Name some non-fiction books that you really enjoyed

Just out of curiosity , I'd be interested to learn about other people's favourite non-fiction reads. List anything, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and all points in between.

Here's a random selection of mine from over the years (I'm just a dilettante, so strictly populist stuff):

1. The New Apocrypha - John Sladek's witty and acerbic guide to cults, pseudosciences and outlandish beliefs. Repeat reading in my teenage years.

2. The Myth of Repressed Memory - Elizabeth Loftus. Required introductory reading on this pervasive, damaging and bogus Freudian construct.

3. Europe: A History. Norman H Davies' fascinating and wide-ranging account of, well, European history.

4. Peter the Great: his Life and World. Robert K Massie's unflaggingly engaging biography of a towering (literally) figure.

5. The World We're In. Will Hutton. Argues that the UK (in 2000 ish) is at a crossroads between following US-style conservativism and returning to a more European model.

6. Black Holes and Time Warps. Kip Thorne more-or-less succeeds in explaining post-relativity physics to me, at least qualitatively (and only for the duration of the book).

How 'bout you folks?

Edited for sense

Revolutionary Writings: Vol. I, 1755-1775 Adams, John
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams Adams; & Thomas Jefferson, John & Abigail
Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World Adkins, Roy
The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld Asbury, Herbert
The Essays, or Counsels Civil & Moral Bacon, Sir Francis
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge & Other Selected Writings Berkeley, George
Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution Bobrick, Benson
The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius
The Lost Tomb of Alexander The Great Chugg, Andrew
On A Life Well Spent (De Senectute) Cicero
On the Good Life Cicero
Turn Left at Orion: A Hundred Night Sky Objects to See in a Small Telescope--and How to Find Them Consolmagno, Guy
The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 Cook, Adrian
The Eerie Silence Davies, Paul
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson Ellis, Joseph J.
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Ellis, Joseph J.
The Essays Of Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson, Ralph Waldo
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volumes 1-6 Gibbon, Edward
The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West Guinn, Jeff
The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873 Headley, Joel Tyler
The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France Jager, Eric
Thomas Jefferson: Writings Jefferson, Thomas
A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN Kay, James Tertius de
Great Tales from English History: A Treasury of True Stories About the Extraordinary People -- Knights and Knaves, Rebels and Heroes, Queens and Commoners -- Who Made Britain Great Lacey, Robert
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Lansing, Alfred
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe Lanza and Bob Berman, Robert
Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 Leech, Margaret
1776 McCullough, David
John Adams McCullough, David
Areopagitica Milton, John
Hell's Kitchen: The Riotous Days of New York's West Side O'Connor, Richard
Common Sense and Other Writings Paine, Thomas
The Oregon Trail Parkman, Francis
The Republic Plato
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind Pollard and Howard Reid, Justin
Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe Rees, Martin
The Life of Andrew Jackson Remini, Robert V.
Democracy in America Tocqueville, Alexis de
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe Ward, Peter
George Washington: Writings Washington, George
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life Webb, Stephen
The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union Wiley, Bell Irvin
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Wiley, Bell Irvin
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America Wills, Garry

edited to include all 6 volumes of Gibbon

A People's Tragedy (Russian Revolution)

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire

The Great Game

Redcoats and Rebels

The Fatal Shore

The Last Tsar

Titan: The Story of John D.Rockefeller

I wouldn't know where to start! Summa Theologica Uniformity with God's Will Imitation of Christ A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides The Life of Samuel Johnson The Forgotten Soldier Touching the Void A Memoir of the 'Forty-Five An Inland Voyage Travels with a donkey in the Cévennes The Amateur Emigrant Across the Plains The Silverado Squatters The Mountains of California The Inklings St Peter Damian: his teaching on the spiritual life ...

1.Parting the waters by Taylor Branch (1987 pulitzer prize winner)

This is the first of a three volume work charting the civil rights movement through the life of Rev Martin Luther king. It is a truly magnificent book it has drama, emotion and insights that are deeper than the best novel you could care to name.

2. The plug-in drug by Marie Winn (about the dangers of TV)

I will come back with more,

Quiet - Susan Cain
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
News of a Kidnapping - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

All are really good!!

