My New Year’s Resolution: Be slightly less ignorant than I was in 2011.
With that in mind, I thought I’d try reading as many books as I possibly can, in between learning another language and doing some other things. I don’t know, whatever things people do to become smart people, I guess. I’m looking for some informative, engaging literature on pretty much anything that’s worth writing about.
I’m really hoping for some good biographies and historical non-fiction, but I’ll take anything, really, so long as it’s well-written. Bonus points if your recommendations are available in e-book format.
I like The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and have given it to many people. I gave it to a woman who had just been promoted to upper management, and she said that she found it incredibly helpful. It’s not JUST about waging war, although of course it’s dandy for that, but about how to handle people.
I really like Jon Krakauer’s style - he reports on interesting stories in a really engaging, engrossing way. I’ve read (and liked) Into Thin Air (about the disastrous 1996 expedition on Everest), Into the Wild (Chris McCandless disappearing in Alaska) and Under the Banner of Heaven (fundamentalist, polygamous Mormonism). Good stuff there.
I’m a huge fan of expedition narratives, for some odd reason. Some of the best are Ghosts of Everest (George Mallory’s disappearance on Everest in 1924), The Endurance (Shackleton and his men’s survival at the South Pole), Unbroken(Louis Zamperini’s survival in a WWII Japanese POW camp), and Shadow Divers (divers find an unidentified U-boat of the coast of New Jersey).
Adding to this, I was captivated by this book (and the accompanying documentary by David Brashears)… every survivor of this event/tragedy has written an account so you can view the same scenario from numerous perspectives…
*Collapse *by Jerad Diamond. A cogent, non-hysterical examination of environmental issues and their impact on societies’ survival.
Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber. A starkly convincing, if overreaching, examination of one of the world’s most pervasive monsters.
*The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down *by Anne Fadiman. The story of a Hmong child and the labyrinthine shortcomings of American medical care.
The Catcher Was a Spy by Nicolas Davidoff. A biography of longtime major league baseball player and nascent CIA agent Moe Berg, including a bittersweet exposition of his perplexing postwar years as a well-off but essentially homeless man.
Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt. The visions and historical perspective of an Oglala shaman.
Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. An treatise on Christian diversity between the death of Jesus and the church councils of the fourth century.
**Guns, Germs, and Steel **by Jared M. Diamond is the stock answer to the OP’s question, a solid foundation of world history with very broad strokes. Far more interested in the ‘why’ than the ‘what and when’ other history books are so intensely interested in. I have qualms about some of his specific conclusions, but overall his method is sound. He does himself no favors in the first third of the book concentrating on plants and animals but that information is essential to his thesis by the end was probably where I learned the most.
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation by Gene Sharp, a fast how-to manual on overthrowing an autocracy, it’s short (160 pages), and plainly written for the sole purpose of easy exportation. Nonviolent struggle isn’t new, but seeing exactly what people should do to make it work is interesting.
More a much faster synopsis I’d recommend How to Start a Revolution on CurrentTV. Think Guns, Germs & Steel is a National Geographic special on Netflix too now that I think about it, but the book is important enough to deserve the time and effort.
Wow. Late to the party and many of my top favorites have already been listed (Krakauer; The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down; Guns, Germs and Steel). A few others I recommend:
The Last Season by Eric Blehm. If you like the Krakauer outdoor adventure books, this is a similar story about the investigation into the disappearance of a park ranger.
dot.bomb by David Kuo. A really funny inside look at a dot.com failure.
Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life by Hugh Brogan. One of the best-written, most fascinating biographies I’ve ever read.
A few classics of the genre:
All the President’s Men and The Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Now you can also add Woodward’s The Secret Man to learn the real story of Deep Throat.
Young Men and Fire by Norman MacLean. Maybe the original work in the Krakauer adventure style.
Forgot to add my favorite book – it’s a little specialized, but still accessible, and extremely relevant:
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. It’s a great read about the rise and fall of a hedge fund.
Several of my favs have been mentioned too, but I’ll recommend one that’s not exactly non-fiction. It’s Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. I’m not sure why it’s always shelved with the fiction; he seemed to take great pains with accuracy. I read it more than 20 years ago and still think of it. (I wonder why I’ve never re-read it?)
Anyway, it’s the story of Gary Gilmore, convicted murderer, who successfully sued to have the state of Utah execute him c. 1979, resulting in the reinstatement of the death penalty being carried out in the country. (Previously people just sat on death row indefinitely; of course previous to that they were executed.)
A made-for-TV movie was made of it starring Tommy Lee Jones. Also Gilmore was the older brother of Rolling Stone’s Mikal Gilmore.
Hope the OP doesn’t mind me piggy backing on this thread, as it’s very much on topic and hopefully any suggestions generated by my question will be useful.
I’m interested in the history of New York City, and the people who shaped it. I’ve wanted to read a book on Robert Moses but The Power Broker scares me (actually, the thought of almost 1400 pages is what is daunting). Is there one that is decent and not so massive? Also, there are a few books about Boss Tweed, any specific ones that are good?
I’m also interested in corrupt politics in general, not exclusive to New York, so anything in that arena would be good.
Again, hope I didn’t step out of bounds by posting this here. If I did please let me know and I’ll know better for the future.
I recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, who’s a fiction writer with no science background. It’s about natural science (astronomy, geology, evolution, etc.) and is easy to read. Despite this, the book isn’t written below my level or anything, and I have a good science background. I decided to read it because Kesha (the singer) said in an interview that she really enjoyed it. I later read another book she recommended (Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, but it was just so-so.