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Top 25 non-fiction books.

Since this is probably going to be my lone post of the week, I figured it should be a long one. I started out planning to offer a list of the ten best nonfiction books I’ve read, and then found I’d written down thirty titles. I trimmed a few and settled on twenty-five. I’ve omitted self-help/instruction books (like books on cooking) and stuck to more serious topics, although some are lightly treated.

25. Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand. Heard the movie was terrible, which is a shame because the book was great. It’s a classic underdog story – horse thought to be too small, jockey blind in one eye, trainer with unorthodox methods, and so on – with Seabiscuit’s rise punctuated by several high moments and an almost too-good-to-be-true shot at redemption when he gets one last chance to win the race that has always eluded him.

24. The Catholic Church: A Short History, by Hans Küng. I’ll admit that this book may have a narrow appeal, but I think it’s a solid read even for those with no direct interest in the Catholic Church. Küng is the Church’s greatest internal critic, a Catholic priest and theologian who underwent an excommunication proceeding for his teachings. He rejects or questions several doctrines of the mundane Church, pointing out that such concepts as papal infallibility and the celibacy requirement for clergy are man-made, not divinely granted. The Catholic Church serves as a summary of many of his major works to date within the context of a Catholic’s history of the Church itself, dating back to its early days as a small-c catholic church hewing much more closely to the teachings of Christ than the bloated and often corrupt bureaucracy we see today.

23. The Prize Game, by Donald Petrie. A bit short and a bit slow, The Prize Game still has a fascinating and improbable story at its core: Piracy was once a government-sanctioned business with clear rules of engagement. Captured ships were known as “prizes” and there were strict guidelines for how captured cargo and sailors were to be treated. This style of privateering was all but ended after 1815, although the book does go briefly into privateering during the U.S. Civil War. If you’ve read any Patrick O’Brian books or perhaps played the Sid Meier game Pirates!, this book’s right up your alley.

22. The Invention of Clouds, by Richard Hamblyn. Reviewed briefly here. Hamblyn tells an interesting story about the amateur meteorologist who came up with the system of nomenclature and descriptions for clouds that is still more or less in use today. The only hitch here is that there wasn’t a lot of drama in the book – not that Hamblyn should have made any up – so the book just sort of flows along without the tension that tends to drive successful history of science books forward. There are some interesting asides, and it’s amazing to think that there was a time when science presentations to the public resulted in packed houses.

21. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain. Hilarious and cutting and explosive in its revelations of kitchen culture, Kitchen Confidential will make you think twice when deciding where to eat when eating out. And I would hope that it would teach all of you to head in the other direction when you see a sign that says “Discount Sushi.”

20. Catch Me If You Can, by Frank Abagnale. The movie sucked, but the book was great, and it’ll make you wonder why the movie’s producers felt the need to alter anything given how outrageous Abagnale’s life of deception was. He pioneered a new type of check-kiting and is one of the greatest social engineers the world has ever seen – all because he wanted to impress the ladies. And if his tale is to be believed, impress them he did.

19. The Power of Babel, by John McWhorter. Reviewed in depth here, Power offers us a history of human languages with a good dose of McWhorter’s own opinions, including his view that language is a dynamic, living entity that can only be constrained through fiat. He also takes the view that all “languages” are merely dialects, and explains why some languages still have nasty features like noun declensions and the subjunctive mood while others have lost them over time.

18. The Island of Lost Maps, by Miles Harvey. The Island of Lost Maps tells the story of one of the boldest and for a time most successful thieves of whom you’ve never heard, a milquetoast man – appropriately named Bland – who cut antique maps out of rare books in university libraries and sell them to collectors. Bland made about a half-million dollars in the early 1990s before he was caught. Harvey weaves Bland’s story in with a few other narratives, including a description of the map-collecting industry, the history of this sort of maps, and his own obsession with the story and with learning about the map world. That last thread is the one major negative of Island, as I’m firmly in the camp that says that a nonfiction book’s author doesn’t belong in the book unless he’s the subject as well.

