Best non-fiction books

[Excited Penguin]

What books do you deem so important that everybody should read? What could you recommend that both impressed you and is comprehensible for the general reader?

And why? - I may take your word for it, sometimes, but that may not be the case for everyone else. Nobody wants bad suggestions. If you could explain, even briefly, what impressed you about the book or the writer, that would be great.

No specialization-type books, neither, only something put in layman's terms.

Introductory books would be great, introductions to economics for example, or a certain theory of economics, or an explaining of how politics work, or a treatise on a philosopher's body of work, or other such thing that truly impressed you and may be important to know, overall.

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I will be making a list of your suggestions, linking them to their wiki counterparts.


Books recommended so far:

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God Is Not Great

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[Minimalist]

God Is Not Great.

[TheRealJoeFish]

I'm particularly fond of The Code Book by Simon Singh.

Singh is one of those great science historians who's accessible to laymen but also valuable to people with significant grounding in the subject. The Code Book is a history of codes, ciphers, and encryption, chronicling humanity's attempts to keep messages secret from others. The whole thing's a fantastic read, but the chapters on the deciphering of the ancient Linear B alphabet and the cracking of the German Enigma code during WWII are worth the price of the book.

[Rev. Rye]

Here are a few:

• The Great Big Book of Horrible Things (aka Atrocities) by Matthew White. A witty look at the 100 deadliest conflicts in human history.
  
• The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. The best damn book about the American Civil War ever written, including Shelby Foote's trilogy.
  
• Permanent Midnight by Jerry Stahl. Probably the best Hollywood autobiography ever.
  
• The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Personally, I prefer the Emperor's Handbook translation, but that's just me.
  
• Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor. If anyone has any idea why Buddhism holds such an interest in otherwise nontheistic individuals, these two books should explain it.
  
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. This, of course, will depend on your definition of "non-fiction."
  
• An Appetite For Wonder by Richard Dawkins. While a recent reread of the God Delusion reveals a mind less apt for dissecting theology than I first thought, it's a very interesting autobiography.
  
• Quite frankly, anything by Bart Ehrman. He's in a far better position to dissect the flaws of Christianity than Dawkins is.
  [/quote]
  
  I have more picks, but then again, a lot of them are not for everyone, and a lot of them are only non-fiction in the sense that the Dewey Decimal System places them in non-fiction. And some are both.

[Excited Penguin]

Thanks, guys, this is great. All of your suggestions will be included in my list and linked to wikipedia(and possibly even to goodreads for other reviews and sites like amazon for buying) for them to be somehow more manageable. If you have suggestions regarding this, please do make them.

Not necessary for regular blokes and gals to read beyond this point:

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Also, if someone's bored and would like to help, I wouldn't mind it. Just be sure to PM me beforehand, so we don't do the same thing at the same time, and afterwards, so I can add the text to the original post, complete with formatting. Also, about formatting, I wouldn't mind some suggestions about that, if I'm going to improve on a simple list of books' names. Like if it would be somehow possible to make it manageable and easily accessible while at the same time easily redirecting to things like wikipedia and other such sites, the specific comments of the users making the suggestions[while mentioning their names beforehand], breaking it down in topics and domains of interest and so on.
I might figure all of this out on my own in due time(though it might take some), but if there's someone out there who wouldn't mind helping, that would be great! Maybe I'm overthinking this and it won't turn out to be a big list after all, I don't know yet.

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You're fine from this point forward:

But anyway, I do think[or, rather, hope] that this thread is bound to get big(at least in terms of how many books we'll have on our hands), no matter what, and if I turn out to be right, we have to plan ahead. The listing of books is to make things more manageable for the person who doesn't want to browse every single reply in part, in order to get to the recommendations.

Note to any staff member reading this:
Also, I trust that the staff will inform me if I'm bound to break any rule, like the ones about advertising, in my carrying out aforementioned plans. I will, however, post what I'm going to do before I do it, so as to make sure everybody's on board, so to speak.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Techniques of Chinese Lacquer', Filippo Bonanni.

Boru

[Excited Penguin]

Forgot you can't edit replies after a while on this forum. Oh well.

I'll be making a list probably, if it grows, and posting it in a comment in the future and continue doing so every other 50 books or smth.

[Clueless Morgan]

The most interesting and mind-opening non-fiction book I've read recently was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It's told partly as a non-fiction book on how the HeLa cells have contributed to science, and partly as a biography/autobiography on Henrietta Lacks' life and the author's journey uncovering it.

An excellent book, I loved it.