OT: Recommend some good non-fiction reading
I realized recently my reading taste has started to favor non-fiction. Right now I'm reading Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers", bought "Tipping Point" at the same time, and will pick up "Blink" soon. He's a fun author.
Anyone got some good ones? Bonus points if they're a little under the radar.
Absolutely agree on the Carlin. The Genghis Khan/Mongols series is a particular favorite.
And to bring it back to books - Carlin also lists on his website the source material for his podcasts, so if you like something in particular you can check out the books. For instance, I enjoyed Bevin Alexander's How Great Generals Win, a snapshot of great military strategists through history.
Also, undaunted courage, about Lewis & Clark expedition.
American Revolution
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. Won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
John Adams by David McCullough. Won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Revolutionaries by Jack Rackove.
World War I
The First World War by Hew Strachan.
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings.
Europe's Last Summer by David Fromkin.
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan.
Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I by John S. D. Eisenhower.
World War II
Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal by James Hornfischer.
Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy by Eri Hotta.
Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer.
With the Old Breed at Pelelieu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge.
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.
Masters of the Air by Ronald Miller
Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb.
Dresden by Frederick Taylor.
Among the Dead Cities by A. C. Grayling.
War in the Ruins by Eric Longacre.
Other History
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. Won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by Steve Oney.
Longitude: The True Story of the Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by David Sobel. Highly recommended about the invention of the longitude watch. .
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly.
Passing Game: Benny Friedman and the Transformation of Football by Murray Greenburg.
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson.
The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz by Hector Berlioz.
Recent Events
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich (along with everything else he's written).
The Dark Side by Jane Mayer.
The Commission by Philip Shenon.
War by Sebastian Junger.
+1 for Washington:A Life. An absolutely amazing read of the man and history.
"Dursu the Trapper" (inspiration for Dursu Uzala, a Kurosawa film) is essentially the Russian equivalent of Lewis and Clark. Fantastic and heartbreaking read about a man who essentially survived in the wild, befriended Russian explorers, and late in life couldn't adjust to being forced to live in the city.
"Walt Disney" by Gabler is probably the most complete history of Disney's life. Gabler got access to the Disney archives (which no other biographer has received) but told a truthful history of the man, without the conspiracy theories, while including some of his negatives, but not making him out to be some sort of devil. Well balanced, and an interesting read.
"Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin. I'm a huge fan of Steve Martin, mostly because he's awesome at pretty much anything he puts his mind to. Here, he writes about his life, and it's really quite fascinating. This book is actually focused, and isn't just a celeb name-dropping and telling all the amazing things he did. It actually ends before he becomes a big movie star. I actually initially listened to this "on tape" with Martin narrating, and that was really enjoyable.
"Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" was a good history about Japan from the Meiji Restoration through and after WWII. It won a Pulitzer and I thought did a really good job of putting into context the war, the Japanese perspective and what the people were going through, the leaders, while still really telling the story of Hirohito.
"Japan at War: An Oral History" I love personal stories. One of my favorite memories was right before my grandpa died, when we got to sit down and just talk about his life; we spent quite a bit of time talking about his time in WWII. This book focuses on the Japanese side of that sort of circumstance. It tells the story of Japanese living in China, Okinawa, and the mainland; former soldiers, citizens, etc. Really interesting and raw read, from remorse to lack of remorse to rationalization and everything in between.
Neal Gabler was best man at my parents' wedding.
I hate Malcolm Gladwell's writing with a deep and abiding passion. Please consider these books whose authors' superiority to Gladwell defies description.
1. Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks
2. Ghettoside, by Jill Leovy
3. Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder
4. Notes from No Man's Land, by Eula Biss
5. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
6. The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright
7. The Control of Nature, by John McPhee
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
Have you read Awakenings? The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and others of his case history books are fascinating and very fun to read. But Awakenings is on a completely different level: in addition to being a fascinating set of case histories, it's a profound and moving meditation on illness, treatment and health.
If you like military history at all, read the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson (winner of the 2003 Pulizter Prize for history).
The books chronical the US Army in Europe during WWII. The books are
- An Army at Dawn (covers North Africa)
- The Day of Battle (Sicily and Italy)
- The Guns at Last Light - Western Europe
A great intersection of readability and detail.