17. God’s Equation, by Amir Aczel. Aczel’s first book was Fermat’s Last Theorem, a history of that famous equation and the math that led up to the ultimate solution by Andrew Wiles. The book started with a riveting description of Wiles’ first presentation of his solution – I’m serious, you’ll be caught up in it too – but the rest of the book was dry and very mathy, with only the occasional bit of real-life drama (like the suicide of one of the Japanese mathematicians whose work was invaluable to Wiles) to keep it moving. For his second book, however, Aczel chose a broader topic and crafted a much stronger narrative, describing how Albert Einstein’s greatest “mistake,” that of the cosmological constant (a sort of high-physics fudge factor) turned out, in the end, to be correct.

16. The Lighthouse Stevensons, by Bella Bathurst. The family of Robert Louis Stevenson is known for something very non-literary: constructing a series of lighthouses around the dangerous coastlines of the British Isles. Not only were these projects dangerous and very difficult, they also disenfranchised the various communities of wreckers who thrived on the proceeds of shipwrecks off their shores, often killing survivors to ensure their hauls. (Bathurst, also a journalist and the author of one novel, started to lose her hearing a few years ago after a head trauma suffered in a car crash, and wrote a column on how the loss is not entirely without compensations.)

15. The Tummy Trilogy/Feeding a Yen, both by Calvin Trillin. A series of four books that are more collections of stories of the quest for good eats across America and eventually the world. The Tummy Trilogy’s stories are more folksy, while Feeding a Yen seemed more focused on the food, although the disappearance of Trillin’s wife Alice midway through that tome is a sad reminder of her early death in 2001.

14. All the President’s Men , by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Still riveting thirty-plus years later, the book is more about the reporters’ gradual uncovering of the Watergate scandal than it is about the scandal itself. Loses a bit of its romance now that we know who “Deep Throat” was.

13. Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross King. The story of the construction of the cupola on the duomo of Florence, Brunelleschi’s Dome focuses on the technological advances that Brunelleschi had to drive to be able to construct such a large dome without internal supports or risk of collapse. The story offers a surprising intensity because of the deadlines, the pressure from the Church, and various other external factors that make the project’s completion seem uncertain, although I can assure you from firsthand experience that it all worked out in the end. If you enjoyed this one, you might like the similar but fluffier Tilt, by Nicholas Shrady, about that crooked tower an hour down the A11 in Pisa.

12. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, by Giles Milton. I picked this one up in the remainders room of a local independent bookstore for no other reason than the inclusion of my favorite spice in the book’s title. It turns out that it’s a riveting and thorough history of the Indonesian spice trade, which has not a little to do with the fact that we in the United States are speaking English today and not Dutch. Black pepper, mace (the aril covering the nutmeg seed itself), and cinnamon all make appearances, but nutmeg was the spice that drove the markets and led to fierce battles and even torture over the control of the Spice Islands, particularly the tiny nutmeg-producing island of Run.

11. Millionaire, by Janet Gleeson. I may be biased on this one, as the subject of Millionaire is the inventor of paper money, a manor-born English ne’er-do-well named John Law. Law’s financial genius (just sounds right, doesn’t it?) led to the development of modern currency systems and credit markets, but also created one of the biggest speculative booms and crashes in history, and led to the need for a new word to describe those who had amassed so much wealth: “millionaire.”

10. The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto. The story of the Dutch colony New Amsterdam, the early history of Manhattan (starting with the arrival of the Europeans, that is), and the enduring influence of the Dutch culture, language, and society on New York, both city and state, and the United States in general. Shorto had access to a recently-unearthed trove of over 12,000 pages of documents from the Dutch colonial government, and the result is a fascinating story with two heroes, the idealistic Adriaen van der Donck and the better-known but half-villian Peter Stuyvesant, some serious villains in the English, the Swedes’ short-lived foray into colonization, and early experiments in things like democracy, tolerance, and free trade.

9. Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel García Marquéz. I’m not big on memoirs, but this book has a lot of the feel of a Marquez novel, and if you’ve read One Hundred Years of Solitude, then Living to Tell the Tale will give you a lot of insight into where the amazing stories from that novel originated. He’s lived a fascinating life, and his role as a journalist in the midst of revolutions and strife provides some incredible and often darkly comic stories.

8. Lords of the Realm, by John Helyar. Still the best book about Major League Baseball I’ve ever read, although it’s somewhat out of date. Helyar looks at MLB as a business and delves into a lot of the self-dealing and corruption that have shaped the monolithic monopoly we see today. And indeed, the self-dealing hasn’t stopped since the book’s publication.

7. Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The book responsible for the -onomics nomenclature scourge does do wonders to lift the image of the dismal science, showing how we can use data to learn things about human behavior and how we respond to changes in our economic world. Freakonomics includes a highly-controversial study of the connection between the legalization of abortion and the drop in crime in the 1990s, but also includes an interesting chapter on the life cycles of baby names, a chapter on why realtors – excuse me, Realtors® – are running a bit of a scam, and an ever more relevant chapter on cheating.

6. The Professor and the Madman/The Meaning of Everything, both by Simon Winchester. These two books, not strictly original/sequel but still inextricably linked, revolve around the production of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 70-year project that outlived all of its original heads and contributors. Professor is the better-known and more successful of the two books, telling the story of the asylum-bound murderer who proved to be one of the most prolific contributors of example sentences to the OED project, but I found it lacked the sort of narrative greed that propels Meaning, which tells the story of the OED’s history from genesis through publication, forward. I don’t see why you’d read one and not jump to read the other, though, since each offers a built-in teaser for its partner book.

5. Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis. I’ve got some serious issues with Moneyball, where Lewis put the narrative ahead of strict adherence to the facts, fabricating the anecdote that includes a mention of me towards the end of the book (and declining to correct it between the hardcover and paperback editions when I pointed out that it wasn’t true). As a result, I look at Liar’s Poker with a slightly jaundiced eye, because I’m not sure if the same accuracy problems infect Lewis’ other books. But I can’t deny that Lewis is a master of prose and storycraft, and Liar’s Poker is a cracking good read, with hilarious stories and comical characters and the intensity you’d expect to see in scenes set in a bond-trading room in the wild boom leading up to the 1987 crash.

4. Longitude, by Dava Sobel. I’ve always seen Longitude as the book that started the whole history-of-science book craze, by taking an esoteric story around a forgotten hero and crafting it as a novel, complete with villains, setbacks, and a linear plot that leads to a big climax. And as it turns out with so many of the best books in the genre, the invention at the heart of Longitude made the world as we know it possible: Transoceanic voyages were not safe until the invention of the chronometer, a device that allowed a ship in the middle of the ocean to determine its longitudinal location and thus its distance from Europe or the Americas. Longitude remains one of the kings in this field because the trials and tribulations faced by its hero, clockmaker John Harrison, were so severe.

3. Mauve, by Simon Garfield. The remarkable story of a teenaged chemist named William Perkin who in effect invented a color while trying to create a synthetic form of the anti-malarial compound quinine. Perkin’s mistake left him with a strong dye he called mauveine and an industrial process that would allow for easy, large-scale production. Perkin became a global celebrity, and his visit to the United States in 1906 was front-page news in the New York Times. He’s all but forgotten today outside of an award named after him that is given to a leading scientist in the field of applied chemistry.

