Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and On Writing. Anyone who thinks King is just a horror fiction writer has never read these two books.
True crime fans ought to check out Jack Olsen’s works. I like him better than Ann Rule. Also check out books by Robert Ressler, who started the FBI’s serial killers unit, and Jack Douglas, his successor.
Black Hawk Down is very interesting and moves at a good pace.
It’s been mentioned, but for a real page turner it’s hard to beat Into Thin Air. Once I passed the halfway point I stayed up until I’d finished it.
I just finished reading A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby, which is fascinating and hilarious, too. Them crazy Brits!
Also, believe it or not, I found The Book on the Bookshelf to be absolutely riveting. It’s about the history of book furniture. No, really.
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
The Hot Zone by Robert Preston. Don’t read this if you’re squeamish, though, because it has very graphic descriptions of Ebola hemorrhagic fever and how the virus is transmitted.
Yes, this one is very good.
And I can’t believe it hasn’t been mentioned yet, since I found out about it through the numerous recommendations here on this very Board: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Fascinating book about society, geography, and ecology, and of course, guns and germs and how it all came together.
He has a new one out called Collapse about why civilizations fall apart. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds great.
I mostly read non-fiction. Some of my favorites are:
Coming of Age in the Milky Way and Seeing in the Dark, both by Timothy Ferris. The first is basically a history of humanity’s vision of its place in the cosmos and is peppered with a thousand fascinating anecdotes. The second is about amateur astronomers and their contributions to modern science.
An American Insurrection, by William Doyle. About the riots surrouding the integration of the University of Mississippi. I had never even heard of this stuff til I read the book.
A People’s History of the Supreme Court, by Peter Irons. History of American civil rights through the Supreme Court cases.
Darwin’s Ghost, by Steve Jones. Sort of a retelling of Origin of Species.
The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weinberg. No one would doubt the reality of evolution if they read this book.
Embracing Defeat, by John Dower. Survey of Japan following the loss of World War II. Enlightening and well-written, won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon. Looks at clinical depression from scientific, cultural, and very personal points of view, won the National Book Award.
A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power. I guarantee you’ll be horrified.
Underground, by Haruki Murakami. The famous Japanese novelist interviewed the survivors of and relatives of the victims of the Tokyo sarin gas attacks. Frightening as hell.
Um, I’ll stop now.
Chunk to Hunk. An obese man uses mind manipulation tricks to try to lose weight and records his journey in the process
Combatting cult mind control. A college student becomes a ravenous cult member, then is forcibly removed from the cult then goes on to fight their influence.
Lucifer principle. The idea that civilization is a living organism and that individuals are just the cells the same way our cells are just individual organisms that create us.
As you can tell i’m alot of fun at parties since this is what I read for fun.
Longitude by Dava Sobel is fascinating.
There’s also a whole series of books by this guy, Cecil something…
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. The book is much more interesting and entertaining than the movie.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, both by Richard P. Feynman (or ‘as told by’). Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning American physicist who worked on the Manhatten Project and the space shuttle Challenger investigation (oh, and quantum electrodynamics). He was well-known for his sense of curiosity, his playful sense of humor, and for being a great teacher. Hugely entertaining reads!
I opened this thread specifically to post this one. The most grueling ordeal, very well told. Read this together with Into the Void , but only if you are safe and warm. Do NOT read either when you are on a winter backpacking trip!.
“Under the Banner of Heaven,” also by Krakauer, is an interesting read. It’s part “true crime” and part “history of violence in Mormon society” and has some interesting descriptions of fundamentalist Mormon splinter groups.
Also, I liked Adrift.
Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution, Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson. The bits about breeding fruit flies are especially gripping. I’m not joking.
If you can find a copy, try The Arabs, by Anthony Nutting. It’s a history of Islam and the Arab people from the sixth century to about 1960. Arab history is, at least in Nutting’s version, a tale of nonstop adventrue and battle, romance and intrigue, filled with larger-than-life heros and villains. And once you’re finished you’ll know all kinds of fascinating stuff such as who Kalid Ibn Wahid was.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
I second Guns, Germs and Steel. Collapse is also excellent.
Another that I loved was The Devil in the White City. Takes place at the Chicago World Fair. It reads like a novel.
In a similar vein, A Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett.
Diogenes beat me to Longitude.
If you enjoy Into Thin Air, there’s also The Climb, by Anatoli Bourkreev, the Russian guide who comes under a lot of criticism in Krakauer’s book for his decisions during that climb. An interesting perspective.
Into the Wild and Eiger Dreams by John Krakauer, although they may scare you into never leaving the city again.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, both by Richard Rhodes, were extremely interesting, informative and well-written. For the latter, he had access to Russian archives and was able to do a lot of research on Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, and a number of other atomic spies, real and accused.
A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr, a non-fiction legal ‘thriller’ about a class-action suit against Grace-Manville for contaminating the ground water in Woburn, Mass. Kind of a New England Erin Brokovich. May have just been interesting to me since it was right next door to my hometown.
I know I’m echoing some previous posts, but what the hell…
King Leopold’s Ghost - Adam Hochschild
Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band - Motley Crue w/ Scott Strauss
** Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe** - Laurence Bergreen
The Proud Tower - Barbara Tuchman
I once read the first part of a (very long) book on the life of Peter the Great the title and author of which I can’t remember now (it was over 10 years ago). I never got to the second part because it was being used as a required-reading book for a roommate’s Russian history class and he had to take it back from me before I was anywhere near done. I certainly remember it as a very interesting, almost novel-like view of the Czar’s life. I’m sure someone on the boards will know what it’s called and who wrote it, which is why I’m throwing it out here in the first place, despite a lack of identifying characteristics… 