I’m looking for a few nonfiction recommendations but right now am coming up empty.
here are the last few nonfiction books I’ve enjoyed, in order of personal preference:
William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War by Eric H. Walther
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko
Rebels on the Backlot by Sharon Waxman
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sack
I am also contemplating picking up:
Mark Penn - Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes
The Reformation, by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2007, edited by Richard Preston
A New Kind of Science, by Stephen Wolfram
Now and Then: The Poet’s Choice Columns, by Robert Hass
I’m just starting the Wolfram book, but it’s very long and very dense. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone other than scientists wanting to know whether Wolfram is really a bozo or not (like me). The others are excellent.
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky
Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies) by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer
Killer as in brain-implosion-inducing? I note that you don’t appear to be into science, but maybe that’s temporary - so how about “The Trouble with Physics” by Lee Smolin? String Theory and the multiverse will blow your synapses.
I’m not sure I can hold a candle to some of those already recommended, but
I think those who read it will find it useful.
Thanks again,
Tim
PS I’ve just learned that the book will get its first national media hit on Sunday, Oct 21.
A syndicated careers columnist, Joyce Kennedy, is featuring it in her weekly piece. Woohoo!
John McPhee is the pioneer of creative nonfiction. If you don’t know his work, I recommend The John McPhee Reader or his latest, Uncommon Carriers. A full account of his career is on Wikipedia or at his publisher’s website: johnmcphee.com/
Either of the McPhee books recommended by Druid (or anything else by McPhee);
anything by Barry Lopez, especially Crossing Open Ground; The Richness of Life, selected works of Stephen Jay Gould with a forward by Oliver Sacks; 1776 by David McCullough; Gun, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
The Nicholson – God’s Secretaries – book is fascinating as English history and as church history, but even more as a look at how (and why) scripture is translated.
Eland: 25 years’ dedication to classic travel writing
Thousands of new books are published each year. And you might imagine that about the same amount go out of print each year.
The history of virginity with Hanne Blank
How do you define virginity? According to historian Hanne Blank, it’s not as straightforward as you’d think. St Thomas Aquinas said that to be a virgin you had to be pure of body and mind. In Ancient Greek times the ‘parthenios’ were considered virgins and yet they often had children; and during the Renaissance the ‘piss prophets’ would study the urine of young women to test their virginity. It’s the history of virginity on the Book Show – it’s not as simple as the birds and the bees.
Agreed, but also ‘forging’ as in ‘to forge’ as in iron!:
The action of the vb. FORGE in various senses; an instance of the same. Also, used gerundially with the omission of in.
Forge: 1. trans. To make, fashion, frame, or construct (any material thing); = FABRICATE v. 1. Obs. exc. as coincident with transf. use of 2. to forge together: to frame together, weld.
2. To shape by heating in a forge and hammering; to beat into shape; to coin (money). Also with out.
b. absol. or intr. To work at the forge; to do smith's work.
