What Non-Fiction are you currently/just read?

[violetpastille]

I'm listening to Bill Bryson's, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and I am loving it.

As for visually reading: any DUers read or are reading this?



I just started reading it last night. The reviews are great, and it should be a slam-dunk for me but I'm not quite feeling it yet. What did/do you think?

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29633913-emergent-strategy

[morningglory]

1. Manhunt, by Colin Sutton nt

[exboyfil]

2. The Great Silence

A bit deep. I have been interested in the Fermi Paradox lately. Also have been studying Evolution and Astrophysics.

[petry77]

30. Astro lover

I'm very much fond of reading space and Astro related topics. Could you please advice some Astro related topics to read?

[exboyfil]

31. Great Courses has an excellent Astrophysics course

Introduction to Astrophysics by Dr. Winn. There are also at least two courses in Expplanets and several Astronomy courses. Great Courses Plus is $10/mo. with a free intro period. Scientific American usually has 4-6 interesting articles a year. For the Fermi Paradox, 75 Answers by Stephen Webb (If the Universe is Teeming with Life). Author Isaac has an excellent YouTube channel. There is also Paul Michael Goudier and PBS Spacetime YouTube channels. From my library - The Crowded Universe by Boss, The Inverted Bowl by Cole and The Eerie Silence by Davies (last three are a bit old).

[marble falls]

32. What kind of dog, is Astro, anyways ...

/revision/latest?cb=20170607084654

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

53. From the size and looks of him

I'd guess a Great Dane.

But that's only a guess. As a cat owner, I'm not the best at distinguishing dog breeds

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Sounds interesting, thanks ! nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. Does the book discuss Campbell's profound racism?

At World Con in Kansas City in 2016 there was a panel on Campbell, and various of the older writers there had known Campbell. I recall Jim Gunn in particular expressing dismay at how incredibly racist Campbell had gotten towards the end. I gathered towards the end he had almost no friends.

[CurtEastPoint]

4. I am doing my biennial re-read of Bryson's 'Lost Continent.' I just lie in bed, reading and...

laughing out loud at some of his stuff!

[JennyStevens]

24. I love Lost Continent

Bill Bryson is a fantastic writer.

[CurtEastPoint]

25. I love his description of the local weather on TV: "frunnel system."

And how old men can't give directions w/o sticking a finger in their ear

[mobeau69]

5. The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Another outstanding piece of work by Lewis.

[MyOwnPeace]

6. "Dirty Words in Deadwood....

Literature and the Postwestern"

After watching the whole HBO series 10 years later (what can I say - I don't keep up!) and being so impressed with it, plus the news that a movie is being made featuring most of the original cast, I decided to buy this book that I found on-line.

I'm having a great time working my way through it and it does give a greater understanding of the dialog and events that took place in the series. And, yes, a ton of "dirty words!"

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Alan Turing, The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.

https://networks.h-net.org/node/9782/discussions/68036/book-review-mize-hodges-alan-turing-enigma

OK, I'm just now reading a 1983 book. But in part it's because I had already read so much about Turing's work thanks to Gödel, Escher, Bach and similar pop sci reading that I wasn't that interested in seeing it all repeated. But I do enjoy biography, and this book ran through several editions and appeared to be more or less recognized as the definitive bio Turing needed. There's considerably more detail on the work at Bletchley Park than I had ever seen anywhere (less nerdish types might find this less commendable), and I'm just now reading the section on the development of ACE,which could have seen the British pull a real scientific and industrial coup by building the first really modern computer, but the foreshadowing is hard to miss. I only wish the author did not take for granted that his audience would be familiar with the ways of the English academic world; not knowing even some of the terminology, much less its implications, it gets difficult to appreciate just where Turing stood at times -- precocious success intellectually, to be certain, but is he more or less well recognized for it ? And is any lack of recognition merely a consequence of straitened times for academia between the wars ?

Turing's tragic -- and unnecessary -- end, being already known, looms over it all, and the final sections can be expected to be unpleasant.

To anyone who watched "The Imitation Game", it might be particularly worthwhile to glance at the review at the top of this post.

[kag]

9. Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff

It's about loyalists during the American Revolution. I'm not very far in, but it's fascinating so far.

BTW, I LOVE Bryson. I read "Short History..." when it first came out. In fact, I got an autographed copy when I saw him at a local book store. Such an amazing writer. If you've never read "A Walk in the Woods" you must.

