Me again with a few more favs for non-fiction sub-categories I didn’t see a lot of mentions for:
Non-fiction (Animal/Environment):
Soul of an Octopus (Sy Montgomery)
Birding to Change the World (Trish O’Kane)
Running with Sherman (Christopher McDougall)
Non-fiction (Sports - even if you aren’t sporty):
Good for a Girl (Lauren Fleshman)
A Most Beautiful Thing (Arshay Cooper)
Born to Run (Christopher McDougall)
Re: The Library Book
Yes, I was fascinated by some of the restoration processes.
It was! Even better, I heard Liza Mundy speak about the book (at a book festival) for an hour. It was just as incredible as the book.
I bet! I want to read her book Code Girls.
Paul Theroux:
Riding the Iron Rooster
The Happy Isles of Oceania
Dark Star Safari
I can’t limit it to 3, but will stop at 4:
•Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
•Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larsen
•Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
•Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
All have stood the test of time, for both accuracy and readability.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee-Brown
Girls Like Us-Weller
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down-Fadiman
Cloister Walk-Norris
I’m glad someone else mentioned The Spirit Catches You…, @Barbette_T! I read that book with a book club maybe 15 years ago and it’s stuck with me all this time.
I would recommend
Boys in the boat by Daniel Brown
Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder
The Wager by Daniel Grann
I agree on The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
, but I will add three different books:
1.Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of 2 Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of WWII by Robert Kurson
2. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
3. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
Killers of the Flwer Moon
The Boys in the Boat
Shadow Divers
I loved a lot of others already listed, so looked for a few that maybe hadn’t been mentioned (as much).
The Wager by David Grann
Nexus by Yuval Harari
You Are Not American by Amanda Frost
Many of my favorites are already mentioned above so I will share some memoirs that I’ve read recently and highly recommend.
Muppets in Moscow Natasha Lance Rogoff
Crossing the LIne: A Fearless Team of Brothers and the Sport that Changed Their Lives Forever by Kareem Rosser
Infused: Adventures in Tea by Henrietta Lovell
The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebank
I loved Running with Sherman, also. Read it on my own 5-6 years ago and then again last year before moderating a discussion of it at a nearby library. I got even more out of it the second reading. Lawrence the goat was my hero; Sherman’s Samwise Gamgee.
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton - may be my favorite book of the year! Also Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor (a balm for our crazy times), and My Life in France by Julia Child (so wonderful!)
City on Fire by Bill Minutaglio
And the Waters Turned to Blood by Rodney Barker
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Eagan