Position:Home>Books & Authors> Most entertaining non-fiction?

Bill Bryson is so great!. I still have a few of his to read and I'm looking forward to it!. Here's a couple of people I like, though I confess to being a fiction addict myself so these are all things that read a bit like novels and are not too terribly technical, mostly!. You have probably heard of most of them but perhaps a few have slipped your mind!. Things are always slipping mine!.

Bruce Chatwin!. My favorite is The Songlines, but he is invariably interesting!. I have learned about some things I had no idea of and a few of them actually changed the way I look at the world!.

Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca is a pretty amazing book too!.

Studs Terkel!. His oral histories cover so much ground that they always range from the amusing to the poignant to the infuriating!. Working is one of my favorites but you really can't go wrong!.

Does James Herriot (of All Creatures Great and Small fame) count!? Because he is entertaining as hell!.

I have read William Manchester's The Glory and The Dream at least 6 times since I discovered it in high school!. It's a very readable account of American history from 1932 to 1972!.
A World Lit Only By Fire, by the same author, is an enlightening (!) account of the Middle Ages!.

Stephen Ambrose also writes some good history!. I like Undaunted Courage, but I tend to be a bit of a freak for the Lewis and Clark expedition!.

Daniel J!. Boorstin has a couple of books I like and he may have newer (and older, for that matter) ones with which I am unfamiliar!. Both The Creators and The Discoverers fascinated me!.

The Beak Of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner is an interesting book about Darwinian theory and natural selection!.

Mr!. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler, is a very cool little book which I won't even atttempt to describe!.

The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker is a terrific book about language and the mind!.

I don't own any Stephen Jay Gould and can't recall the exact titles, but I borrowed some from a friend years ago and really enjoyed them!. The same holds true for Oliver Sacks, Noam Chomsky, Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan!.

Vance Packard, Marshall McLuhan and John Kenneth Galbraith are somewhat dated but still interesting and remarkably prescient!.

Erik Larson is an unusual author!. I've only read The Devil In the White City but it made me want to read his other titles too!.

Greil Marcus writes some interesting social commentary/history!. I like Lipstick Traces fairly well but I have an interest in early punk rock and its era!. Which leads me to also recommend Please Kill Me, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, it's an oral history of the early days of punk!.

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant and A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell are both great overviews!. I guess I can't say that these exactly read like novels but they are certainly not boring either!.

David Denby wrote a book called Great Books, in which he, at the age of 48, enrolled in a couple of Western Civ!. courses!. He takes us along on his ride through them and it is quite edifying!. Makes you want to read some pretty erudite stuff too!.

Speaking of erudite, if you get much more so I am going to end up scared of you! That being said, I hope you find something that looks interesting here!.


Edit) But you express your knowledge so well! Mine just sort of mills around in the back of my head!.

Oh, and you underestimate TheVet!. Why, he even stooped to answering a LOTR question, believe it or not!. Admittedly not very reverently, but still !. !. !.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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If you're interested in soccer at all, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch is a hilarious look into the mind of a beyond obsessed fan!. I highly recommend it :)

John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud is a terribly sad memoir written by the father of a boy who died of a brain tumor!. This book is superb and a classic!.

Your Own, Sylvia is a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath (poet and author of The Bell Jar) by Stephanie Hemphill!. I know it doesn't sound all that great, but it's amazing!. You don't have to know anything about Sylvia Plath to appreciate this book!.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a hilarious treatise on proper grammar by Lynne Truss!. It's great and funnier than you ever thought apostrophes could be!.

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle chronicles the author's move from England to the south of France and his and his wife's first year there!. This book is hilarious and extremely well-written!. Check it out!

Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen is a really interesting memoir about a young boy's experiences growing up under the rule of Mao in China!.

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz is an amazing true story about a man and (I believe) four others who are Russian prisoners but manage to escape and trek across all of Siberia!.

