Non-Fiction recommendations

[Vermilion]

OK, having finished an amazing book called Birth: A History by a journalist named Tina Cassidy - a book so good both my mum and I have managed to charge through the 300 odd pages in under a week between us- I wanted to know what non-fiction book you'd read recently that fascinated you.

Tell me :
- How/Why you came to read it?
- What fascinated you so much?
- Who would you recommend the book to?


and anything else you think relevant...

To answer my own questions...
- A doctor friend gave it to me as a birthday present because I keep asking her whether 'such and such' is true and I've been interested in birthing practices recently - I guess she got fed up answering

- I love social history - all those little details not chronicled by great men, but just forgotten as time passes or remembered only in scraps from diaries and letters. This, covering the history of childbirth from all round the world since prehistoric times, was rich in the gruesome and fascinating details that I love, as well as providing an interesting guide to more modern obstetric practices. I was proudly smug to note that in the whole book the method I want/plan to employ when I start having children, hypnosis, was the one found to have the best effects over pretty much everything else available nowadays. Gave me a little burst of 'I was right, I was right ner ner ner ner ner'... if you know what I mean?

- A Mary Roach quoted on the back cover recommends the book as a 'must read for anyone who's ever been born.' Whilst I find this recommendation perhaps a tad broad, I do agree that there is a wide range of interests covered for those who, like me, revel in historical detail. The book is clear and well written containing a plethora of anecdotes and case studies and manages to avoid being patronising or long-winded - two of my biggest bug-bears with writers of non-fiction.

I give it 9 out of ten, it loses a mark for not covering hypnosis more fully and for finishing too soon.

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[rgraham666]

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in The West. I always recommend this one.

If you like social histories, you'll love this one. It demonstrates how Reason alone, without the balance of the other human traits, has gotten the West into the mess it's in.

It's now impossible for me to say or do anything without this book affecting my actions in some way.

 

[Vermilion]

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in The West. I always recommend this one.

If you like social histories, you'll love this one. It demonstrates how Reason alone, without the balance of the other human traits, has gotten the West into the mess it's in.

It's now impossible for me to say or do anything without this book affecting my actions in some way.

Thanks. I've had a look on Amazon but I'd love to hear a little bit more from you about it if you have the time...? Sounds like something my father-out-law might appreciate.
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[rgraham666]

Where to start? At the beginning, I guess.

Basically Saul starts at The Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was in reaction to the end of the Middle Ages, a time ruled by Faith without any of the balancing factors. The nations were ruled by kings and nobles appointed by Faith. The clergy ran on Faith. All things came from God.

And Faith was failing. There were some things Faith couldn't handle. The kings, nobility and clergy were selfish and incompetent.

So Reason was revived by a new wave of philosophers and writers as an antidote. The first effect of this was the rise of democracy, the idea that most people ought to have a say in how they were ruled.

And Reason seemed to work for a while. The Western World changed, and it seemed for the better.

But in Saul's mind, and now mine as well, Reason is failing. There are some things Reason alone can't handle. Our politicians, management and experts are selfish and incompetent.

It's a big book, V, and not just in page count. It is, in my words, a highly heretical book. Reason is our Faith, and this book challenges it.

If you want examples of Mr. Saul's writings and ideas, look at this thread. I've been quoting from his book The Doubter's Companion. It's a dictionary he wrote, similar to Bierce's The Devill's Dictionary. It's a real hoot.

 

[cloudy]

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown.

This book's been around since the 70's, but it's one I would highly recommend if you want to know the truth about "manifest destiny" and what really happened during the States expansion into the West. If you can read it and not cry, you don't have a heart - there are some truly heartbreaking stories in it.

From the back cover:

"Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, it changed forever our vision of how the West was really won."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I seem to read more non-fiction than fiction these days. I read fiction too hard. Here's some good ones:

The Elements of Murder, by John Emsley. A look at the poisonous chemical elements - arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury, thallium and some more exotic ones - their history and chemistry and how they've been used in medicine and crime, especially in the 'Golden Age of Poisoning' in Victorian times and more recently (up until the '50's, antimony was used as a fire retardant in crib mattress covers. In Victorian times, arsenic was used to color green wallpaper, and in damp climates like England's would react with a mold that grew on the paste to produce a gaseous form of arsenic called trimethyl arsine that would slowly poison the rooms' inhabitants, one of the reasons they were always running to Spas to take the waters and sweat the arsenic out of their bodies)

Who Wrote The Bible? by Richard E. Friedman - an absolutely fascinating examination of the Old Testament - who write it (there were 4 or 5 authors), when they wrote it (about 200 BC) , where (in Israel and simultaneously Judah, the two versions later combined into one book), and why (political propaganda - to make each kingdom look legit and make the other guy look bad). Friedman's theories summarize the best and brightest of mainstream modern thinking on the subject and brilliantly explain some of the most puzzling and bizarre features of the OT - the endless lists of "begats", the dual versions of various stories, where Cain got his wife.