Of non-FS stuff:

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins had me dizzy with the concepts. Ditto The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

Cooper Cars by Doug Nye is a tale of how a little garage in Surbiton became the Formula 1 world champion - and then went back again. Wonderful tale. Similarly Peter Golenbock's American Zoom is an oral history of NASCAR racing from the roots up.

Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper was one of the first proper literary books about football - they have become much more common in recent years.

Thinking Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahnemann. Great thought-provoking read.

I really liked A short walk in the Hindu Kush, Seven Years in Tibet, Touching the Void. So out of place travellers and adventurers up in the mountains tick the box for me. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison was recommended by an English psychiatrist friend of mine. At times a heart wrenching read, written by a psychologist with biploar disorder.

Leo Marks' "Between Silk and Cyanide" is a great read on the author's work as SOE cryptographer during WWII - his self-depreciating humor and tales of boyish mischief makes it compulsory reading for anybody with even a passing interest in WWII or cryptography.

In a related vein, David Kahn's "The Codebreakers" is a broad history of cryptography throughout history; it contains enough mathematics to be useful professionally and enough prose to be eminently readable just for its edutainment value.

Ross Anderson's "Security Engineering" is one of those books which were not on the curriculum when I studied engineering, but definitely should have been - by providing loads and loads of case studies of systems which weren't quite as robust and resilient as the designers thought, he not only provides entertainment (for those of an engineering persuasion), he also gets you started on critical thinking applied to just about anything you build or do - truly one of those very few books which, actually, change your life.

I've always been a sucker for a good travel story; Tim Slessor's "First Overland" on an expedition by Land Rover from the UK to Thailand in the early fifties is a great read.

Part travelogue, part theology and part history, Philip Marsden's "The Spirit Wrestlers" on the old-school Russian Orthodox believers in southern Russia is one of the most brilliant books I've ever read; touching, sad, insightful. I now read it once a year or so.

Also, if you do any computer programming, you owe it to yourself to find a copy of Don Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming". Demanding, but it provides for lots and lots of valuable insights which will make you a much better programmer in the end - that is, after several years of study and practice. Luckily, it can be dipped into for its sheer elegance when you're stuck at a particular problem, too. Knuth will help you out. :)

9

Leo Marks' "Between Silk and Cyanide" is a great read on the author's work as SOE cryptographer during WWII - his self-depreciating humor and tales of boyish mischief makes it compulsory reading for anybody with even a passing interest in WWII or cryptography.

Thanks for that odderi. I have read Simon Singh's the Code Book and was taken a little by Cryptography: fascinating subject

Thinking about the current thread on hunting, reminded me that I enjoyed both The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Man Eaters of Kumaon.

I also enjoyed Anthony Seldon's two volume biography on Tony Blair. I know some regard it as hagiography, but I found it gave another perspective on an increasingly-maligned PM.

>2 Betelgeuse: I know where to start if I ever get around to reading more American history. Thank you for reminding me of Thomas Paine. Common Sense has been on my list forever, and though short I never got around to it.

>4 LesMiserables: But you did know where to start! And with Summa Theologica, no less. I'm more than impressed that you found this an enjoyable read. I've read summaries and commentaries and that was quite enough. The Inklings looks good - I read Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien years ago and enjoyed that.

>7 InVitrio: I've read The Elegant Universe and enjoyed that, whilst retaining 0% of the concepts.

>9 odderi: The Spirit Wrestlers sounds interesting.

Some really excellent choices in the above posts. Some of the non-fiction works both past and relatively recent that I thought worth reading are:

1. The Beauty and the Sorrow - An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund. An extraordinary piece of research and a highly original book showing how truly global and disruptive WW I was. The book traces twenty people from around the world showing how their lives and career paths were disrupted by The Great War as they are buffeted across the globe by events beyond their control.

2. The great trilogy of books on the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans: The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War.

3. I Will Bear Witness (2 volumes) by Victor Klemperer. A diary of the Nazi years from 1933 through 1945 by a Jewish professor whose life unravels during the Nazi years. Remarkable for the insight the books give into the thoughts and actions of ordinary non-Jewish Germans.

4. Golden Inches - The China Memoir of Grace Service edited by John S. Service. John S. Service, the oldest child of Grace and Robert Service, was a Foreign Service Officer in China from 1933 to 1945 and an important diplomatic expert on China, later persecuted by Joe McCarthy and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He edits the diaries and memoirs of his mother Grace Service during her years in China from 1905 to 1935 as a Christian missionary for the YMCA. The book provides an extraordinary look into China at the turn of the twentieth century, especially the remote areas inland away from the large cities of the Eastern coast (Beijing, Shanghai,etc.), and the events leading up to Mao Tse Tung's Chinese Revolution. An ultimately heartbreaking book about two young people with great courage and personal conviction. NOTE: this is NOT a religious book about their Christian missionary work.

5. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch. A frightening look inside the horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing in Rwanda in 1994. To this day it is underreported. The number of people murdered in an astonishingly short period of time is difficult to comprehend.

6. The great trilogy of books about China written from 2001 to 2010 by Peter Hessler:

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001)
Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present (2006)
Country Driving: A Journey Trhough China From Farm to Factory

Peter Hessler was living in China teaching the English language to Chinese during the start of China's Industrial Revolution and its move away from Maoist Communism toward a pragmatic Communism that begins to incorporate capitalist practices in small measured doses. He provides invaluable insight into the lives of ordinary Chinese during this transformative decade with emphasis on the cultural clash between old traditional ways and the modern Chinese "revolution" into a global economic power.

>7 InVitrio: Totally agree on The Elegant Universe. Wonderful book.

Along the lines of physics, I'd heartily suggest A Tear at the Edge of Creation by Marcelo Gleiser and anything by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

>11 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb: You are most welcome! I am enjoying all of the suggestions on this post.

I just read 'Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands by Roger Scruton. It came out a few weeks ago and I highly rate his lucid attack on Lucan, Deleuze and other fashionable "theorists".

this is on my star list. What a wonderful list.

>2 Betelgeuse: Are the Jefferson letters from LOA?

>12 dlphcoracl: The Evans trilogy is an excellent piece of work, which I haven't read in years. I think I'll move 'The Coming of the Third Reich' back in my TBR pile.

Also, I forgot - Frederick Taylor's 'The Berlin Wall' is a most accessible history of the Wall and the events leading to its construction and its downfall - and at times, it reads like a thriller. Truly excellent.

Oh, and John Julius Norwich's three volume history of Byzantium. I loved those.

Edit to add: According to this thread, apparently one should signal to fellow members if the subject matter of one's thread is not directly connected to Folio Society books.

I was unaware of this, and apologise for anyone who feels they've been hoodwinked into reading it. I will police myself rigorously from now on.

>16 ironjaw: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson which I list above is indeed LOA, and I am pleased to have the beautiful leather-bound edition that is no longer available. (Likewise my George Washington's "Writings.") However, the Adams-Jefferson Letters are not. That was published in hardcover and later in paperback by The University of North Carolina Press, edited by Lester J. Cappon.

edited to add comment about Washington

Titles I've read in the past year or so that I think that Devotees would particularly enjoy:

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes (now in a FS edition!) - fascinating look at several important early figures in the "Romantic age" of science. Science, art, religion, and philosophy were all much more intermingled at the time so it also gives a general cultural picture of the period.

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides - riveting narrative nonfiction about a doomed polar journey.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos - very thought-provoking exploration of many different issues involved in the activity of translation.

The Fellowship by Philip and Carol Zaleski - a group biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. The latter two are less well known but the relationships between all four are essential to an understanding of their lives and work.

The Treasure of Auchinleck : The Story of the Boswell Papers (1975 in the UK; 1974 in USA, I think) by David Buchanan does what it says on the tin. It may sound dry, but on the contrary, it reads like a thriller, with plot twists galore, legal disputes, unexpected death, academic rivalry and the fanaticism of a determined collector. I literally couldn't put this down when I first read it.

The Diary of Anne Frank (FS, 2005). The poignancy as you read this is almost unbearable.

Science, Religion, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2013) by David Wilkinson. Thought provoking, as science meets philosophy meets religion. Wilkinson must be almost unique in holding a PhD in both Theoretical Astrophysics (subject: the study of star formation) and Systematic Theology (subject: the future of the physical universe), disciplines which he manages to combine without his brain exploding.

New Towns of the Middle Ages : Town Plantation in England, Wales and Gascony (1967) by Maurice Beresford. This is a sequel to Beresford's classic text, The Lost Villages of England and analyses the various motives for and archaeology of this crucial period of urban development. I can't think why I should have been so gripped by this when I read it thirty years ago but I was!

