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Favorite non-fiction books?

I'm reading The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes right now. Its great. I'm thinking about starting a thread on it to see if anyone wants to talk about it. I didn't know much about the founding of Australia beyond the very basics. This sure fills in lots of gaps I didn't know I had.
 
I would find it impossible to choose a favourite non-fiction book, as surely you pick & choose what you want to read going by what you want to learn at the time. An example being there is no way I could compare a photography book to a philosophy or science one.

Sorry if I seem pedantic - just voicing my opinion :)
 
I am currently enjoying A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson--a book I first learned about at this site. Very readable, wide-ranging, and up-to-date--it's state-of-the-art popular science.
 
Lets see, one of my favorites was,

Stiff: The curious lives of Human Cadavers - a really fun book about all the things that get done with human corpses. All the different places they can end up. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Unwanted (By Ken Nguyen)- An autobiography of a 1/2 american and 1/2 vietnamese boy who was left behind after the fall of Saigon. It tells the stor from the time he was 5 and watched the last chopper take off from the american embassy to his coming to America.
 
Stiff: The curious lives of Human Cadavers - a really fun book about all the things that get done with human corpses. All the different places they can end up. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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I highly recommend this one as well. I almost started a thread on it. Very informative and funny to boot. I would also recommend Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, a great book on a huge industry written in the best muckraking tradition.
 
I read a fair amount of non-fiction apart from that which is specifically job-related, and I didn't think I had a favorite kind. But thinking about it, I am quite interested in fact-spy non-fiction books, especially now that Soviet archives have been opened and one can read the Philby story from the other side. Stories from Soviet handlers of recent spies apprehended in the US (Hanssen, Ames) are also available. Unfortunately I can't offer titles; all the books are still packed.
A somewhat allied genre that I like to read is non-fiction accounts of codes and codebreaking. There, the grand-daddy of all such is The American Black Chamber, if you can get your hands on it. More recent is a monstrous tome by Kahn called The Codebreakers, if memory serves me right. Also The Code Book by Simon Singh which is available and much easier to read.
I realize there is only the slightest off-chance these specialties might interest you, but that is my best effort answer to your question.
Other than those topics, I read books on world affairs.
Any help?
Peder
 
I loved The Professor and the Madman! Two of my favorite non-fiction books are memoirs: Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez and My Invented Country by Isabel Allende. I'm currently enjoying Le rideau by Milan Kundera.
 
If you are a big baseball fan, I could recommend "Eight Men Out". It is a great look into just who was behind everything, and a great look at the history of this great game.
 
I've not read a lot of non-fiction, but I'm hoping to broaden my horizons :)

I did read and LOVED Toby Young's book 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.' I read it quite a few years ago, but from what I remember he was a writer in England who came to NYC to write for Vanity Fair. Lots of funny stories and an inside view of the party/model/elitist crowd in New York.
 
I don't read a lot of non-fiction but some of my favorites have been:
Leap of Faith by Queen Noor- she is an American woman who became the Queen of Jordan
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer- about an ascent of Mount Everest
Alive by Piers Paul Read- plane crash in the Andes
Between a Rock and a Hard Placeby Aron Ralston- He's the climber who got trapped by a boulder and had to cut his hand off
The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio by Terry Ryan- how her mother raised ten children by entering contests
 
I love Americana so my favorites are books by Eric Sloane. I'm trying to collect them all. My first exposure to him was reading Diary of an Early American Boy when I was a teenager. I wanted to write a novel set in early America, and was reading this partly for research. I enjoyed the research so much I never got the book written.
 
Some other favorites of mine, in no particular order:

All Over But the Shoutin-Rick Bragg (had me laughing and crying in the same chapter..and I swore I heard my great-aunt's voice in my head as I read some of his relatives' lines)

Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey-Lillian Schlossel

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances- Laura Schenone

How To Make a Journal of Your Life-Dan Price

Eat My Words : Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote - Janet Theopano

From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals -Barbara Haber
 
All Over But the Shoutin-Rick Bragg (had me laughing and crying in the same chapter..and I swore I heard my great-aunt's voice in my head as I read some of his relatives' lines)
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I second this one. And I would also recommend Bragg's other book, Ava's Man.

If you are at all curious about the planet we live upon, you might want to give John McPhee a try. He makes geology quite palatable.

Barbara Kingsovler writes essays that will make you feel better about human beings in general. (No small thing right now.) Oh, never mind my other suggestions. Go find yourself a copy of Small Wonders. It should be required reading. ;)
 
Some of my favorites:

PrairyErth by William Least-Heat Moon - 620+ pages about a county in Kansas. I know how it sounds, but the book is like a long, waking dream.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - everybody says that that their non-fiction history reads like a techno-thriller, this one really does. The definitive history.

A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes - a wonderfully readable account of bibliomania in all it's forms.

Endurance by Alfred Lansing - An account of the Shackleton expedition, perhaps the most harrowing story of survival ever.

Anything by David McCullough (though I'd start with The Great Bridge).
 
In terms of the most pleasure derived, I would say Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler, a guide to experimental German rock music of the late 60s and early 70s. Having only been familiar with a couple of the groups previously, this led me to buy dozens more excellent albums that I would otherwise never have heard. As well as being very knowledgable, the author also has the open mind and love of the bizarre necessary to appreciate music that really pushes the boundaries, ranging from ambient and acoustic through heavy rock, screaming punk and industrial noise, sometimes in the same album. In addition to providing a shopping list of recommended works, the descriptions of Julian's top 50 albums, or the longer pieces on the different artists, are also very entertaining little essays to read while listening to the music, superbly conveying his enthusiasm and sense of the ridiculous when things go just that bit too far. :cool:
 
Scottishduffy said:
Lets see, one of my favorites was,

Stiff: The curious lives of Human Cadavers - a really fun book about all the things that get done with human corpses. All the different places they can end up. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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I loved this book - it was extremely funny, considering the subject matter. :eek:

Other non-fiction faves are Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything; Carl Sagan's Cosmos; Jared Diamond's The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee.
 
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