2. Charlie Wilson’s War, by George Crile. Reviewed at length here, and soon to be a major feature film adapted by Aaron Sorkin and starring Tom Hanks. The book revolves around two amazing characters and their successful launching of the largest covert military operation in history, the U.S. funding and arming of the Afghan mujahideen, whose guerrilla warfare against Russian invaders was a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1. Barbarians at the Gate, by Brian Burrough and John Helyar. Still, for my money, the most novelesque non-fiction book I’ve ever read. Helyar and Burrough couldn’t have created better characters if they tried. The superficial story here is the takeover battle for RJR Nabisco, but the real story is how some very wealthy and intelligent men managed to act like teenaged boys when winning became more important than maximizing profits. The leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, until 2007 the largest LBO in history, ended up costing the victors in the battle nearly 50% more per share than the original offer due to the bidding war between multiple suitors, with the primary players being a management-led group that includes Shearson-Lehman, the buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and rival buyout firm Forstman Little. One entertaining subplot is RJR’s then-failing effort to introduce a smokeless cigarette without admitting that cigarette smoke itself was a health hazard. Good luck with that.

Filed Under: Languages, Nonfiction Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Comments

  1. TC
    Oct, 22 2007 / 4:05 pm

    I’ve only read a couple of the books on your list, but I highly recommend THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by Erik Larson. Terrific depiction of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. It’s the fastest reading non-fiction book I’ve ever come across, detailed, fascinating, and riveting.

  2. Mr. P
    Oct, 22 2007 / 7:39 pm

    Barbarians really had to be #1, didn’t it?

    And my understanding, from some folks who were around for the events of both, is that Lewis fudges the truth in every way that Burrough and Helyar didn’t.

  3. Joel
    Oct, 22 2007 / 7:40 pm

    A superb book about Fermat’s Last Theorem is “Fermat’s Last Theorem” by Simon Singh. Singh does a better job with the narrative than Aczel, in my opinion, and handles the math and history of the theorem with an enviable dexterity.

    And in reply to TC, I would recommend “Sin In The Second City” by Karen Abbott as a nice companion book to DITWC. About the famous Everleigh Club in Chicago, “Sin” takes place almost concurrently with DITWC, and a handful of figures appear in both.

  4. migueljacero
    Oct, 22 2007 / 7:44 pm

    Which do you consider the best Márquez novel? I wish that I had taken advantage of Spanish fluency when I possessed it and read both 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera in their original forms, but those remain my two favorites. I’m still looking for a time to read his memoirs.

  5. Jeremy
    Oct, 22 2007 / 8:50 pm

    If you have an interest in modern military history, read anything by Rick Atkinson. Specifically, his book on the West Point Class of 1966, THE LONG GRAY LINE, is a fantastic narrative piece on the experience of the first class to be fully invested in the Vietnam war. His works on the Gulf Wars are fantastic as well.

  6. keith
    Oct, 23 2007 / 10:39 am

    When Devil in the White City first came out, I read 5-10 pages in a bookstore, and it was the part about Holmes’ first (known?) victim, a female employee whom he trapped in a bank vault and then listened at the door while she screamed and passed out. It was so lurid, I put the book down and swore never to buy it. Just not my cup of tea.

    Miguel, I’ve only read two Marquez novels, but just picked up Love in the Time of Cholera (on sale at Costco because it’s the new Oprah book of the month). One Hundred Years of Solitude is amazing; but I can’t imagine reading it in Spanish, since his vocabulary is enormous and his sentence structures defy traditional conventions in an almost Proustian way.

  7. Jesse G.
    Oct, 23 2007 / 10:58 am

    Great list. Still, I think any list like this is incomplete if it doesn’t include at least one bok by Robert Caro. Also, I just came across a blog post at the Volokh Conspiracy about Informant it sounds really fantastic.

  8. Ron Kaplan
    Oct, 23 2007 / 2:40 pm

    The standard baseball book these days seems to be Lewis’ Moneyball, so your choice of Lords is interesting. Perhaps it will turn into The Glory of Their Times for the business section of the literature of the sport.

  9. Jonathan
    Oct, 24 2007 / 2:17 pm

    Keith,

    Do you have a similar list of Fiction books?