Time in History : Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988) by G. J Whitrow. This looks at man's growing awareness of time and how that awareness has shaped the development of human society and inventions.

Thucydides : The Reinvention of History (2009) by Donald Kagan. This is an interesting exposition and interpretation of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, examining the author's methods and motives. Revisionist.

No FS stuff. No particular order.

James Gleick: Chaos: Making a New Science and The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

Antony Andrewes: The Greeks

Lisa Randall foremost theorist on M-Theory and Multiverses: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions; Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World; and Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, a monograph.

>1 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb: I'm a fan, too. Have yhou read Nicholas and Alexandra?
R K Massie: Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Victoria Glendinning: Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West and Leonard Woolf: A Biography

Richard P Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman; Six Easy Pieces: Essentials Of Physics Explained By Its Most Brilliant Teacher; his autobio, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character); and his bio, The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by Jagdish Mehra Really, anything by and about this man, I've either read or own; these are favorites.

Douglas R Hofstadter: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Edward O Wilson: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Murray Gell-Mann: The Quark and the Jaguar

Dava Sobel: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Michael Korda: Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee

Will Durant: The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers and his and Ariel Durant's series, The Story of Civilization

Johnjoe McFadden: Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

Brian Greene: The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Mary S Lovell: Straight on Till Morning. the Biography of Beryl Markham

Stephen Ambrose: Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Nien Chang: Life and Death in Shanghai, a memoir

Timothy Brook: Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

Eudora Welty: The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews

H E Huntley: The Divine Proportion

Louis Godart: The Phaistos Disc: The Enigma Of An Aegean Script

William Least Heat Moon: Blue Highways : A Journey into America memoir of a road trip

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Team of Rivals

Frank Arthur Worsley: Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure

Edmund White: The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris

Would have included more of my favorite physics titles but. . .

>21 boldface: Your first choice reminded me of how much I enjoyed A J A Symons' The Quest for Corvo - also a detective story, in which Symon's gradually uncovers the eccentric life of author Frederick Rolfe.

>22 Limelite: I think my other half has Nicholas and Aexandria, I will have a dig.

Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! is terrific fun.

>23 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb:

Yes indeed. I nearly mentioned that one too.

>23 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb:

Went to check out your library at your profile page, only you don't have any catalogued. Disappointed me.

Only one FS book. Recent(ish) reads that have stuck in the mind:

Bob Stanley - Yeah Yeah Yeah- a history of Rock & Pop music from a British perspective (but not by any means limiting coverage to UK acts)
Keith Thomas - Religion and the Decline of Magic
Holbrook Jackson - The Anatomy of Bibliomania - ventriloquises Robert Burton (largely successfully I think, to address book collecting/bibliomania as Burton does melancholy.
Rob Young - Electric Eden - a "secret history" of psych-folk, pagan themes in pop music in the 60s-70s etc.
Owen Davies - Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Philip Hoare - Wilde's Last Stand: Scandal and Conspiracy during the Great War
Phil Baker - The Devil is a Gentleman: the Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley

>25 Limelite: Surely the picture of me lifting things up more than compensates?

Sorry you're disappointed, but cataloguing seems onerous and the rewards uncertain.

Another biography I really enjoyed (many moons ago, now): Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton by Byron E. Farwell. A fascinating and readable biography of one of the most remarkable men of his age.

>27 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb:

With no malice aforethought and no desire to offend, I think I'm probably more interested in your library where we might have something in common. ;^)

Notes from a Small Island and The Lost Continent, both FS and both Bill Bryson.

>28 Limelite: No offence taken, and I was being utterly facetious about the picture.

I'm filled with genuine admiration for those with the assiduity to document their entire libraries, but I'm far too lazy to do the same. Bugger that for a game of soldiers, as we say over here.

If you're interested though, I have at least listed my reads from the '1001 Books to Read Before You Die' collection here. and even had a stab at reviewing my latest reads.

I saw the reference in your profile to the South Florida Drug Wars. I wonder if you've come across the Jon Roberts book American Desperado? I borrowed it last year and found it a compulsive (if lurid and generally unpleasant) read.

>30 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb:

Never heard of the book and don't think I'd read it simply because like most people who survive being in the eye of the storm or in the heart of Never-Never Land, books about the goings on in your backyard sometimes lack appeal. That said, I admit to having watched the '06 documentary, "Cocaine Cowboys." Believe me, everything in that film is exactly true, and I imagine that can be said about what's in your book, too.

