I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That author freaks me out because my first and middle names are Colin and Evans.
Boy did you come to the right place. My thoughts
Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck is a good 'un for youngsters. There is a scene in the South, a black girl being walked to school by a White [Southern Accent] Law Enforcement Officer[/Southern Accent] he may never forget - I didn’t
Which brings to mind The autobiography of Malcom X by … well Malcolm X.
Back along the further History lines, I can recommend ** Benjamin Franklin : An American Life ** by Walter Isaacson which is pretty readable and for someone who liked “guns and germs” it is a similar, though more narrow read.
Finally In Search of Moby Dick: Quest for the White Whale
by Tim Severin. Severin re-traces the Moby Dick voyage and looks at the natives situation compared today vs. Meville’s time. He looks for a modern white whale too. If the teenager likes other cultures, history a bit o’ adventure this isn’t an awful one to try – if he hasn’t read the cliff notes of Moby Dick or seen the movie - I’d give it a miss.
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous… maybe for the older teenage crowd.
Hee!
May I heartily recommend:
Some Guy At Amazon:
Another book that I, a female and self educating myself about 'Nam, adored and loved in high school and made the colassal mistake of giving my copy away is
The Sunshine Soldiers
I want to buy this book again and re-read it to see if it stands up to the hilarity that sticks in my mind.
Some Guy at Amazon wrote:
A book I haven’t read yet, but it is on my list is:Bringing down the house: how six MIT students took Vegas for millions
It was recommended in Maxim with a three (out of five) rating. Looks interesting.
May I plug two book sites:
Chinaberry Books Which is an excellent source for infants to adults. With a good chunk of books for teenagers. (at least all the books I want to get are for teens.)
Bas Bleu This is an excellent little company that has the knack for finding gems and making them so enticing and yet, being the tightwad I am, I go to the library with their little catalog. If they go out of business, I am to blame. ( I just got my fall catalog in and have alread 10 books that I have to have.)
And lastly, for the physcotic teenager that lurks in all of us, may I heartily recommend my favorite book in my teen angst years: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/087131777X/qid=1059019067/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8331824-1347820]Bloodletters and Bad Men. A compliation of the criminals in America from the Pilgrims to present. ( I don’t know if its been updated, but it ended at 1980 before.)
It was so fascinating to my young Catholic School Girl mind.
And lastly last,
Tobacco: A Cultural History of how an exotic plant seduced civiliation Very fascinating and I am not even up to our time period. (It’s a bathroom read, if you must know 
)
I’ll shut up now.
Since he’s a Straight Dope fan, he’s probably already at least three-quarters skeptic, so why not push him over the edge? Try him on The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Also anything by the utterly adorable Michael Shermer – I recommend Why People Believe Weird Things to start. And books about Urban Legends are bound to be a hit. I recommend Jan Brunvand’s books for that – he’s the authority, really the grand old man of the subject.
Is there a sport or hobby he’s particularly interested in? My 17 year old son is all about boxing right now, so I’ve gotten him (from the library mostly) a stack of books on boxing that he’s enjoyed very much. And keep an eye on what he seems interested by on TV. My son and I watched The Six Wives of Henry VIII on PBS last night and, afterward, I saw him heading up to the bathtub with my copy of Antonia Fraser’s The Wives of Henry VIII. That may be a one-time thing, or it could spark an interest in the British Monarchy, or in the English Reformation or in Tudor history, or who knows what all. Another time, we watched a cable special about hurricanes that prompted Nick to tear through all my books on Great Disasters, plus a bunch more we found at the library.
Just being nitpicky but this is not non-fiction.
Oooh, seconded. Read that one several times from when I was 13 on, and got something new out of it each time. Its pace is leisurely and there’s real warmth and humor, along with the keen observations. I’ve long wanted my own Rocinante (the truck, not the horse).
There are so many good suggestions in this thread. I have a hankering to hit the library this weekend and just work my way through the list.
2 by Stephen Ambrose…
“Undaunted Courage” - The Lewis & Clark Expedition
“Citizen Soldier” - From Normandy to the end of the war through the eyes of ordinary soldiers.