  10. Ace
    Oct, 24 2007 / 2:55 pm

    Nice call on Barbarians – I’m glad ESPN has Helyar writing for them now, but Barbarians and Lords of the Realm are two of my top 10 non-fiction books as well. If you ever collaborate with him Keith, get him to write another novel!

    P.S – No Kapuchinski?

  11. Mike
    Oct, 24 2007 / 4:20 pm

    Keith,
    You seem to have an affinity for narrative non-fiction. As such, I highly recommend Manhunt by James Swanson. It’s the amazing story of the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth through Maryland and Virginia after Lincoln’s assassination.

  12. Matt
    Oct, 24 2007 / 4:58 pm

    I hate to be the guy that talks about a movie in response to a post about books, but you should really give Seabiscuit a chance. One of my very favorites in the last several years, headlined by three great performances. Also, RE: Erik Larson, his other two books, Issac’s Storm and especially Thunderstruck are both good reads if you thought DITWC seemed too lurid. Thunderstruck also concerns a greusome murder, but the act itself makes up a very small part of the book, and you won’t find a better nonfiction narrative-as-novel anywhere.

  13. keith
    Oct, 24 2007 / 6:34 pm

    Ace – Ryszard Kapuscinski? Hadn’t heard of him before you mentioned him. Where would I start?

    And yes, I like narrative non-fiction. It keeps me reading. Doesn’t have to be about a specific person, but I need a storyline to make the book move.

  14. Javier
    Oct, 24 2007 / 7:02 pm

    I’m with you on Devil in the White City. It alternated chapters between the serial killer story and Burnham’s architecture story. I just read Burnham chapters.

    Simon Schama’s “Rembrandts’s Eyes” is simply a stunningly beatiful book. Its a Rembrandt bio, that covers the history of the low countries during his life (when the United Provinces were fighting for their independence from the Spanish), and as an added bonus, weaves a bio of Peter Paul Reubens into the tale. Great color plates of both Rembrandt’s and Reubens’ works. The difficult first couple of pages are not indicative of the readability of the rest of the book.

    Other highly readable and nearly seminal books, Donald Kagan’s “The Peloponnesian War”, Norman Cantor’s “Civilization of the Middle Ages”, Fige’s “Natasha’s Dance”.

  15. Ace
    Oct, 25 2007 / 1:54 pm

    Keith,
    yeah – he was a Polish journalist/author – I don’t know quite how to describe him, so I’ll defer to Wikipedia. I really enjoyed Another Day of Life, and the Soccer War is sitting on my bookshelf.

    There have been suggestions that he melded fact and “fiction” occasionally, but its still enjoyable writing.

    PS – another book I didn’t think of (that I really enjoyed) was The Clash of Civilizations

  16. Terrence
    Oct, 25 2007 / 12:26 pm

    While I’m sure those history of science books mentioned deserve reading, my favorite (almost memoir like) book remains “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).” And for those that enjoyed that book, the more in depth “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman” by James Gleick is worthwhile.

  17. Fran
    Oct, 29 2007 / 6:11 pm

    Keith,

    Another non-fiction work I’d recommend (and one you may well have read) is Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann and the Holocaust. It is a really fascinating philosophical look at the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. It specifically examines his culpability in the crimes and criticizes the logic behind the case, both by the judges and the prosecutors. It comes from her original articles published in the New Yorker at the time of the trial. Make no mistake – the book does not justify the Holocaust, but merely looks at this trial and the circumstances surrounding Eichmann, Israel in its formative years, and Germany during WWII. It is really highly engaging.

  18. John
    Oct, 30 2007 / 5:36 pm

    Couldn’t agree more about Charlie Wilson’s War, it’s an incredible story. Let’s hope the movie is half decent as it has massive potential.

    Another one to consider (I think someone mentioned it in one of your espn chats the other day) is ‘Ghost Soldiers’ by Hampton Sides about the rescue of American POW’s who survived the Bataan Death March, fascinating book.

