Does anyone know of any good non fiction books?

Question

i want to know if n e body knows any good non fiction books or any biographies that were interestin. nothing in politics please.

Answer 1

Here's a list of some of my non-fiction favorites. Each of these books were books I couldn't put down once I picked them up -- I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Great and gripping memoirs I have loved:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller
A Riot of Our Own: Night & Day With The Clash - Johnny Green
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend & I Decided to Get Pregnant - Dan Savage
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story - Timothy Tyson
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster - Jon Krakauer

Funny memoirs:
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
Feeding a Yen - Calvin Trillin
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

General non-fiction:
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda - Philip Gourevitch
A Summer Bright & Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain - David E. Fisher
It Came From Memphis - Robert Gordon
Elephant Memories: 13 Years in the Life of an Elephant Family - Cynthia Moss
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal - Eric Schlosser
Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Answer 2

Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larson, tells the story of the Galveston hurricane that almost wiped the city off the map. It is still the most devastating hurricane in history, even with Katrina.

"The Professor and the Madman," by Simon Winchester, shows the remarkable creation of The Oxford English Dictionary.

"A Crown for Elizabeth," by Mary M. Luke, is a rare biography about the childhood of Queen Elizabeth I.

Answer 3

I don't know if you'd consider them political, but I've enjoyed several books from around the world that really expose aspects of cultures we don't often hear the whole story about in the U.S.

A list:
My Forbidden Face by Latifah (Afghanistan)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (nonfiction AND graphic novel form)
Escape from Slavery by Francis Bok (Sudanese escaped slave)
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (Rwanda)

Other biographies I've enjoyed that are closer to home include Fat Girl by Judith Moore, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiato, and A Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos.

Under memoirs I consider interesting, I'd list Frank McCourt's work and Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is an eye opener too.

For straight-up history, I liked Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World about Shakespeare.

I think that covers the last year and a half of the non-fiction I've read. Good luck finding good stuff!

Answer 4

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (Paperback - Jan 20, 1997)

"God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless.

OR

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by James Mcdonough (a great look at the roots of rock-n-roll in the 60's)

Answer 5

A really cool book is "E=mc^2" by David Bodanis. It's all about the history of that equation with the first chapters being titled "E is for energy", "=", "m is for mass"...giving the history of everything that led up to the equation and it's application in WWII. Another cool book by David Bodanis is "The Secret House." It's about all the history behind everyday objects, the things that go into margarin, toothpaste, cake, and ice cream you'd rather not know about, and the biology and physics that occur everyday that you never thought about. Really I'd recommend almost anything by David Bodanis. If you're into philosophy, then "The Dominion of the Dead" by Robert Pogue Harrison is good. If you like math, then I'd recommend "The Golden Ratio" by Mario Livio.

As for things of a more biographical nature, read "Helter Skelter" by Vincent Bugliosi. It's about the Charles Manson murders and its written by the DA prosecuter who put Manson behind bars.

Answer 6

Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga
The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto
The Myth of Ability by John Mighton
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss.

Answer 7

Well, first of all, don't bother with Patricia Cornwell's "Portrait of a Killer- Jack the Ripper; Case Closed". It's absolutely awful and her evidence is circumstancial at best.

I liked Mary Roach's "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers". It's a book about corpses and what human do to and with them. Very fascinating and grotesque and even funny. But don't read the cannibal chapter while you are eating! The book really makes you think.

Answer 8

The Girl With The White Flag by Tomika Higa
Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim
In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke
The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender

Any by James Cross Giblin. I loved the one on Hitler.

Answer 9

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Alboom, all about Alboom's former sociology professor as he became ill and contemplated his death. Saw Morrie on Nightline when they re-ran the shows with Ted Kopple and the movie a fears back with Hank Azaria and the late Jack Lemon was wonderful. It is NOT a mournful book, lots of thought provoking insights.

Answer 10

Guy Deutscher, The Unfolding of Language