[violetpastille]

10. Thanks, I'll check it out

I have a scribd membership and Bill Bryson well represented, including "A Walk in the Woods".

[VarryOn]

11. "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt

A movie based on this book is coming out in mi-2019, starring Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran, the main character.

Sheeran was a close friend and confidant of Jimmy Hoffa. The book centers on Hoffa's disappearance, and you learn Sheeran knows lots about it. You'll learn Hoffa had lots of enemies, and most of them were not the kind of guys you'd want to be crossways with.

It was hard to put down. If you like books about the mob, you'll love this one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

12. Several.

Mary Tudor, Princess, Bastard, Queen, by Anna Whitelock. Very good.

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris. Sometimes cringe-inducing (what people insert in their bodies), always fascinating.

[lounge_jam]

13. Currently reading the following:

I am reading this essay titled "A Study in Blue: trauma, affect, event" by Andrea Long. In the author's words, the essay aims to "ask what happens when an event doesn't." More particularly, it aims to establish ways of talking about "ordinary affective life," and this includes talking about this in the public sphere. Which is to say, the essay is also about the American public sphere and public discourse and what it excludes.

Second, I'm reading Howard Abadinsky's "Drug Use and Abuse: A Comprehensive Introduction." A highly multidisciplinary book, it draws from law, sociology, public policy, and psychology. Although it doesn't openly deal with how drug use and abuse is dealt with in the public sphere, there is plenty in it that allows the reader to probe this question. I'd say both readings are quite related, and give many fresh insights.

[Hortensis]

14. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

Interesting big picture, basic factor approach to history. Enjoyable read so far.

I stumbled on a good deal on it when I was checking out a recommendation for his Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. Right now I'm reading

Empty Planet by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, about the coming demographic collapse. Truly fascinating.

[ChazII]

17. Brant Hansen's

Unoffendable.

[PETRUS]

18. I just noticed this group for the first time!

I always have at least one book going, and my reading is heavily non-fiction.

Currently reading: "The Fight to Vote," by Michael Waldman (about halfway through - fascinating American history).

Last few:

"Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth," by Sarah Smarsh. It's very well-written, and it's the kind of book I was hoping for when I picked up "Hillbilly Elegy" a few years ago (JD Vance's clear right-wing point of view was irritating and disappointing). Ms. Smarsh came from a different part of the country, but grew up in similar circumstances, i.e. an already poor area with diminishing economic opportunity, a family with addictions and domestic violence, etc. But she has (in my opinion) a much broader and more analytical mind and more empathy than Vance.

"How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States," by Daniel Immerwahr. This book provided me with details about episodes of American history that I was only faintly aware of, and introduced me to a number of facts I didn't know at all. I highly recommend it.

"Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World," by Anand Giridharadas. It's a book about the network of foundations, think tanks, and philanthropic organizations and their impact on public policy, which the author believes is sometimes helpful, but usually not, and pretty much always in the interest of the already-powerful. Although I was already in agreement with the author's point of view, the details were interesting.

"The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming," by David Wallace-Wells. The book opens with the statement "It's worse, much worse, than you think." The author explains that the climate system has already been disrupted and that we've already been experiencing some of the impacts, and that there is more to come. He provides details about the range of possibilities, which depend in part on what we do going forward. The information in the book is terrifying and I've been encouraging everyone I can to read it.

[matt819]

19. Blitzed, by Norman Ohler

I just finished listening to Blitzed, by Norman Ohler. Drug use in Nazi Germany and, more specifically, Hitler's drug use/addiction.

Fascinating, though you do have to keep a few things in mind. Ohler is not a historian. That said, he does seem to have done a deep dive in archives that others have either overlooked of discounted. He also tends to generalizations. At times you realize that he's creating dialogs that he can have no way of knowing. That said, he also refers to his research and so you tend to believe that the gaps he might fill are at least feasible. As a reader, you want to believe him, but he clearly has an point to make, and he's not going to let anything stop him from making it.

To the extent that he is on to something, it is a fascinating listen.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

44. Oh, yes!

I read that recently and it's amazing.

[lounge_jam]

20. Earl Babbie

I'm currently reading Earl Babbie's The Basics of Social Research. It focuses on both the quantitative and the qualitative method. Which means it also focuses on the merits and drawbacks of the scientific method. Also very glossary-like in its approach to jargon from the quantitative side, which sort of demystifies the process. Quite interesting so far.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Weapons of Math Destruction

by Cathy O'Neil. It's about how data is used and mostly misused these days. Scary. But I recommend it.