  19. Johnny
    Nov, 1 2007 / 2:23 pm

    No Mark Bowden? I’ve read Blackhawk Down, Guests of the Ayatollah, and Killing Pablo. But I think his best is Doctor Dealer…a story of a U-Penn undergrad who went from selling pot to graduating dental school as one of the biggest cocaine dealers in the north east. An extremely enjoyable morality tale based on jailhouse interviews with Dr. Larry Lavin.

    My next two non-fiction choices awaiting me are Omnivore’s Dilemma and Liar’s Poker. Really looking forward to both. I know your feelings on LP, how about Omnivore?

  20. Sean
    Nov, 1 2007 / 3:55 pm

    I’m somewhat surprised nothing from David McCullough, since you mention you like narrative non-fiction. 1776 probably has the broadest appeal of his books, but his biographies on Truman and John Adams are also quite good. Along the same lines, you might enjoy Joseph Ellis’ American Sphinx, about Thomas Jefferson. But one book in particular that I think should end up on your list eventually is Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, perhaps even making the top 10. It’s the story of the exploitation of the colonial Congo by European interests, something you might be familiar with from the fiction of Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness).

  21. Sam
    Nov, 1 2007 / 4:18 pm

    Have you read Common Ground? It is narrative non-fiction and does an excellent job of describing the racial history of Boston in the late 60’s early 70s.

    Also, recommend Conspiracy of Fools. It is about the history of Enron and reads like a novel.

  22. Andrew
    Nov, 1 2007 / 8:22 pm

    Keith, thanks for the list and blog. I’m surprised by your selection of Shorto’s book: I found it poorly written and full of slang, sort of like a book-length GQ article.

    I have two recommendations, if I may. The first is John Julius Norwich’s _A Brief History of Byzantium_. It’s an abridgment of his longer, three-volume set; Norwich writes very well and skillfully retells a complex story in a highly digestible fashion. It’s a good read about a topic that’s often neglected.

    A work that should not be missed is Christopher Browning’s _Ordinary Men_. It’s the story of a reserve battalion of German soldiers in WWII and their descent from “normalcy” to utter depravity. Extremely chilling, and the work was really a ground-breaking, seminal piece in the historiography of WWII Germany. I use it when I teach and my students both appreciate the experience yet are shocked to their core by it.

  23. keith
    Nov, 1 2007 / 8:54 pm

    Lots of questions … Omnivore’s doesn’t appeal to me; I read part of the intro in the bookstore, and I started to get chills like the food-police were sitting over my shoulder.

    McCullough’s books are LONG. I’ve listened to some audiobooks in the early American history vein – biographies of Hamilton and Washington – but it’s just not a subject to hold my appeal for 600 pages. I did like Founding Brothers, which was short and more of a collection of stories about several of the founding fathers than a straight narrative.

    Shorto: Lot of people have echoed your thoughts, Andrew. I read it three years ago so I can’t say I remember the slang or poor writing. I loved the subject matter, though, so perhaps that’s why I remember it fondly.

    Haven’t read any of your (collective your) other suggestions. Thanks for all the rec’s…

  24. Dennis
    Nov, 4 2007 / 10:15 pm

    Check out “Ballad of the Whiskey Robber” by Julian Rubenstein. True story about a backup goaltender for a Budapest hockey team/ infamous bank robber. Very entertaining.

  25. Andrew
    Dec, 5 2007 / 1:46 pm

    Keith,

    I’m kind of schocked by two omissions: “In Cold Blood” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”. You don’t like true crime?

  26. keith
    Dec, 5 2007 / 2:03 pm

    I don’t really like true crime, and I’ve heard that In Cold Blood is perhaps not 100% nonfiction. It actually appeared on one of those lists of the top 100 novels of the 20th century – I think it was Radcliffe’s.