But the really stunning thing is to see how the hissy, petulant political-theological bitchniess of two no-account, backwater kingdoms has over time been elevated to become the guiding light of our entire Western ethical & religious system. It's as if we'd taken a Rush Limbaugh broadcast and misunderstood it as the revealed Word of God, commercials and all. It makes you realize just how often we're misled even byt those with the best of intentions, how many countless lives have been thrown away for the sake of mistakes, misunderstandings, and simple stupidity.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown.

Yeah. I thought I'd known how the Indians got screwed before I read that book, but it really changed me. Anyone who thinks this country doesn't have blood up to its elbows hasn't read this book.

I mean, of course the Indians were doomed once the whites came, but it was just a holocaust, as bad as anything the Nazis ever did.

 

[cloudy]

Yeah. I thought I'd known how the Indians got screwed before I read that book, but it really changed me. Anyone who thinks this country doesn't have blood up to its elbows hasn't read this book.

I mean, of course the Indians were doomed once the whites came, but it was just a holocaust, as bad as anything the Nazis ever did.

I'm going to have to pick up one you recommended: Who Wrote the Bible? It sounds fascinating.

 

[Liar]

A light and entertqaining read, for the science ignorant:

A Short History of Nearly Everything

 

[bluebell]

I thought my pinkies would fall off.

A light and entertqaining read, for the science ignorant:

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson rocks my socks.

I started reading "Swimming to Antarctica" once. I was so inspired after this woman came into Borders (I used to work at Borders) raving about how grand it was, how uplifting.
So I checked it out on Book Loan.
Had to stop for two reasons.
One, the girl doing this was either somewhere near my age or younger, and I started to get the Olympics Complex. Where younger people are doing fantastic things with their lives and you just want to hoover an entire bag of Dove chocolate and then chase it with a bottle of vodka.
Two, I was so freakin' cold reading about her swimming in Arctic waters that I had to take a scalding shower and step away from the book. Oh well.

A successful non-fiction read would be "Nobody Nowhere" by Donna Williams. It's a mind-boggling autobiography of her growing up an Autistic child, before it was commonly diagnosed, and how her family would just beat the tar out of her because she wasn't "normal", etc. The above description is kind of dry, but the book is not.
It's so facsinating to read how much she overcame, and how talented she is. She also wrote a follow-up (and a load of other stuff) called "Somebody Somewhere" which I, regrettably, have not read yet.

 

[Vermilion]

In Victorian times, arsenic was used to color green wallpaper, and in damp climates like England's would react with a mold that grew on the paste to produce a gaseous form of arsenic called trimethyl arsine that would slowly poison the rooms' inhabitants, one of the reasons they were always running to Spas to take the waters and sweat the arsenic out of their bodies)

And did you know that William Morris had the first green dining room in the UK, because he invented the first green paint that didn't contain arsenic?
I wish there was a job where you could just go round reading and reciting useless, but fascinating, facts.
Guess being a writer is pretty close
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[dr_mabeuse]

And did you know that William Morris had the first green dining room in the UK, because he invented the first green paint that didn't contain arsenic?
I wish there was a job where you could just go round reading and reciting useless, but fascinating, facts.
Guess being a writer is pretty close
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I didn't know that, but I remembered that Morris was mentoned in the book and so I looked him up in the index (book's overdue. Still sitting here on the this stack on the floor...)

Turns out his first successful wallpaper design was called The Trellis (pp. 121-122) which consisted of a climbing rose on a trellis. It derived its green color from copper arsenite in the dye. I guess wallpaper's different from paint, though, and until the growth of the synthetic dye industry, there weren't many good sources of green color.

He wasn't alone in his ignorance of arsenic, though. Arsenic and antimony were both used as tonics and sold as sexual stimulants, so everyone was going around poisoning themselves and each other. It used to be legal to take out a life insurance on a stranger and name yourself as the benficiary and never tell them about it. You can imagine what kind of crime that led to.

 

[cloudy]

I get PMs every once in awhile asking me about the link in my sig, and "just who is Leonard Peltier, anyway?" I realize there are a lot of people here in the AH who either weren't born or were very small when the whole incident at Oglala thing happened, but I still remember seeing the news about it.

For those who might be interested, the best book on what led up to it, and it's aftermath, is In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Matthiessen.

If you're American, you will never trust our government again after reading it, it's that frightening, but I think it's another must read, even if its scope isn't as large or sweeping as the one I recommended in my earlier post.

 

[cumallday]

What's good for the goose...

Hegemony or Survival because the title is hard to read.

 

[cloudy]

Hegemony or Survival because the title is hard to read.

It might be helpful if your link was to the book on Amazon, instead of just a picture.

 

[cumallday]

It might be helpful if your link was to the book on Amazon, instead of just a picture.

Sorry, I know, but I doubt amazon will show Hugo Chavez promoting it.