The People’s Chronology: A Year-By-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present.
Older editions are available at Abebooks for less than $4 including shipping.
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture by James Billington.
I had to read this in graduate school, and I gave a copy to my half-Russian daughter for Christmas a couple of years ago. If I had the time, I’d revisit it myself.
The Boy Scout Handbook has a ton of information in it, most of it very practical.
AFAIK, they’re out of print but not hard to find.
The first three, which came out in the late 1970s, were huge best-sellers, and the fourth, which came out IIRC around 2000, much less so. #4 also does not have the Janis Joplin fixation that the other Wallechinsky volumes possess.
Speaking of books of lists, there’s also the 1001 Must See series of books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintessence_Editions
It starts with 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and goes on to cover other subjects like books, music, food, and places to visit. I enjoyed them.
Kevin Kelley’s Cool Tools is a review of all sorts of tools you didn’t know existed but suddenly discover you need.
The New York Public Library Desk Reference is a compendium of all kinds of information.
Michael Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.
No, it’s just what he does. He’s a retired dairy farmer.
All great suggestions. Thank you. I like the music history idea but I think a Rock history book would be more up his alley. I have my eye on “The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1” now. Cool Tools sounds like the perfect thing for an ex-farmer. I like the look of The People’s Chronology, too. I put a bunch of these in my cart so I have ideas for next year, too.
A comprehensive history of the British Empire would keep him busy for quite some time. Also “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, by Gibbons is a fairly weighty tome.
Thing Explainer is fun.
What If? by Randal Munroe.
https://www.amazon.com/What-If-Scientific-Hypothetical-Questions/dp/B00LV2F1ZA
In a darker vein, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things is a survey of the 100 greatest historical causes of death (man-made). Wars, famines, genocides, etc. Entertainingly written, and interesting for the layperson. (I hope we’re all amateurs, if not strictly laypeople perhaps, at megadeath-causing actions.)
Somewhat similar in heft, and similarly grim in subject: Bill James’s Popular Crime, a survey of notorious American crimes. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/books/bill-jamess-popular-crime-book-review.html
In the same vein, Mary Roach’s Stiffis pretty entertaining and informative. She has several others of similar type, but I haven’t read them. I should.
Mark Kurlansky writes many interesting books, such as Salt and Cod, which are histories of those food items.
Although available online for free, the CIA World Factbook also comes in traditional paper format and makes interesting browsing for people interested in that sort of thing. It’s fairly cheap for its size (1,114 pages) since it’s actually public domain and the publisher isn’t recouping any writing/research costs.
I quite liked The Time Traveler’s Guides (Medieval England, Elizabethan England, etc.) by Ian Mortimer.
The Book of Camping and Woodcraft. Originally published in 1906, it’s a book that teaches how to live off the land and not succumb to the wilderness. It’s lost knowledge but still useful…or could be.
Look in used book stores for old World Almanacs, at least 30-40 years old. Statistical data from several decades ago is nearly impossible to find anywhere else. Almanacs have to remove a useful fact, to make room for every new one they add. Also, pre-1960 almanacs will not have been scrubbed for political correctness.