[GeoWilliam750]

22. Bully Pulpit

[eppur_se_muova]

23. The Dawnseekers ...

Last edited Sun Feb 2, 2020, 09:06 PM - Edit history (1)

The First History of American Paleontology, by Robert West Howard

I read this book *many* years ago, but remember the contents in only the most general way, so I'm re-reading it. I'm finding it to be a truly rewarding read, esp. re. the 18th and early 19th century scientists who paved the way BD (before Darwin). We've all heard about the great Scopes "Monkey Trial" and all the opposition by reactionary religionists, but it was fascinating to see how the study of fossils, from shells in the high mountains to elephantid bones in New York bogs to giant lizard teeth in English quarries, and the growth of the then-infant science of geology, nursed by stratigraphy, made the whole idea of a recent Creation increasingly untenable -- yet to declare the Earth to be older than 6000 years was considered anti-Christian blasphemy, and not to be risked in too public a fashion. Even acknowledging that some animals might have gone extinct was to take too great a risk of controversy for some.

Controversy aside, it's interesting to read how hungry people once were for practical knowledge, and how popular public lectures and lyceums were, and how much they contributed to the growth of trade and industry and the expansion of the country. There's some interesting overlap, at least as I see it, with Paul Johnson's "The Birth of the Modern", although covering events both preceding and following the era in that discussion.

The following excerpt, which follows a lengthy quote from the diary of Charles Lyell, is worth reflecting on:

The revolutionary significance of this reverie by the forty-four-year-old Scotsman as he stared into the rainbowed spray of Niagara can be understood only when it is viewed in historical perspective. When Lyell was born, any expression of doubt about the "sacred truth" of the traditional interpretation of Genesis was punishable in the new United States by a three-year jail sentence and virtual loss of civil rights. Then Thomas Jefferson knew that as a public servant he had to insist that the Almighty would not permit any species to become extinct, and congregations nodded grim agreement to the cry of "heresy" thundered from the pulpits against Hutton and his uniformitarianism*. Lyell was a schoolboy when Benjamin Silliman's lectures demonstrated to James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Amos Eaton, and others that the "giant footprints" found in New England's rocks were records of the chaos of Noah's Flood and upheld Ussher's edict that the Creation had taken place in 4004 B.C.. William Smith's stratigraphy began to gain credence while Lyell was at Oxford.

Now, at forty-four, staring at the mightiest cataract on the ancient land mass curiously called the New World, he could conceive of and freely muse about an Earth so ancient that "the imagination in vain endeavors to grasp it." No passage in nineteenth-century literature so succinctly reveals the rapidity with which science, and its technological offspring, developed and was accepted as respectable by civilized men on both sides of the Atlantic, despite the campaign waged against it by religious leaders.

* (Uniformitarianism is the idea that the Earth has changed only gradually over long periods of time by the slow cumulative effects of the same geologic processes which operate today, as opposed to "Catastrophism" which posited that geologic and biological change was brought about by rare, massive events such as Noah's Flood. Today we know that both operate, with the former being more imporant the vast majority of the time, only asteroid/comet strikes, a few post-Ice Age floods, and some supervolcanic eruptions providing the exceptions.)

I'm still finishing the book, but the remaining material covers more modern events, with the Cope-Marsh "bone wars" being all too familiar, as they have been covered elsewhere many times. I'm not really expecting any great surprises from the remainder of the book. I'm just a little surprised that more of the material in the first half didn't stick with me from the first reading, but then, I was a callow youth when I first read it.

PS: If you've read Simon Winchester's "The Map That Changed The World", you might consider this book a broader, less tightly focused treatment of the same topic.

[JennyStevens]

26. Public Enemies

I'm reading Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 right now. It is about the depression era bank robbers -- people like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly and Ma Barker. It is incredibly well researched and detailed, yet runs at the page of a gripping fiction thriller.
Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UUJ62M/

[ChazII]

27. Thought Shall Not Be a Jerk by

Rev. Eugene Cho. It subtitle is A Christian's Guide to Engaging Politics. I will start reading it this evening.

[pacheen]

28. I'm reading Michael Cohen's book

In the midst of it. Michael relates his experience of working for the “Boss” with commentary throughout of what he was thinking and feeling at the time as opposed to how he feels now. He portrays Trump as a mobster type who lies and cheats with impunity. And you will learn how and why he does his famous combover!

