Seven Favorite Nonfiction Books (1 Viewer)

[Don Quixote]

Sorry (not sorry) for another one of these, but since we have a novels thread, I thought a nonfiction thread was needed too.

I'm combining multivolume works into one (otherwise, my entire list would be Shelby Foote and Robert Caro). I'm partial to history, which is why my list is limited to those.

The Civil War: A Narrative (3 vols) - Shelby Foote

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (4 vols) - Robert Caro

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris

The Path Between the Seas - David McCullough

The Education of Henry Adams - Henry Adams

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 - Robert Middlekauff (from the Oxford History of the US series)

Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin

This may be the hardest list I've assembled yet. Tough to leave off William Manchester and Taylor Branch, specifically.

 

[Fariq]

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Ghost Soldiers would be two selections on my non-sports list, but really my favorite non-fiction books are all sports related.

I will post the list later if I have the desire.

 

[oso diablo]

not in any order...

1. Leadership is an Art - Max Depree

2. Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul - John Eldredge

3. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

4. The Big Short - Michael Lewis (about the mortgage meltdown)

5. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract

6. Ava's Man - Rick Bragg (family memoir)

7. Ghost Soldiers - Hampton Sides (about the rescue of the Bataan Death March POWs in WW2)

 

[timschochet]

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Glory and the Dream

The Last Lion: Visions of Glory

The Last Lion: Alone

Battle Cry of Freedom

Lies My Teacher Taught Me

Muhammad Ali: Life and Times

 

[RC94]

I don't have 7 off the top of my head but I wanted to mention these 2:

"Ballad of the Whiskey Robber" - by Julian Rubinstein (http://www.amazon.com/Ballad-Whiskey-Robber-Transylvanian-Moonlighting/dp/0316010731/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404321392&sr=1-1&keywords=the+whiskey+robber)

"1776" - by David McCullough (http://www.amazon.com/1776-David-McCullough/dp/0743226720/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404321483&sr=1-1&keywords=1776+by+david+mccullough)

 

[Peak]

Have a Nice Day - Mick Foley

Do the Voices in my Head Bother You - Steven Tyler

Moneyball

Brain Droppings - George Carlin

Dad is Fat - Jim Gaffigan

I Am America - and So Can You - Stephen Colbert

The Tao of Pooh

 

[VA703]

Go Dog Go - P. D. Eastman

 

[IvanKaramazov]

How to Avoid Huge Ships -- John Trimmer

Images You Should Not Masturbate To -- Graham Johnson

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates -- The RAND Corporation

 

[Deepster]

Loose Balls - a history of the ABA by Terry Pluto

Endurance - the tale of Sir Ernest Shackleton

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

Zen and the Art of Happiness by Chris Prentiss

One Pitch Away - the account of the 1986 mlb postseason and win by the Mets

Live From New York - the history behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

 

[sports_fan]

I don't read a lot of non-fiction but these are some I've enjoyed

The Glass Castle by Walls

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bryson

The Intelligent Asset Allocator by Bernstein

The Glory of Their Times by Ritter

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Feynman

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Ratey

A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals by Flannery & Schouten

Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders by Buffett

 

[NorvilleBarnes]

Asimov's Guide to the Bible - Isaac Asimov
The Double Helix - James Watson
1776 - David McCulough
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill

 

[HughHoney]

People still read books?

 

[joffer]

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

 

[FUBAR]

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson

Born to Run - Christopher McDougall

We Were Soldiers Once, And Young - LTG Moore

Flags of Our Fathers - James Bradley

The Art of War - Sun Tzu

It Worked For Me - GEN Colin Powell

 

[FUBAR]

Live From New York - the history behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live

Just getting into this now. Not overly impressed with the first chapter, but hoping it gets better as there are more personalities I like represented.

 

[Brony]

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

Ideas & Opinions - Albert Einstein

The Dirt - Motley Crue

In the Heart of the Sea - Nathaniel Philbrick

A General Theory of Love - Thomas Lewis

I Drink for a Reason - David Cross

Band of Brothers - Steven Ambrose

 

[Bonzai]

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity - Richard Rorty

Philosophical Investigations - Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Way of Chuang Tzu - Thomas Merton

Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus

Being and Nothingness - JP Sartre

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn

 

[Brony]

Had been meaning to read Ghost Soldiers prior to this thread, but this reminded me to get the book from the library before my vacation next week. Well, I already finished it. Really good book - usually good war books are by a good writer but you lose the first-person perspective; or, you get a first-person perspective but the writing is so-so. I thought Sides did such a good job it made me wonder at times if the author was a combatant or not.

 

[kentric]

Two favorites of mine:

Battle Cry of Freedom and Personal Memoirs of Ulysseys S. Grant.

 

[Todd Andrews]

No way to choose 7 favorites, so here are 7 great nonfiction books I loved off the top of my head:

James the Brother of Jesus by Robert Eisenman

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Liberating the Gospels by Bishop Spong

A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy

The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester

 

[Fiddles]

unbroken - hillenbrand

seasbiscuit - hillenbrand

the glass castle - walls

black hawk down - bowden

all the ambrose ww2 books

the rape of nanking - chang

there are no children here - kotlowitz

 

[Mr. Know-It-All]

Some already mentioned (Shelby Foote volumes, 1776)

my other favorites include -

Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears

Landscape Turned Red by Stephen W. Sears

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson (shorter version of Foote volumes)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Custer Victorious by Urwin

Into the Mouth of the Cat by Malcolm McConnell (Lance P Sijan story - Vietnam POW)