Nonfiction for the literal literate!

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tabletop_joe
tabletop_joe Posts: 455 Member
Informative, educational, ripped from the headlines and purportedly true! Is the real world good enough for you? Which nonfiction book do you love?

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  • tabletop_joe
    tabletop_joe Posts: 455 Member
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    Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James Swanson is a keeper!

    I also loved Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson was wonderfully grim and fascinating. You'll also learn about an interesting era in American architecture as a bonus! If you like Alan Moore's From Hell, definitely pick it up.

  • denversillygoose
    denversillygoose Posts: 708 Member
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    Anything by Jon Krakauer
  • tabletop_joe
    tabletop_joe Posts: 455 Member
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    ^^^Into the Wild was really good. Sad and infuriating, but very well written and researched.
  • tabletop_joe
    tabletop_joe Posts: 455 Member
    edited May 2017
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    While In on the stationary bike, I'm reading Benjamin Wooley's The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.

    And because I apperently can't get enough if the black and bloody past, I'm reading The Third Horseman: A Story of Weather, War, and the Famine History Forgot by William Rosen. It has completely changed the way I understand England and Westerb Europe in the mid-1300's.
  • theowlbox
    theowlbox Posts: 912 Member
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    I loved The Residence by Kate Andersen Brower about the White House through time. Also really enjoyed Jim Henson the biography by Brian Jay Jones. The Possibility Dogs (cadaver dogs) and Chaser (the border collie who knows all the words) were enjoyable because I love dogs with jobs.
  • KETOGENICGURL
    KETOGENICGURL Posts: 687 Member
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    Countdown Alan Weisman, while I dislike his pro-Palestinian very political diatribe at the beginning he addresses the population bomb that did NOT occur as predicted in the 80s, and the over population problems to come.

    Basically science solved some food/production issues to feed 4+ billion BUT at some point we pass the ability with any new methods to keep feeding 6-8-10 billion. Misery and human die off is what he predicts with not enough birth control.

    The reasoning is: every new healthy child will grow, consume, produce more kids that ALSO live to produce, all due to better medical and food. So he expands on programs to offer birth control to most other non western countries..offering women a pig/goat for every year not pregnant (and on BC) and it works...most women do not want to be pregnant endlessly and have kids die, be sick for 10-15 fertile years, most want a better life, less stress and worry over starving.

    While most western nations are now at (US, Europe) or below (Japan) replacement level, other nations do want help to raise the welfare of all their people. really large book with a ton of ideas.
  • theowlbox
    theowlbox Posts: 912 Member
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    Reading Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military Industrial Complex by Michael Hiltzik. Very interesting so far!