[raccoon]

29. Just finished. IT WAS ALL A LIE by Stuart stevens. Nt

[alicehilligan]

33. Flow By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It's pretty interesting

[Journeyman]

34. "The Republic for Which It Stands" by Richard White . . .

"The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896" by Richard White


This is the latest in the proposed nine volume Oxford History of the United States.

Only one volume remains to be written, and it will cover the period from 1896 to 1928.

[ificandream]

35. Been reading books about the Trump Admin.

Finished "Peril" by Bob Woodard and Bob Costa. Loved it. Before that it was "I Alone Can Do It," which disappointed me. Not enough revelations. Most recently, I finished Adam Schiff's "Midnight In Washington," which is tremendous. Trying to decide to read Raskin's book. Any reviews?

[ificandream]

36. Anyone read Raskin's book?

Thinking about getting it but wondering if it's just a repeat of Schiff's, which I read and really liked.

[Lulu KC]

37. Ladyparts by Deborah Copaken

Grim and comical memoir; insights into treatment of women by medical establishment. Recommend!

[benpollard]

38. Andrew Seidel's The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

I'm just about to start on this. I watched an interview with Andrew and what he has to say is pretty interesting. He's also a civil rights lawyer.

[raccoon]

55. THE LONG EMERGENCY by James Howard Kunstler.

[hippywife]

39. Heart Earth by Ivan Doig (1993)

I've loved reading, and re-reading, his historical fiction over the years, as well as his memoir, This House of Sky, so I'm continuing that enjoyment with this book about his mother. She died when he was only six and he's reconstructing her life through her letters to her brother that he' recently been bequeathed upon his uncle's death.

I just posted about this over in the Fiction group, but as I've been reading, I came across this line he wrote about his mother first meeting his father, and it reminded me why I so love his writing:

"Boundaries of dream take human shape, there when our bodies begin their warm imagining."

I had to re-read that line several times, not because I didn't understand it, but because the prose is so amazing. And he doesn't spare it for his fiction only.

He's one of my favorite authors and I'd put his work up there with Wendell Berry's, whom I absolutely adore.

[hippywife]

40. Just checked out on Libby last night:

Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR

https://shop.npr.org/products/susan-linda-nina-cokie-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-founding-mothers-of-npr-by-lisa-napoli

[hippywife]

41. On the Courthouse Lawn:

Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century by Sherrilyn Ifill

[Apollo Zeus]

42. "The Storytelling Animal" just read

still reading "Road to New Canaan: the War for America's Soul"

The Underground Railroad went all the way to Canada -- it had to.

>"New York was once home to the largest number of slaves of any state in the North—more than Georgia, until the late 18th century. The heaviest concentration of them was on plantations in the Hudson Valley, many owned by the prominent Livingston family. At times, slaves had made up as much as 10% of the population. Slavery was cruel here as it was anywhere in the South...."<

http://www.fergusbordewich.com/blog/?p=38

Storytelling Animal made many good points but way too many obvious examples and the book was heavily padded with pictures of things like a rat in a section about an MIT study -- to make sure we know what a rat looks like I guess. I got the sense that he had a strong thesis but had to stretch to get 200 pages out of it.

[intheflow]

43. I really love Emergent Strategy but

its POV is not one that many people - especially white people - can easily grasp. I'm familiar with the language and goals from my Peace Studies days, working with Black community groups and churches on various social justice projects: housing discrimination, antiracism, etc. It's the way we oriented towards the work that had to be done. I read this book for the antiracism committee at work, and no one else could really wrap their heads around it. (The group was 100% white.) I also enjoyed Brown's book after this one, called We Will Not Cancel Us. Same themes, but seemed to be presented more simply than Emergent Strategies.

The blurb says Brown was inspired to write this from Octavia Butler's book, Parable of the Sower (fiction). She was also inspired by Margaret Wheatley's book, Leadership and the New Science (nonfiction). I've also read these two books, and think they complement Emergent Strategy exceptionally well. (Or is it that Emergent Strategy compliments those books?)

I just finished reading Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. Good food for thought, though it was more a book about cults and the people who follow them. The "language" part of the subtitle refers to the jargon developed and used by "cultish" groups, such as CrossFit, Jonestown, QAnon, and SoulCycle.