Miami, during the 30+ years I've lived there was the omphalos of the world when it comes to "News of the Weird." I remember bodies falling out of the air after being pushed from airplanes, just like the bales of cocaine that splashed into the Everglades, which was literally our backyard." I remember the lethal shoot-out between FBI/DEA/and other Feds with Colombian drug thugs in a shopping center I frequented, but not that day. I remember innocent women and their children murdered in gruesome circumstances in their own homes to "send a message." Heck, one night we were awakened by cops who asked if we knew there was a man asleep under the bushes next to our house. "No." Then they asked if we knew anything about the suitcase of drugs and the guns in the trunk of what was no doubt the guy's car. "No," again. Luckily, it was a harmless encounter with a drunken druggie.

There are just too many stories of my years there to tell. But all my friends and acquaintances who wrote Miami noir -- Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, James W Hall, Les Standiford, Barbara Parker, Vicki Hendricks, and even Elmore Leonard -- are not making it up.

>31 Limelite: Wow.

You really were in the eye of the storm.

The headlines in my local newspapers are usually of the 'Man finds Spoon in Road' variety; the sort of events you describe couldn't be further from my own experience. Reading your description, I feel exceedingly lucky about that.

If I had had a local paper, a typical headline might have read, "Limelite Finds Python in Garage." Or, as happened on another occasion, "Limelite Discovers Blind Pony That Wandered into Her Laundry Room." That was before we finished fencing our acreage, on a day when I left doors open. Feral horses wandered up and down the road and grazed wherever they like. Visited ditto, too! Our own used to stand on the back patio and try to stick their heads inside through the sliding glass doors. THUNK!

Plenty of other tales of weird animal encounters and behavior. For instance, the people behind us kept lions, tigers, Florida panthers, ostriches, water buffalo, and even an American bison. The quiet country nights were certainly noisy. Lions love to vocalize. At this point I think I've written enough non-fiction in this thread about living in Miami-Dade County for it to be a favorite book.

>33 Limelite:

Keep going, Limelite! This is hugely entertaining. Like Cliff, the most exciting thing happening around here was when next door's gnomes disappeared from their garden - and that was years ago. Incidentally, it turned out they'd been stolen by a policeman.

>34 boldface: Funny you should mention that, the one and only time I've been arrested was for taking someone's garden gnome without consent.

I was fined £5 with £3 costs (well, it was 1980).

Maybe the same policeman who arrested me became obsessed by the idea until he was compelled to act upon it.

>34 boldface:, >35 Cliff-Rhu-Rhubarb: - One of my parents' neighbours had this absolutely, positively, hideous garden gnome (is there any other sort, by the way?) which was sitting on a small bench under a tree in their garden.

Someone stole the bench, leaving the gnome. For years, he sat under that tree, appearing to be taking a s**t.

>36 odderi:

Hey, some of us are at work and can't afford to be laughing uproariously--thanks for the humor.

I just finished and very much enjoyed White Matter: A Memoir of Family and Medicine by Janet Sternburg.

Musings on family relationships and mental illness from a woman whose mother was one of six children, two of whom were given lobotomies but remained within the family unit.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang remains one of my all-time favourite non-fiction reads.

Just about anything by Robert Massie and David McCullough.

1. Robert Massie's "Peter the Great": my favourite by far. I've read it twice now but i still recall my immense enjoyment going through all 1000 pages of this biography the first time round many years ago. I remember thinking to myself when i turned the last page (regretfully) that this author can REALLY write. Since i was reading a cheap paperback then, i immediately hunted down a hardcover for keeps.

Other titles that have left an impression are:
2. Robert Massie's "Catherine the Great"
3. David McCullough's "Truman"
4. Peter Heather's "The Fall of the Roman Empire"

>40 tkerod:

I liked McCullough's John Adams, but not even he could make Harry Truman interesting.

On the Other hand, maybe Massie could. Far better writer. Just finished Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. I miss her company because Massie made her vivid and almost alive again.

A few of my favourite things, although I've left out those published already by the FS!