  27. CJ
    Mar, 2 2008 / 9:53 am

    Great list. Some listed, others not, that are my favorites include: The River of Doubt by Millard, Isaac’s Storm by Larson, Honor Killing by Stannard, Arthur and George by Barnes, and A Long Way Gone by Beah. The last is a truly remarkable story of survival.

  28. jw
    Feb, 22 2009 / 3:22 pm

    I agree with Sam on Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas. That book represents what sociology can be, if it is done well. It was an amazing examination of 3 perspectives that clashed, even though each was well-intentioned.

  29. Windier E. Megatons
    Feb, 24 2009 / 7:28 pm

    McWhorter recently put out Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, which talks about the ways English came together and was affected by nearby languages. An interesting read for linguistics fans such as myself (and I’m assuming you as well). I’ve also read several of Winchester’s books lately – Outposts, Krakatoa, and The River at the Center of the World.

  30. Jeff
    Mar, 6 2009 / 3:21 am

    Keith – if you like Barbarians at the Gate, then you will absolutely love Den of Thieves. It’s the same style (nonfiction that reads like a novel), but the story itself is much more interesting than the RJR LBO.

    Have you read it?

  31. Terrence
    May, 6 2009 / 2:57 pm

    Keith, I enjoy your take on literary topics and I have stepped up my reading pace because of it.

    I was wondering if you have read The Catcher Was a Spy, the Moe Berg biography, and what you thought of it. I’m about halfway through and it really seems to bear out that nobody, including the author, knew much about Berg.

  32. keith
    May, 17 2009 / 3:38 am

    Yes, I read it and enjoyed it. The lack of definitive source material on some of his stories limited the book’s appeal to me, though.

  33. Chris
    May, 19 2009 / 3:11 am

    I guess it’s never too late to discover this website thanks to your snarky chats on ESPN that I enjoy. I agree with a whole bunch of recs here, maybe most notably Manhunt and Den of Thieves. A couple of my friends and I made some comprehensive spreadsheet of books we have read and reviewed. I have more books to recommend there than I know what to do with.

  34. Alex R
    Jul, 16 2009 / 7:13 pm

    Late to the party, but…

    Kapuscinksi’s very well-regarded; I’d start with “Travels with Herodotus,” which is sortof a memoir. “The Emperor,” a weirdly riveting oral history of Hailie Selassie, is maybe his best-known work. Honestly, he’s not exactly my cup of tea – but he’s worth a look.

    (There have indeed been accusations of his…uh, staying true to point but maybe not exactly the facts, for what that’s worth.)

    I don’t see why everyone loves Devil in the White City so much. It’s fine, but people talk about it like it’s one of the greatest books of the decade.

    Thanks for the Nutmeg suggestion; that’s now on my list. Always interested in non-fiction recommendations.

  35. ibex
    Jan, 25 2012 / 12:27 am

    I’m going on vacation this week and I ordered 5 books from the list for beach reading. 🙂
    So glad you did this!

  36. Danielle
    Mar, 28 2013 / 9:36 pm

    love this list- completely agree with the manhunt suggestion, its one of the best books ive ever read. what about “into think air” by Krakauer? I have had devil in the white city downloaded to my kindle for the past year and cant get into it- going to give it another shot- THANKS!

  37. Gary
    May, 7 2013 / 6:18 pm

    One of the best lists of reads I have agreed with.

  38. Ibex
    Sep, 24 2013 / 9:19 pm

    This was compiled in 2007 & I was just wondering if there are any other books that you would add to the list.
    Have you read any noteworthy nonfiction recently?

  39. keith
    Sep, 24 2013 / 10:53 pm

    Ibex: Yes. All my non-fiction posts are at that link, and I think the majority of the recent ones earned positive reviews.

Trackbacks

  1. The dish » Blog Archive » Ballad of the Whiskey Robber. says:
    February 21, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    […] a comment on my October 2007 post listing my 25 favorite nonfiction books, reader Dennis suggested Julian Rubenstein’s Ballad of the Whiskey Robber. […]