*Thank you for your responses, everyone. I will definitely be checking out some of these.
The Victorian Internet: about the societal impact of the telegraph
Isaac’s Storm: about the 1900 Galveston hurricane
Open: about the early history of Compaq and IBM PC clones
1984 /j
But actually it is probably “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom.
Its about someone who learns important life lessions from an old man who is dying from ALS.
American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics by Kevin Hazzard
Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki
It’s Your Funeral by Kathy Benjamin
Plight of the Living Dead by Matt Simon
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
A Woman of No Importance - Sonia Purnell
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Don’t know if it’s my all-time favorite, but I really enjoyed Moonwalking With Einstein. It’s a glimpse into competitive memory champions and the techniques they use. Written in a very casual, investigative style.
A split third person narrative; One describes the architects that built the 1894 world fair in Chicago, and another that follows the escapades of one of history’s most notorious serial killers, HH Holmes, that prayed on the women that went to the fair.
One of my favorite books I’ve ever read.
Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker.
Fascinating book all about what sleep is and the reasons every living thing on earth does/needs it in some way or another.
Gut by Guilia Enders.
Intriguing journey from mouth to anus, showcasing the functions performed to sustain life by some of the body’s most underrated organs. Also discusses some of the most common ailments and their effects (but also causes, and in some cases their treatments/cures).
Immune by Philipp Dettmer.
A wonderful introduction to how the body’s immune system performs its job…or doesn’t, in some unfortunate circumstances.
All three books are written for the lay person who wants/needs an accessible introduction to these complex systems affecting health and well-being.
Into the Heart of Borneo and In Trouble Again by Redmond O’Hanlon.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123474/into-the-heart-of-borneo-by-redmond-ohanlon/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123475/in-trouble-again-by-redmond-ohanlon/
To be clear, O’Hanlon was a natural history book REVIEWER, before all this. His editor decided, in a fit of whimsy, to pack him up and send him to Borneo for two months.
"As a former academic and a natural history book reviewer I was astonished to discover, on being threatened with a two-month exile to the primary jungles of Borneo, just how fast a man can read.
Powerful as your scholarly instincts may be, there is no matching the strength of that irrational desire to find a means of keeping your head upon your shoulders; of retaining your frontal appendage in its accustomed place; of barring 1,700 different species of parasitic worm from your bloodstream and Wagler’s pit viper from just about anywhere; of removing small, black, wild-boar ticks from your crutch with minimum discomfort (you do it with Sellotape); of declining to wear a globulating necklace of leeches all day long; of sidestepping amoebic and basillary dysentery, yellow and blackwater and dengue fevers, malaria, cholera, typhoid, rabies, hepatitis, tuberculosis and the crocodile (thumbs in its eyes, if you have time, they say)."
The book is an absolute delight and when he survived, returned, and submitted it, his reward was to be sent to the Amazon for FOUR months.
He did a third book in the Congo which is not a light and friendly read. I’m glad I read it, but it’s absolutely horrifying on multiple levels.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123476/no-mercy-by-redmond-ohanlon/
His 4th book, Trawler, isn’t as morose as No Mercy, but it’s not light and friendly either. Basically “Deadliest Catch: The Book”.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123477/trawler-by-redmond-ohanlon/
In order of recall,
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Why Nations Fail
A Short History of Nearly Everything
God Is Not Great
Gödel, Escher, Bach
The Smartest Kids in the World
Never at Rest by Richard Westfall is a comprehensive biography of Isaac Newton. Near the end when he works at the mint it gets pretty boring but otherwise great.
The Making of the Atom Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a fairly definitive treatment of how the US atomic bomb came about. It covers an incredible amount of background info of both the science and history that lead to it.
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsburg is a terrifying look into the wild west of nuclear weapons in the couple decades after their advent. Ellsburg is famously the person who leaked the Pentagon Papers and he had a front row seat to the insanity that was the early* Cold War. It’s a miracle we survived.
Humble Pi by Matt Parker. It’s about common mistakes people make in math and the real world consequences of these mistakes
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Not as tough as read as the title sounds. Just the introduction will blow your mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_MindGuns, Germs, and Steel:
Don’t do the abridged version or watch the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_SteelThere’s some legitimate criticism of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Some of the author’s key assertions are incorrect but by and large a very well informed and exhaustively researched.
Most of the vitriol around it though seems to have missed the point. Diamond uses the book to argue against the idea of euro-exceptionalism but a loud part of society sees it as arguing the exact opposite.
Basically, what I’m saying is, don’t read it as gospel but an exceptional book that examines the way the world became the way it did from a fairly balanced perspective.
I know it really pissed off social anthropologist back in the day.
But I found the part about animal and plant domestication the most interesting. Domestication of animals created slaves you could eat.
I don’t usually read non-fiction but for a reading bingo card challenge at my local bookstore and I was blown away by Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, it was fantastic.
Hunter S. Thompson - Hell’s Angels
Jake Adelstein - Tokyo Vice & Tokyo Noir
Art and Physics by Leonard F Schlain.
It was his thesis on the advancement of artistic expression and that of hard science and scientific discovery and their seemingly parallel discoveries, as an expression of how intelligence grows across two separate disciplines.
Some of the write-ups and reviews paint it as fairly plebian, but the entire read is really good.
It’s online.