Natural History
The History of the Countryside - Oliver Rackham
Crow Country - Mark Cocker
Findings - Kathleen Jamie

Travel
Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater
Terra Incognita - Sara Wheeler
Hamish's Mountain Walk - Hamish Brown
Everest - Walt Unsworth

Adventure
The Perfect Storm - Sebastian Junger
The Cruellest Miles - Gay and Laney Salisbury
A Voyage for Madmen - Peter Nichols

History
History of the World - JM Roberts
All Hell Let Loose - Max Hastings
Dambusters - James Holland
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
Storm and Conquest -Stephen Taylor
Waterloo - Tim Clayton
The Pursuit of Glory - Tim Blanning

Biography
Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee
Wellington, The Years of the Sword - Elizabeth Longford
Shackleton - Roland Huntford
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin
The Pinecone - Jenny Uglow
Hogarth - Jenny Uglow
The Lunar Men - Jenny Uglow
In Search of Robert Millar - Richard Moore

Others
Small is Beautiful - EF Schumacher
Letters To Alice on first reading Jane Austen - Fay Weldon

>42 Willoyd: I enjoyed J M Roberts' History of the World too.

>42 Willoyd: You have impeccable taste. That is a near-perfect reading list for a year of non-fiction! I would perhaps just add Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain (written inthe 1940s, and somewhere between Natural History and Travel I guess, it recounts her hill walking experience in the Cairngorms, and is an absolute classic).

>42 Willoyd: I agree with Michael. What a wonderful reading list!

Some favorites I'd love to see in Folio editions:

Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Voices From Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich (just won the Nobel in Literature)

A few other non-fiction choices I really enjoyed in the last few years:

The Big Short - Michael Lewis
Jim Henson: A Biography - Brian Jay Jones
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief - Lawrence Wright
Detroit: An American Autopsy - Charlie LeDuff
Call the Midwife/The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (marketed under two different titles) - Jennifer Worth

>47 TabbyTom: Let me guess, 'Famous Vanishing Acts'.

>48 cronshaw: It could be worse. It could have said The author has been deleted by this message.

I would have missed TabbyTom.

>48 cronshaw:

Sort of, yes. I'm continually pressing the wrong keys in editing my posts. I'll post my choices sooner or later.

These are a few of my books that I've enjoyed for various reasons. I've left out some very enjoyable autobiographies (e.g. Sir Thomas Beecham, Anthony Burgess) because I have doubts about how far they are genuinely non-fiction. I've omitted a few biographies/histories (e.g. Brantôme, Aubrey) for similar reasons.

City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, by Peter Parsons. A fine account of life in a city in Hellenic Egypt, reconstructed from the papyrus fragments which were discovered there in the 1890s and which are still being slowly deciphered.

Lord Rochester's Monkey, by Graham Greene. Published in the 1930s but couldn't be published till the 1970s. Still, it probably wouldn't have been so sumptuously illustrated in the 1930s.

Longitude, by Dava Sobel. Maybe I should replace my copy with the Folio edition.

The Anatomy of Bibliomania, by Holbrook Jackson. A discursive acciunt of book-obsession from all angles, in a style based on Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I suspect this is one of the great "Marmite" books, either loved or hated by those who know it.

Dewey, The Small-Town Library Cat who Touched the World, by Vicki Myron. Sheer sentimental mush, of course, with little claim to inlusion in a forum like this on literary grounds, but irresistible to a cat-freak like me.

A Corner of a Foreign Field, by Ramachandra Guha and Beyond a Boundary, by C L R James. Great books on cricket and very much besides, by authors from Trinidad and India.

Cricket: The Golden Age, by Duncan Steer. A wonderful collection of photographs of cricketers on and off the field, and of cricket at all levels from Tests at Lord's to kids' games in the streets of the East End.

The Physiology of Taste, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. One of my few choices that I have in the Folio edition.

The Discovery of France, by Richard Cobb. How the French discovered each other and how the various "pays", so different at the Revolution, were gradually brought together.

>52 TabbyTom: During your second disappearing trick, I looked up reviews for Anatomy of Bibliomania which I'd not heard of before, despite the glorious title, intrigued as to how we Devotees could appear under dissection. But then I saw that it was first published in 1930, long before Charles Ede & Co., and that there would be no reference to cerebral tissue ravaged by the FAD virus.

The only book in your list I've read is Longitude, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

>44 Conte_Mosca:, >45 ironjaw:
Thank you for your kind comments. The Living Mountain definitely looks like one to settle down to - it's a part of the world where I've had some of my most enjoyable (and challenging!) experiences, especially in the winter. Being a teacher, settling to a book is difficult at this time of year, but the Christmas holidays are flickering pleasantly on the horizon!

