Need some non-fiction recommendations

gary the great

I need a few good books to read, basically I’m off on holidays for a few weeks. I need some recommendations.

I only read non-fiction. I generally like the type of books recommended on the Panel and Sean Moncrieff’s show, that are modern enough. A few of the books I’ve enjoyed over the last while are Reefer Madness, Donnie Brasco, Wednesdays Child, High Society, Fast Food Nation, Barefoot soldier (best book I ever read), Blue Eyed Salaryman etc so that kind of gives an idea. Id like something maybe to do with the deep south, love all that kind of culture, but am totally open to ideas and recommendations.


I can’t just go into a library and find a book, I don’t like doing that. I like hearing from other people its good and being recommended it first.

Lamps

Blue Eyed salaryman is a good read, liked that to. barefoot solider is an amazing story to.

try this enjoyed it

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686244_1691772,00.html

Red Hand

Driving over lemons is a good read. About a guy (Genisis's first drummer) that decides to relocate himself and his wife to rural mountanous Spain in the late 70s or early 80s. Quite funny and really paints a beautiful image of rural Spain.

gary the great

I got a good book called Comrade Jim, about an English communist who went to live in Russia and ended up playing for Spartak Moscow. Really good read so far, im really intrested in RUssia as a country so im loving this book, a very good read.

studiorat

Just finished Diving Bell and the Butterfly, short and sweet! Well worth a read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly

It's a novel but "The Ass saw the Angel" by Nick Cave paints an intense picture of the deep south.

HalloweenJack

Freakonomics is a pretty good book. Well worth the read.

is_that_so

Bought Blood River by Tim Butcher on a recommendation(starting to read it as we speak). It made the shortlist for the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Here's the shortlist.

* Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher (Vintage)
* Crow Country by Mark Cocker (Jonathan Cape)
* The Whisperers by Orlando Figes (Allen Lane)
* The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French (Picador)
* The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (Fourth Estate)
* The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury) The Winner

and some former winners

1999 - Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin)(brilliant book)
2000 - Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (The Penguin Press)
2001 - The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (Macmillan)
2002 - Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan (John Murray)
2003 - Pushkin: A biography by T.J. Binyon (HarperCollins)
2004 - Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta)
2005 - Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (Picador)
2006 - 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber)
2007 - Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Bloomsbury)

JuliusCaesar

The Tipping Point

gaf1983

I really liked Reefer Madness. It's rare that I read a fiction book over a non-fiction one. I haven't read Donnie Brasco, but if it's like the film and based on the Mafia and you want to read a history of the mafia from the 19th century to the present day I'd recommend Cosa Nostra by John Dickie - not only does he give a straightforward account of how the Sicilian Mafia came to weild so much power in Italy and subsequently in immigrant communities across the water, he also has a nose for some great stories - some chilling ones too.

I enjoyed most of Freakonomics, found some of the chapters really interesting - such as the one about Chicago gangs - but found others a bit boring. Much preferred Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life though.

Two of my favourite other non-fiction books I've read in the past year or so are Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel and Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation.

If you're in any way interested in history/politics/political theory there are some good recommendations in this thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054972751

I'm currently reading Archangel by Robert Harris. He's one of my favourite fiction writers, basically because his books seem very well researched, based in factual historical settings.

Yeah I'm a complete junky when it comes to non-fiction. Just last week I went to buy a badminton racquet off amazon, and of course ended up adding 5 titles to my basket too, namely:

The Road to Serfdom - F.A. Hayek

Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them [Paperback] by Legrain, Philippe

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart [Paperback] by Butcher, Tim

The Geography of Nowhere: Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler

Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses [Paperback] by Theodore Dalrymple

Then only last June I ordered

Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (finished it just before the Lisbon referendum)

What Does China Think? both by Mark Leonard - just started it, seems very good

The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order by Parag Khanna.


Along with What does Chinan think? and Archangel I have also borrowed two books off friends - Charlie Bird's memoirs and Foul! by Andrew Jennings (an investigation into the murky underworld of FIFA) so I've a lot on my plate - I shouldn't even be on the Internet I've so much reading to do!

tHE vAGGABOND

Mc Carthys Bar
Around Ireland with a Fridge [Cant remember who wrote it, but its a classic, very funny]
Anything by Bill Bryson


Birdsong [WW1 story that reads like non-fiction!] Sebastian Faulks

beans

Currently finishing 'Junky' by William S Burroughs.

Great read, not much zany craziness, it's mostly straight reportage. Semi-autobiographical account of living with heroin addiction. Straight-shooting, no self-pity or fits of indulgent prose. Serves as an insight into Burroughs, the hipsters and the beats, and some of his later works and characters.

edit - It's not 'modern', but I'd say it's pretty timeless