What is the best non-fiction book you've read

[Bruno]

I can't really decide, but since I'm into non-fiction these days maybe this will give me some ideas.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

This one.

[Bruno]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Thanks! keep them coming, i need xmas ideas.

[Guest]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

English History 1914 - 1945, AJP Taylor

The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins

Dreadnought, Robert K Massie

The Pax Britannica trilogy, James Morris

Mother Tongue & Made in America, Bill Bryson

War Memoirs series, Spike Milligan

.... that'll do to be geting on with. Shedloads of history ones.

[Wyatt Earp]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Something like:

1. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
2. Godel, Escher, Bach, Doug Hofstadter
3. The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes
4. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
5. The IRA, Tim Pat Coogan.

But ask me on another day and it'd be different.

[Guest]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

I've got the IRA book. Didn't think it was that spectacular. Has it been updated at all, to take account of recent doings?

[Guest]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

But while we're on Irish history, In Time Of War, by Robert Fisk, is ace.

[Wyatt Earp]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Tiny Bulcher wrote:

I've got the IRA book. Didn't think it was that spectacular. Has it been updated at all, to take account of recent doings?

Ah! Sorry, yes, I meant The Provisionals (I think) by the same author. Got mixed up.

[ursus arctos]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

This is impossible, but a momentary top five (not in order) which will change immediately after I hit submit.

E.B. White, Here is New York
Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity
Roger Angell, The Summer Game
Ferdnand Braudel, The Mediterranean
Robert Caro, The Power Broker

[Ginger Yellow]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

As I said on the other thread, Goedel, Escher, Bach.

Then:

Consciousness Explained (Dan Dennett)
The Ape and the Sushi Master (Frans de Waal)
If This Is A Man (Primo Levi)
The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)

[Anton Gramscescu]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Among recent books read:

The Siege of Mecca - Yaroslav Trofimov
Imperial Life in the Emerald City - some journalist dude whose name I can't quite recall.
I Didn't Do it For You - Michaela Wrong
Another Day of Life - Ryszard Kapuscinski

If you're feeling ambitious, go for A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson, an intelletcual history of the 20th century which is flat-out amazing.

[Wyatt Earp]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Ginger Yellow wrote:

As I said on the other thread, Goedel, Escher, Bach.

Then:

Consciousness Explained (Dan Dennett)
The Ape and the Sushi Master (Frans de Waal)
If This Is A Man (Primo Levi)
The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)

I haven't read de Waal, but excellent call on all the others.

[Wyatt Earp]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

In fact, Levi knocks out Coogan easy.

[ursus arctos]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Imperial Life in the Emerald City is by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (and is very good).

Levi might well be in this instant's top five for me, too.

[Bruno]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Wow, that shaped up to be a damn good reading list really quickly. Most of those I haven't "gotten to."

Some random favorites of mine:

old stuff-

Plutarch's Lives (tr. Dryden)
The French Revolution (Carlyle)
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke)
Essays of Montaigne
(for GY) Discourses on Livy (Machiavelli)
Decline and Fall (Gibbon)

newer(ish) stuff-

Russian Thinkers (Isaiah Berlin)
Postwar (Tony Judt)
The Metaphysical Club (Louis Menand)
From Dawn to Decadence (Barzun) - great as a reference because he recommends so much source material
The Discarded Image (C.S. Lewis)

[Anton Gramscescu]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

That's the chap - thanks!

[Bruno]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

If you're feeling ambitious, go for A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson, an intelletcual history of the 20th century which is flat-out amazing.

Cool...I might look into this first.

[ursus arctos]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Yet again, I am struck by how right Bruno can be about so many things, given how wrong he is about Italian football clubs . . .

Bruno, have you read Tocqueville's Ancien Regime and the French Revolution? On the basis of the above, I would strongly expect that you would like it.

[Ginger Yellow]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

De Waal is excellent if you have any interest in primate behaviour. Chimpanzee Politics is his other masterpiece. Otherwise he's probably not going to do much for you.

The Discarded Image is a great call. It's a really good book for getting a handle on the mediaeval worldview (and dispelling quite a few myths). And yet Lewis was so silly about faith in the modern era. A bit like his namesake, Bernard, I suppose.

[Bruno]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Ursus, no I haven't, is there a particular edition you can recommend?

Ginger Yellow wrote:

De Waal is excellent if you have any interest in primate behaviour.

Speaking of primate behavior, anyone interested in early Roman Christianity might look at Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance by H. A. Drake. Really turned around my understanding of that whole...thing.

The Discarded Image is a great call. It's a really good book for getting a handle on the mediaeval worldview (and dispelling quite a few myths).

Yeah, this one really set me on the right track- stunning little book, only 120 pages or so!

[Mighty Mudhsuden]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Age of Extremes, by Eric Hobsbawm.

[Amor de Cosmos]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Off the top of my head:

Cover to cover...

In the Vineyard of the Text — Ivan Illich
Structures of Everyday Life — Fernand Braudel
Design for the Real World — Victor Papanek
The Uses of Enchantment — Bruno Bettelheim
On Photography — Susan Sontag
Empire of Signs — Roland Barthes
London the Biography — Peter Ackroyd

Frequent reference...

Religions in Four Dimensions — Walter Kaufmann
The New Golden Bough — Sir James George Frazier
A History of Western Philosophy — Bertrand Russell
Modern French Painters — R.H. Wilenski
Elements of Typographic Style — Robert Bringhurst

Biographies...

A Life of Picasso — John Richardson
Mark Rothko — James Breslin
Zola — Frederick Brown

[ursus arctos]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

"Structures" is another great Braudel work. He is one of my genuine heroes. Another French "history" with much more than specialist appeal is Ladurie's Montaillou.

Bruno, my edition of Tocqueville is at least 30 years old, but I would think that any version you could get would be worth it.

[Toby Gymshorts]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

I'll go with something a bit lighter and nominate Spike Milligan's series of war memoirs. Funny, touching and full of the kind of insanity that they used to shoot people for (and, indeed, tried to get him charged with).

[Incandenza]

What is the best non-fiction book you've read

Essays:
Joan Didion, The White Album
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Criticism:
Susan Sontag, On Photography
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual

History:
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis
Richard Wright, The Middle Ground
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul
George Chauncey, Gay New York
Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing

Other:
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas
Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night
D.J. Waldie, Holy Land
Michael Lewis, Moneyball