Best Nonfiction Books

[TheLastMohican]

Why should the top-100 list be dominated by fiction titles? Let's assemble a decent list for the underappreciated nonfiction books. Post your suggestions.

Mine (in alphabetical order):
The Art of War
A Brief History of Time
The Communist Manifesto (whether or not you agree with it, it's an important work)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Origin of Species
The Prince
Republic
Up From Slavery
The Wealth of Nations

And many others that I forget at the moment :)

[tp6626]

I've only read three of those.

Here are the ones I enjoyed reading most. Not really classics or anything, but still:


The Black Swan
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Emotional Intelligence
Unweaving the Rainbow
Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
Understanding Organisations
General Relativity
Freakonomics
Blink

The ones I'd read above were:

Art of War
Brief History
Origin


The Prince and The Wealth of Nations are on my list.

[Rudy]

A few more that come to mind:

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. von Hayek
Relativity, Albert Einstein
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis (Don't agree with it, but important)


RudyHenkel added to this post, 3 minutes and 4 seconds later...

And:

The Rights of Man - Thomas Paine
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (the most influential of his books)

[Merle]

My top non-fiction books are probably going to be enjoyed by very few others...
I'm not into non-fiction as an information source, I'd rather get straight to the info myself, I like some philosophy and some lit crit/ cultural crit stuff... but my favourite non-fiction is mostly very specific literary criticism. So, here goes:

1. Sexual Personae - Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson - Camille Paglia
2. The Poetry of Meditation - Louis L. Martz
3. Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes
4. John Donne - John Carey
5. The Conquest of Time - H.G. Wells
6. Areopagita - John Milton
7. On the Pleasures of Hating - William Hazlitt
8. An Essay on the Principles of Human Action - Hazlitt
9. The Republic - Plato
10. The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions - Frederic Jameson

ok... so some are essays or tracts or whatever... but they're self contained works.

[tp6626]

Fiction 1 - Non-Fiction nil :(

[fomatizer]

Coming immediately to mind are various texts that changed the way people look at subjects or express them. I'm skipping lots but here's some that are often overlooked:
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Fredrick Neitsche (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel was one of the first books I paid full price for as a young adult (I usually bought second-hand).
(The above are my personal favs) and I dunno...various recent texts on linguistics and literary theory...Chomsky, the French situationalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism (not taking sides, here)
...and other assorted:
The Elements of Style by William Strunk AND E. B. White (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King by Jr.
Mathematics for the Million/How to Master the Magic of Numbers by Lancelot Hogben

[Rudy]

Isn't Zarathustra fiction? Philosophically directed fiction perhaps... (Sorry, I'm feeling nitpicky ;) )

[fomatizer]

Isn't Zarathustra fiction? Philosophically directed fiction perhaps... (Sorry, I'm feeling nitpicky ;) )Dang, ya got me. Ok, switch that for Beyond Good and Evil or On the Genealogy of Morals, what have ya. Is all parts of the same work, IMO.





fomatizer added to this post, 0 minutes and 45 seconds later...

YAAAY! and that's post #15...off to the games thread.

[Goethe]

My additions:

Epictetus - The Enchiridion
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Livy - History of Rome
Plutarch - Parallel Lives
Castiglione - The Courtyer
Mirandola - Oration on the Dignity of Man
Kierkegaard - Either/Or, Journals
Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
Goethe - Truth and Poetry: Autobiography
Eckermann - Conversations with Goethe
Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism, The World as Will and Representation
Emerson - Complete Essays and Lectures
Nietzsche - I would agree with B&G, G.ofM but, would add On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
Wilde - De Profundis
James - Pragmatism
Collingwood - The Idea of History

[Merle]

ooh, yeah totally missed De Profundis of my list!
And while we're on Wilde : "The Soul of Man Under Socialism".

[AnEskimo]

I'm reading: Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein, and it is quite good.

[Tenacious B]

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. von Hayek

Beat me to it, that was the first that came to my mind.

[cyberdabbler]

Am not well read, and wouldn't begin to suggest that all should read these, but these are my favorites that come to mind, covering many genres and in no particular order:
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Chopra
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bryson
Healthy Healing - Page
Joy of Cooking - Rombauer
A Reader's Encyclopedia - Benet
Understanding Yourself and Others series - Berens
Me Talk Pretty One Day - Sedaris
A Year in Provence - Mayle
The Professor and the Madman - Winchester
And The Band Played On - Shilts

[Stratego]

New one that has just come out, and looks very interesting.

How to win a cosmic war : God, globalization, and the end of the War on Terror / Reza Aslan.
New York, N.Y. : Random House, 2009.

Just noticed the last name of the author---puts me in mind of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

[CaseBlue]

For history fans:
de Bello Gallico by Caesar
Lost Victories by Erich von Manstein

[Night Runner]

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

[luck321]

the long walk slavomir rawicz

[Ither]

Some odds and ends:

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Pepys Diary
Ibn Khaldun, History of the World
Hadewijch, Letters
Catherine Bowen, The Lion and the Throne
(a biography of Sir Edward Coke, 1552-1634)

[Winterstorm]

"God's Playground" Norman Davies
"The History of Polish Literature" Czesław Miłosz