>53 cronshaw:

It would be nice if the book could be kept under review and updated from time to time, like (say) Britannica or Gray's Anatomy. Then it could take account of mutations like the FAD virus. This forum would be an obvious resource; some of us might even find ourselves quoted, or referenced in the millionth footnote.

A few more:

London: The Biography, by Peter Ackroyd. The title is typical of Ackroyd and so is the treatment. His historical London, like the London of his novels, is a city where the past makes itself felt in the present, often in a disconcerting or sinister way.

Civilisation: A Personal View, by Kenneth Clark. His lordship's views and tone are less popular now than they were when he first presented his television series, but (to use one of his favourite words) they're perfectly "agreeable" to me.

The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes. I'm glad to see I'm not the only devotee who enjoys this account of transportation and convict life in Australia.

The Ern Malley Affair, by Michael Heyward. The tale of a great literary hoax involving a fictitious modern poet, perpetrated by a couple of Australian undergraduates.

Kings, Lords and Wicked Libellers, by John Wardroper. Political satire and its targets from the reign of George III to William IV (a rather one-sided account, I must admit).

Shaw's Music, by George Bernard Shaw, edited by Dan H Laurence. I can have reservations about Shaw, but I never find fault with his music criticism, all of which is collected in this 3-volume set.

The Voyce of the World: Selected Writings of Sir Thomas Browne, edited by Geoffrey Keynes. Many thanks to Folio for publishing these works in a worthy format.

Playing the Game: A Biography of Sir Henry Newbolt. A bit of an eye-opener in places. I had no idea that the man who urged us to "play up and play the game" spent his later years in a ménage à trois with his wife and his wife's girlfriend.

My final selection:

Rural Rides, by William Cobbett. I now have this in a Folio edition. Cobbett, like Orwell, appeals to me as an intensely political writer who never swallows propaganda but always thinks for himself. So I can relish his writing even when I don't agree with it.

The Wipers Times, edited by Ian Hislop. The complete run of a trench newspaper produced intermittently on the Western Front World War One.

The Postcard Century, by Tom Phillips. The history of the twentieth century told through 2,000 picture postcards of every kind.

Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse. The artistic and personal life of one of he earliest of early music revivalists.

And also;

The social histories by E S Turner, including "Boys Will Be Boys", "The Shocking History of Advertising" and "Roads to Ruin";

The "Oddly" books by Paul Jennings, collections of his whimsical columns in "The Observer" in the 1950s and 1960s;

>53 cronshaw:

I have the most beautiful paperback book, a gold embossed cover against a brown background with woodcut panels on front and back of Medieval libraries and readers (one wearing spectacles). The book is A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas A Basbanes.

A great passage in re Richard Heber's spendthrift ways with his father's money -- son of an English clergyman and a maniac collector -- is by means of moral advice to his son regarding his mania.

It is an itch that grows by indulgence and should be nipt in the bud. All extravagance originates in the lust of acquiring superfluities which are ruinous, superfluous Horses, superfluous Carriages, superfluous Pictures, superfluous Libraries are the daily source of misery and beggary. A small collection of well chosen books is sufficient for the entertainment and instruction of any man, and all else are useless Lumber.

Are you crazy, Pop?! A sufficiency of books? What is that?

A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen

I would love for the FS to do editions of the above.

The Grand Medieval Bestiary
The History of Rome in Art

Large books of the arty variety, but read cover to cover and will be returned to for dipping.

Citizens - Simon Schama
A History of Rome - Mommsen
The Tomb of Tutankhamun - Carter

All read recently in Folio editions, which undoubtedly enhanced the experience.

And, a pair of books which I could never say that I 'enjoyed' reading, but which I think people 'should' read:

If this is a Man / The Truce - Primo Levi

I don't usually post, but I am reading Margaret Thatcher From Grantham to The Falklands by Charles Moore, and really enjoying it.

I hardly ever read political biographies or autobiographies, but The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew was fascinating.

The Story of Civilization (11 vol) by Will and Ariel Durant along with companion works: Heroes of History and Lessons of History. I have them in Easton Press leather not sure if they were ever offered by FS.

From FS: Robert's Holy Land (2 volumes) and Vermes' Authentic Gospel of Jesus.

Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda) - special slipcased 50th anniversary edition.