“The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe
“Yeager: An Autobiography” by Chuck Yeager
And one I first read as a teenager and still read occasionally…
“The Rough Riders” by Theodore Roosevelt
I would also like to heartily recommend anything by Dave Barry. I discovered him when I was about 18 and nearly peed my pants reading Babies and other hazards of sex. His sophomoric goober mentality has never failed to make me laugh.
He might like Maiden Voyage, the story of an 18 year old Ausie who solo-sailed a 26’ sloop around the world.
isaac’s storm and devil in the white city, erik larsen.
to sleep with the angels, david cowan and john kuenster
the proving ground, bruce knecht
in our defense, ellen alderman and caroline kennedy
the gift of fear, gavin de becker
ship ablaze by ed o’donnell
merejane, if you are still out there, how went the book selection?
Has anyone recommended Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose yet? It might be a little heavy for a 13-year-old, but it is a wonderful book.
Hi, Shirley Ujest! Yes, we’re still out here. Actually, we’re on vacation in Vancouver, Canada, across the continent and in another country, but we’re still online, checking the SDMB!
The day you posted about Dave Barry, I took my son to Barnes & Noble to use some gift certificates he had. He has actually been a fan of Dave Barry for quite some time, but hadn’t read any of his books recently. Well, your post reminded my son how much he did like Dave Barry’s books, so when we got to the bookstore, he made a beeline for the humor section. He ended up buying Dave Barry’s Not Making This Up and Dave Barry Turns 50. He enjoyed them both!
When I gave him Seabiscuit, back when I started this thread, he had not yet finished Guns, Germs, and Steel. So, since the thread started, he has read the two Dave Barry books, finished Seabiscuit, and returned to Guns, Germs, and Steel. He is about three-fourths through that book. (He just told me he got a bit bogged down with the discussion comparing food production in America with food production in Mesopotamia, and then we left for vacation. He does have the book here, and is getting back into it.)
So, we still have a long ways to go with the list! I think when we get back from vacation I’ll type up a WordPerfect list of the books to take with us on trips to the library. Working through the list will probably take a while, but my son is looking forward to it. I’ll be happy to report back!
And thanks, RNWebner, for the Band of Brothers recommendation. My husband has read that book, and he agrees that my son would likely also enjoy it.
And thanks again to everyone else for all the great recommendations!
A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert Sapolsky is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in the past several years. It’s the story of Sapolsky’s research on the effects of stress on wild baboons in Kenya. About half the chapters are about the baboons - the other half are about the people he encountered. The parallels between baboon and human behavior are fascinating. Sapolsky is an entertaining writer, and the book is fun to read as well as educational.
Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNabb. Story of a SAS guy in Iraq during the first gulf war. That’s probably one a 13 year old guy would get into. Immediate Action is the autobiographical story of his life, and actually quite a fascinating read of a smart kid that grew up poor and became a soldier’s soldier cum writer.
If he’s into history I would suggest The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. It describes the ordeals of the citizens of Leningrad during the Nazi blockade in WWII and their attempts to build a road across a frozen lake in order to procure supplies from another town.
The End of the World: A History by Otto Friedrich describes various disatrous historical events from the fall of Rome to the Holocaust and discusses some of the people involved and how these events affected people’s perception of the world.
Pretty much anything by Barbara Tuchman has my recommendation. She mostly wrote books about various periods of history, from the late middle ages to the pre WWI era.
And don’t miss out on Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Just re-read my post and realized I misattributed “10,000 Miles By Dogsled” to Bernard Hubbard. It was actually written by Hudson Stuck, another missionary and first white man to summit Mt. McKinley. Another book of his (but very expensive and hard to find) is “Ascent of Denali”, which recounts the climb.
Hubbard wrote “Mush You Malemutes”, which is also very readable.
Both of these were very popular with the teenager I mentor, who also liked Guns, Germs, and Steel. I also heartily second The Hot Zone, The Demon-Haunted World, and Into Thin Air.
Fotos sez that ALONE by Adm. Richard Byrd is perfect!
A chronical of 6 months in Antartica, in the mid 50’s
He said it’s one of his favorite books of all times!!!
My favorites are biographies/autobiographies - just about anyone!