1491 and 1493 by Charles C Mann about human history in the Americas before Columbus and the Columbian Exchange respectively are both fascinating. 1491 is a little more interesting because I think that history is less well known.
Try "Salt" and "Cod" by Kurlansky. He does a fantastic mix of science and history.
"Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer
"The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt" by William Nothdurft and Josh Smith
"Operation Mincemeat" and "Agent Zigzag" by Ben McIntyre; epic accounts of WWII spy schemes pulled off by the Brits
"The Path Between the Seas" by David McCullough about construction of Panama Canal
"American Caesar" by William Manchester, fantastic bio of Douglas McArthur
I picked this one up on a whim at the library recently. What a fascinating tale. I need to read Zigzag next.
I just started this, really cool metaphysical exploration on why the universe exists.
I'm going to cheat with something semi-autobiographical but technically fiction (doesn't read like fiction): My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. One of the best books I've ever read.
Why Does the World Exist: An Existential Detective Story is a nice read. It tackles some relatively heady issues in an accesible way.
Another great one is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
I also studied regional planning and "The Metropolitan Revolution" by Bruce Katz was another interesting one. None of these I've recommended will be more interesting than a good history book, however, unless you're really into the topic.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
Wicked Takes the Witness Stand, by Mardi Link. A fascinating and disturbing story of the Jerry Tobias murder trials in Gaylord, and the complete miscarriage of justice that occured. It will completely shake your faith in the justice system. An added positive is that the book is published by the UM Press.
I would also join the list of those recommending Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower. It's the best analysis of the rise of Al Qaeda.
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts (about the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the researchers and activists who responded)
Che by John Lee Anderson (the definitive biography on one of the 20th century's most intriguing persons)
Big Bang by Simon Singh (good plain English history of astronomy and the science leading to the Big Bang theory)
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel (if there is such a thing as pop philosophy, this is it)
The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe (the funniest and best of the "I played D&d when I was a kid" memoirs)
An outstanding account of the World Championship chess match against Spassky. There's plenty of insight into Fischer's personality as well as political maneuvering and Cold War tensions. Incredible book.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
I couldn't put any of these down ...
John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth (a history of the US focused on business and economic development; sheds a great deal more light on many periods than histories that focus on politics)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness (philosophy and statistics; a rather deep and entertaining explanation of what went wrong that led to 2008, but published in 2004)
Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, All the Devils are Here (a balanced and knowledgeable history of what led to and followed from 2008)
David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered (bio of Vince Lombardi (great coach, different era that I hadn't known well)
Michael Lewis, Moneyball (although Lewis' work has been mentioned in this thread, of all his books this is most directly relevant to the discussion of mgoblog and the analysis it offers -- a history of how it took hold in baseball)
Michael Crichton, Travels (yes, the physician and author of Jurassic Park; his autobiography, but only for those open the idea that the world is more complex than most of us acknowledge)
Fascinating book, I recommend it as well.
A couple of recent books I've liked that are non-fiction:
- So You've been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson
- Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America - Jill Leovy
- Plays with Cars - Doug DeMuro
- What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions - Randall Munroe.
- Console Wars - Blake Harris
Imperial Cruise
Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927. A fascinating history of several months in the USA, featuring events both familiar and forgotten. In many ways, a story of America at the peak of its Americanness, if that's a word.
Jesse Walker, The United States of Paranoia. A fun read about the history of conspiracy theories in the US. You will like it if you like this sort of thing. The author is a former Michigan Daily writer, if that helps.
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone. I have seen more than a few World War I histories mentioned here; this is among the best.
Joseph Wheelan, Mr. Adams's Last Crusade. John Quincy Adams deserves to be more famous. Not for his presidency, but for his years in the House of Representatives after his presidency. Read this book (or William Lee Miller's Arguing About Slavery) to see why.
William Manchester, The Last Lion: Volumes 1 and 2. Okay, this might not be "obscure," but these books about Winston Churchill, covering the years from his birth to 1940, paint a portrait of an occasionally great man and the amazing times in which he lived. Volume 1 is worth it just for the picture of the late Victorian Era and the aristocracy that still dominated British political and social life at the time.
