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Current Non-Fiction reads

I'm reading a History of Sociology book. It's a book my teacher wrote that we could use for the exam on Monday.
 
Two nonfiction books that I enjoyed in 2006 were both by Douglas Preston: Cities of Gold and Talking to the Ground. Both are about traveling by horseback in the present day American West. In Cities, Preston retraces Coronado's route in his search for seven cities of gold. Preston tells the history and alternates it with his adventures as a not very experienced horseman.
 
Steven Pinker

Actually I much enjoyed the Steven Pinkers http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/index.htmltwo books:
How the Mind Works
The language instinct


I did not read these books sequentially, skipped from chapter to chapter (subjects from some chapters I knew already well but from a completely different field - programming and artificial intelligent so in a sense I might new some stuff better than the author, thus I preffered to skip them). But in general I had much fun. Pinker has some very interesting comments on a society in "How the Mind Works" and I must admit - some points were amazingly true about us humans, but when you read it - you would not agree, just because we all think about ourselves too good. But we all are just animals. Pinker says it in a funny way and not so "white-and-black" as I do here.

Other book that I am reading now is "City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi" by William Dalrymple. Not bad, about the city of New Delhi now-and-then. But it is the best if one reads it after visiting India and Delhi, otherwise it is a bit disconnected from the place and the time.
 
Just started Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist by Nick Salvator. So far, it's an interesting read concerning where he grew up, Terra Haute indiana.
 
Be sure to read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate too ;)

I'm currently reading something that's very similar to Pinker's subjects: Paul Bloom's Descarte's Baby: How Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human. Bloom has many interesting things to say about how children at very tender ages already have notions of art, categorisation of objects and abstract ideas, good and evil, morals, and other things that pop up in the 'nature v. nurture' debate.
 
I'm going to have to try the Cheesemaking book...something I've been wanting to try out.

My last non-fiction: Out of Thin Air by Peter Ward...slow to start, but once I got into it, it presents a very interesting theory about how the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has driven the development of various body plans in the fauna of the world. Very fascinating.
 
I just bought Star Wars on Trial yesterday and am completely engrossed by it. I can't stop reading it and I'm having trouble deciding which book i should read, this one or the first of the han solo trilogy. (yes, i'm in a big star wars mood. have been for the past week. and yes, i know star wars isn't great literature).
 
Not too long ago I finished Heavier than Heaven: Biography of Kurt Cobain
This one stands out from everything else I've read on him. It paints him in a different light. You can actually see that he was just a person.
 
I'm reading Margrave of the Marshes, John peels biography/autobiography (he started it, his family finished it!). I also read a lot of books about the Titanic and Jack the Ripper. Morbid fascinations of mine :)
 
Right now I'm reading Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I read he explored the nature of Evil in Mankind using Abhram and Isaac's story (Mr. Kierkegaard was very religious), which seemed fascinating. But it started disappointingly. I've only just read 27 pages, though.
 
I will now devote myself to fiction for the entire year. I've finished Salvatore's book on Eugene V. Debs. Never before has such a most interesting historical figure, been portrayed in such a dull and mind-numbingly boring way.
 
SFG75 said:
Never before has such a most interesting historical figure, been portrayed in such a dull and mind-numbingly boring way.
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Wanna bet? I'm currently reading Victor Bockris' biography on Keith Richards, and like everything else Bockris has written, it reads like one big book report. Why does he keep writing biographies on musicians when he's obviously not interested in music?
 
I'm reading Gerald Clarke's Capote. It is wonderfully sympathetic, yet not cloying - actually seems well researched and exposes his foibles very clearly. Capote was quite a character, apparently. Nice to read about the man behind those interviews I occasionally saw as a child. I was intrigued by him even then. It's a good read.
 
I'm now reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Very educational. I get to unlearn all off the stuff I learn during the day in U.S. History class.
 
The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs, Edited by Gregory S. Paul. Essays about dinosaurs and how the theories about them have changed over time.
 
claybugg said:
I'm now reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Very educational. I get to unlearn all off the stuff I learn during the day in U.S. History class.
Click to expand...

I read that in college, one of the best history books that are out there. For my upper level history courses, I'd take sections of a given historical event from Zinn's book and then find a corresponding section by Paul Johnson, a conservative historian. What the students would have to do then, was to examine the different interpretations of history and what would ensue, was a fascinating examination of historiography. Take your time on it, it's definitely a book to be savored.
 
Finished Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works this weekend: it was brilliant, another great book by a wonderful writer who can make linguistics, evolution and neuroscience seem easy and fascinating.
 
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