[hippywife]

45. The last couple of non-fiction I've read

recently were the ebook editions of:

A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story by Raphael G. Warnock

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey N. Cep

Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell

Recommend them all.

[RealityChik]

46. WAR IS A RACKET by My Hero...Smedley Butler

WAR IS A RACKET by Smedley Butler.

Also Saved America from the Bankster/Nazi coup and takedown of FDR. Precursor of Jan06.

[onethatcares]

47. "The People of the Abyss" by Jack London

Last edited Fri Jan 27, 2023, 09:23 AM - Edit history (1)

just started and now I know how I'll spend this weekend.

I was at a thrift store and found it in the $3.00 bin. It's paperback but has an aside on the cover "Museum Edition"

It appears to not been opened til this morning as throne reading material.

It's Londons' look at England in 1902 from the perspective of a working man. It appears the gilded age never ends for some while the rest just get covered in crap.

[Timeflyer]

48. "Learning from the Germans" by Susan Neiman.

Highly recommend.

[terrya]

49. Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff

Excellent so far.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

52. Going through list...

I'm not much on non-fiction. I tend to go through "spells" where I'll read a bunch of it, then burn out.

The last NF I read was White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad, about the ways white women exercise DARVO whenever they're accused of racism. You know, crying to get sympathy whenever a brown woman tells them don't touch my hair, or speaks up when they're being racist. The tears are used to turn themselves into the victim, to get fellow whites to take their side and ostracize if not torment the brown person.

An infuriating read, but one that needed to be written.

[hippywife]

54. 3 non-fictions:

Previously finished in the past week and a half, and both of which I very highly recommend to anyone who loves reading about medical history and science:


The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Song-of-the-Cell/Siddhartha-Mukherjee/9781982117351


The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry

https://www.johnmbarry.com/the_great_influenza__the_story_of_the_deadliest_pandemic_in_history__133171.htm


Just started this morning:

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/616914/an-immense-world-by-ed-yong/


I keep forgetting this group is even here since people rarely post.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

62. The Great Influenza

is an amazing book. It really needs to be thought of as the basic one about influenza.

[ChazII]

57. I have just started The Rational Bible

by Dennis Prager. He began with Exodus and then Genesis. I am reading Genesis.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

58. Why?

Prager is a known liar and moron.

He doesn't have the first clue about rationality. This is the guy who presents slavery as a good thing for fake history courses that the right wing pushes.

I wouldn't use anything he wrote as toilet paper, for fear it would contaminate my bum with toxic stupid.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

59. This is a big non-fiction week for me

I have three I'd like to get to, if possible:

Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the rise and fall of the friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft. It's Goodwin, so the 923 page count turned out to be not-so-scary once I remembered that at least 1/4 of the count would be citations and indexes, LOL.

Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, memoir about a young woman who broke free of her Hasidic upbringing in Brooklyn.

The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger, a recent release about gays sent to Nazi death camps.

Yeesh. I think I'll steer clear of the oven and sharp objects this week...just to stay on the safe side.

[lounge_jam]

60. God, Animal, Human, Machine

Just read Meghan O'Gieblyn's God, Animal, Human, Machine - a fantastic account of the metaphors we use to talk about progress, AI, ML, and the neural in general. It lays bare the data-enchantment at the heart of this Big Data push. Also examines Kurzweil's arguments concerning "spiritual machines." In general, it aims to show that our present is far from an era of disenchantment. We are, the book shows, deeply enchanted by machines. Other than that, I'm also reading about functionalism--which also drew its validity from its scientific leanings, its enchantment with the positivist tradition. Interesting in the context of Meghan's book, especially since she treats science itself as metaphor.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

61. So this week

I read Velvet Rope Economy by Nelson Schwartz, about how the rich buy convenience and amenities that end up costing the 99% in loss of, well, everything, and contributes to increasing inequality and divisiveness in the country.

Infuriating read.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

63. Current non fiction books:

The Flatiron by Alice Sparberg Alexiou about the building with that name. So far only one chapter in, but I think it will be good.

The Gluten Lie by Alan Levinovitz, PhD, about the truly stupid and wrong myths about things like gluten, sugar, salt, fat, and other things that people believe.

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte. Wow. Amazing book. I recently read his book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.

Both books are incredibly detailed, and rather slow going but oh, my, I've learned a lot.

[Mz Pip]

64. Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough

The last third of the book was a page turner. It was fascinating to read how she evolved from such a Trump supporter to one of his biggest detractors.