by authors who aren’t good writers. Seems it would be much better to get first-hand recommendations. I’ve found true-crime fascinating, and biographies (but not auto-biographies usually, because celebrities often varnish the truth, omit most of the good stuff, or are not good writers), but after that, I’m stuck. Any recommendations for things that you’ve found interesting and/or humorous? It doesn’t have to be of classic-level caliber—just a good read.

I’d recommend The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. It’s a great look at hippy culture by a very talented writer. I’m mostly a fiction guy myself, but I loved this book.

The Moral Animal - Robert Wright
Looking for Spinoza - Antonio Damasio
Darwin Among the Machines - Dyson
Against the Gods - (?)
King Leopold’s Ghost - Hochschild

Enjoy. I did. :slight_smile:

I highly recommend Ann Rule if you like true life mysteries/crime. She’s fantastic.

Suburban Plankton recommends Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

The Right Stuff
Band of Brothers or pretty much anything by Steven Ambrose
Tom Clancy has written some several non fiction books about how various parts of the miltary works.

Yep, I agree Ann Rule is fantastic, and have read all of hers.

Thanks to all for the suggestions, and keep 'em coming. I’m making a list and getting after them!

(I imagine this will get moved to Cafe Society shortly)

Authors you might enjoy:
Bill Bryson
Stephen Jay Gould (his collections of essays)
Barbara Tuchman

Good autobiographies:

Have A Nice Day: A Tale Of Blood And Sweatsocks by Mick Foley. For those of you who don’t know, Mick Foley was a professional wrestler who wrestled under the names Cactus Jack, Dude Love and Mankind. I loved it, and I don’t even like wrestling all that much.

The Real Frank Zappa Book. All I can say is read it.

Other:

Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage. The author of the column Savage Love defends the seven deadly sins. And unlike moral scolds like Robert Bork or Bill Bennett, he goes out and gets himself dirty.

Oh, I hope so–I didn’t even THINK of that! How dumb of me. Would you all have seen it there?

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson
Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder
If this is a man &The truce - Primo Levi

Young Men and Fire - Norman Maclean
Ghosts of the Fireground - Peter Leschak
The Perfect Storm - Sebastian Junger
Ice Bound - Jerri Neilsen
My Year Off - Robert McCrum
The Executioner’s Song - Norman Mailer
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
Abandon Ship! - Richard Newcomb

I am sort of in the same boat as you, but I much rather enjoy nonfiction science, math, and textbook style texts. If you like the same, I’d recomend Asimov’s Undestanding Physics collection, any of the Greene texts on superstring theory, and Anton Bivens Davis’s Calculus text. That should be in the 7th edition atleast.

Stiff by Mary Roach (morbid yet fascinating)
Icebound
Killed

“The Da Vinci Code.”

d & r

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.

One of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read - written by a former literature professor in Iran.

E.

The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven
Ghosts of Cape Sabine by Leonard F. Guttridge
In the Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov

<i>Seabiscuit</i> by Laura Hillenbrand had me so engrossed that I missed my stop on the train when I was commuting home from work. I was amazed that I was that caught up in the story of the match race, as I already knew the outcome. Still, exciting stuff!

<i>Bury Me Standing</i> by Isabel Fonseca was also a page turner, her study of modern day Roma people was fascinating, and in many parts, very sad.

And in the humor vein, I had a very good time with <i>French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France</i>, by Tim Moore – he is a travel writer, and this is his account of the time he spent cycling the route of the Tour de France.

Window’s for Dummies?
:smiley:

sorry, i don’t read non-fiction much. Not since graduating anyway.

I’ve raved about this one before, but if you have any interest in medieval history at all, pick up Robert Payne’s The Dream and the Tomb. It’s an impeccably researched account of all the Crusades, told with a novelist’s eye for detail and some of the most beautiful prose ever written. Absolutely absorbing, history told the way history should be told.

Magic Prague By Angelo Maria Ripenelli (I’m sure I’ve misspelled the name) is a fascinating book that starts off going through the history of the Czech nation as it relates to literature and finally goes on to explore the literature itself. Somewhere along the way, you can hear the guy’s brain snap and the writing gets more and more fevered and…haunted. It’s an absolutely fascinating book.