These are my favorites! I hope you like some of them!.
By the way, it's great to see another Bill Bryson lover!. I can't get enough of his stuff!Www@QuestionHome@Com

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I like to read about different cultures!. Here's my picks:
1!. A Million Truths: A Decade in China by Linda Jakobson!. A Finnish journalist's look at living in China!.
2!. China Wakes by Nicholas D!. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn
3!. Amish Society by John HostetlerWww@QuestionHome@Com

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here are mine:

--> The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
--> 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
--> The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
--> Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

enjoy!Www@QuestionHome@Com

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lol well the only one I liked was something bout the worlds most evil women!.lol I know!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Well, if you enjoyed Bill Bryson, you might enjoy the travel books of Will Randall!. he has had some fascinating experiences working in exotic foreing parts 'Solomon Time' 'Indian Summer' 'Botswana Time' 'Another Long Day on the Piste' and 'Limey Gumshoe' are all very entertaining!.

I love P!.J!. O'Rourke's books, his savagely funny commentaries on other countries, on politics etc are wonderful!. I particularly like 'Holidays in Hell' 'Give War a Chance' 'Parliament of Whores' and 'All the Trouble in the World; the lighter side of famine, pestilence, destruction and death'!.

Another author I find absolutely hilarious is Florence King, 'Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady' her account of her 40s childhood and 50s college days, is absolutely hilarious, and so is 'Southern Ladies and Gentlemen' her book about what southerners are like and how they got that way!.

Brian Thacker is another author who writes extremely funny travel books!. 'Rule No 5, No Sex on the Bus' 'Planes, Trains and Elephants' 'the Naked man festival' and 'I'm not eating any of that foreign muck' are all very good!.

Charlie Connolley's books 'Attention All Shipping' and 'In Search of Elvis' are very good too!.

I love Gerald Durrell's books about his boyhood on Corfu, 'My Family and Other animals' is the funniest one I think, and he also wrote many books about his animal collecting expeditions 'The Overloaded Ark' 'The Bafut Beagles' 'Three Singles to Adventure' etc, all very funny!.

Although you might not think it would have many laughs in it, George Orwell's superb book 'HOmage to Catalonia' about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, has actually got a lot of humour in it, and is a really wonderful book!.

Another excellent book is 'Quartered Safe Out here' by George Macdonald Fraser, about his experiences fighting the Japanese in burma during WW2, when he was about twenty!. A really gripping book with lots of laughs in it!.

A very funny book I read recently is 'History Without the Boring Bits' by Ian Crofton, which is full of surprising and fascinating information!.

'The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody' by will Cuppy, is a wonderful humorous history book, it tells the lives of various memorable characters, from Cleopatra to Miles Standish, and is very entertaining!.

'The Naked Olympics' by Tony Perrottet is a wonderful history of the ancient Greek olympic games which is utterly gripping from beginning to end and full of astonishing information!.

'America's women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, helpmates and heroines' by Gail Collins is an utterly fascinating history of the women of America, told in a very readable style and although some of it is very serious there is a lot of humour woven into the text!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut is brilliant and funny!.

Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence Joseph was fascinating!. Taking a somewhat familiar prediction and then analyzing all the scientific knowns and unknowns that may support it was brilliant!. Not what I expected!. Had an interesting story line of the author actually going and talking to various Mayan High Priests that was phenomenally interesting as well!.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong is one of the most comprehensive unbiased comparative religion studies that I've ever read!. Written at a somewhat high reading level but worth the effort!.

Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson is a decent look at one of the most embarrassingly un-American acts in American History!. also briefly touches upon one of the fundamental problems in the American Republic: that labor unions were villanized and the rights of laborers have always been sacrificed for the benefit of our wealthy and elite!.

And I love this guy, I don't always agree with him but he's fascinating and important so I'd say: read Media Control by Noam Chomsky!. It's an enlightening series of essays, interviews, etc about how media has/is been/being used to suppress the masses!. (Fahrenheit 451 without the book burning!.) Another of his books, Profit Over People, is also very interesting!. Prepare to do a lot of background research for his books though, he has a tendency to cite obscure history, and a variety of reporting inaccuracies by compare/contrast without providing the actual source material!. It gets annoying!. But fascinating social ideas, definitely!. And something I think every "educated" person should have to deal with!.

Thomas Friedman's books were interesting to me too!. The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat!. They both have revised and updated editions to them now, but they were good!. I don't think I agreed with everything he said, he was a lot more optimistic about globalization than I am, but they were well written and easy to read!. Which I think is rare for most current events books!.

Unfortunately not many of my books are technical!. I'm, as you'd probably guess, more interested in social sciences!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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