I also recommend Churchill's war diaries. I started with the single book abridged version (about 1k pages), and later read all the rest. He won the Pulitzer in 1953 for the series.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-World-Winston-Churchill/dp/039541685X
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
Five Families
it's the story of the Mafia, from the creation in Italy to roughly 2005. Very long, but very complete and detailed.
Also, Dispatches by Michael Herr is just amazing.
If you're a big baseball fan, the Bill James Historical Abstract is pretty great. Goes in depth on systematic rankings of players and also has some great anecdotes and stories from the different decades. Not the most recent title, but still very interesting. Might not be great on a flight though, I bought mine as a companion to watching the Ken Burns series.
I did read Ball Four a few summers ago and while it's also a bit dated it's cutting and hilarious. Good look at that point in time in baseball and just how crazy the game was on the inside.
My favorite sports book besides Bo's books on Michigan is Ken Dryden's The Game...it lives up to the hype, and even if you aren't a hockey fan it's a very articulate, interesting look at the life of an athlete.
For books that just came out, I can't recommend them but I'm going to read Bruce Feldman's The QB and the Al Michaels autobiography.
If you want to read about sorta-dirty SEC football recruiting, read "Meat Market" Also, if you like baseball and some of the analytics in action, you can read Jonah Keri's "The Extra 2%" about the TB Rays.
Storys of early baseball. Not great writing, but great storytelling for a baseball fan
A great travelling sports book is Bill Simmons basketball book.
I know many here are not fans of his, but he really does have an entertaining (in a very light way) style of prose and his insights, while not revolutionary, at least head in the right direction compared to the stat-obsessed national media. Yes, he uses stats, but stats do NOT tell the entire story.
I am a big reader, but haven't had a chance to read Gladwell yet. I ordered all his books and they are actually arriving tomorrow from Amazon.
99% of what I read is non-fiction, so I can give some recommendations:
The Future of the Mind- Michio Kaku (Absolutely Fascinating!!!)
Physics of the Future- Michio Kaku (Excellent!)
Freakonomics- Levitt and Dubner (Entertaining)
SuperFreakonomics- Levitt and Dubner (Entertaining)
Think Like a Freak- Levitt and Dubner (Conceptual framework for economics)
Think and Grow Rich- Napoleon Hill (Motivational/ Self-Development)
The Power of Now- Eckhart Tolle (Worthwhile for spirituality)
The UltraMind Solution- Mark Hyman (Personal Health- very interesting)
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management- Roger Lowenstein (Interesting case study)
The Autobiography of Ben Franklin- Ben Franklin (What better mind in history?)
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal- Ayn Rand (Good arguments for capitalism)
Philosophy: Who Needs it?- Ayn Rand (Why do we need philosophy?)
Sam Walton: Made in America- Sam Walton (Buffett recommends this)
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Rise and Fall of Enron- Bethany McClean (Comprehensive account of the largest corporate fraud ever- very entertaining)
Unlimited Power- Tony Robbins (Very worthwhile to read anything Tony has to say)
The Psychology of Self- Esteem- Nathaniel Branden (classic book, very interesting)
Beyond Good and Evil- Friederich Neitzsche (Perhaps the most interesting thinker in all of history)
Capitalism and Freedom- Milton Friedman (Anything by Friedman will make you instantly smarter)
The Alchemy of Finance- George Soros (excellent criticism of free market fundamentalism)
Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway- Susan Jeffers (Cool book, good way to build happiness in your life, regardless of fears)
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists- Neil Strauss (highly entertaining, controversial, perhaps life changing, worth a read at the least)
One up on Wall Street- Peter Lynch (fun investing book)
Ayn Rand may be the worst widely read writer there is.
Where Men Win Glory - Jon Krakauer. There was so much more to Pat Tillman than most people realize, and this book brings it all out, as well as the tragic circumstances surrounding his death and the ensuing cover-up.
Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green - Johnny Rico. There have been quite a few books in the past decade that overly dramatize and romanticize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but if you truly want an inside look at what it's like to be in an infantry unit stuck at an Afghan outpost, read this book. It's far more accurate than you think.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
The Wolverine Way by Douglas Chadwick. Great nature book that documents one of the most fierce, free and gutsy animals in the world: The Wolverine.
There's also a documentary film with Douglas Chadwick about the fierce, free and gutsy Wolverine.