Well written and interesting non- fiction books

[BeverleyCleverley]

I've got a decent pile of fiction books to work through but I like to have some non fiction books on the go too and I'd love some recommendations! Particularly stuff about current affairs/politics etc but I also love geography/history/science books and open to wider suggestions

Some great ones I've read are:

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce
The New Wild by Fred Pearce
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
A Taste for Poison by Neil Bradbury
A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley

Thank you SO much for this recommendation. I'm listening rather than reading and it's incredible. I'm two thirds of the way through. I'd like to give a description but I don't know where to start. It's definitely not a misery memoir, it's so so much more than that.

@PeonyPanda

Can you peorive a link to the American psychologist material?
Sounds really interesting.

Oh I have Entangled Life on my bookshelves. My dad gave it to me and raved about it and I totally forgot it's on my list of books I want to read

I’ve just finished Is A River Alive by Robert Macfarlane. Really interesting and so beautifully written.

It’s The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn. I’m just listening to the Hess chapter for a second time because it’s so unbelievable.

www.penguin.co.uk/books/371695/the-nuremberg-interviews-by-goldensohn-leon/9781844139194

Has anyone read Tales from the Dancefloor by Sacha Lord? It's not bad, if you are from the NW and middle aged and like music it's great. I have it classified as a bath book. Good to read, but if I dropped it into the bath I wouldn't be upset

Black Diamonds - The rise & fall of an English dynasty by Catherine Bailey

Dreams of the Celt - a ‘novel’ account about Roger Casement by Mario Vargos Llosa (considered better than traditional biographical accounts and so beautifully written).

Millenium (and others) by Tom Holland (lots of history!)

Bump

@Tootingbec and @Tiddlywinkly you might like Home Grown by Joan Smith.
In essence, the argument is that if domestic violence/ violence against women were taken more seriously some very serious crimes / terror attacks may have been prevented. For example, if I remember right, the Manchester arena bomber had attacked a fellow female pupil, but charges weren't pressed. Had they green his risk rating would have been higher. Joan Smith found that, when risk assessing, at one point violence against animals scored to up a tick box risk rating, but not against women.

She was fascinating about the Peter Sutcliffe case too, think that was in Misogynies.

Similar vein is Sisters in Law by Harriet Wistrich.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. By Reuben and Manni Coe- Brother Manni "bronaps" Reuben who has Downs Syndrome from a care home but without much of a plan.

Do No Harm by Henry Marsh- neurosurgeon, worked abroad too. I want to say Ukraine but might be wrong. There was a brilliant documentary as well.

33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynsky- history of protest songs

Ruth and Martin's Album Club by Martin Fitzgerald- famous people listen to "classic" albums for the first time. Good stocking filler maybe, or a punt extragor a music fan.

House of Fiction by Philys Richardson- about famous houses in English Literature such as Pemberley.

Not read it but I believe Prisioners Of Geography by Tim Marshall is well thought of. Would tick a few boxes of your brief @BeverleyCleverley

I've just finished American Mania by Peter Whybrow. Thought provoking.
www.ryandelaney.co/book-notes/american-mania-summary

To my utter astonishment, I'm suddenly drawn to books on economics.

I spent my early life reading almost exclusively novels. One days, I was desperately looking for something to read on the book-discard shelf at the office, and the only thing was something by the economist Robert Reich. I was pretty sure I wasn't gong to understand it, much less like it, so ... imagine my surprise.

One book that was mind-blowing was Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou, but I don't know if private equity is an issue in the U.K. I'm also collecting a list of titles I was to read about tech. I'm tech-averse, but like reading about it. I posted here about Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, and hope to now read his next. I also own, but haven't read yet, Patriot, by Alexei Navalny.

Reading about reading, via Nicholas Carr | Mumsnet

Patriot by Alexei Navalny: 9780593320969 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

@MsAmerica I like books on economics too. I am reading Mark Carney's book at the moment. It's fairly densely written but it is interesting and thought provoking

https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/value-s-book-mark-carney-9781541768703

Also - Private Equity is definitely a major issue in the UK too

Last year I attended a talk given by Nick Higham, former BBC correspondent titled 'The Mercenary River'. It was a fascinating talk that was really about the history of London's water... he joked that if the title was water & sewage then no one would come!

He has a book on the subject which I've finally got around to starting and so far so good, as I expected it would be.

Private Greed. Public Good. A History of London's Water

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-mercenary-river/nick-higham/9781472283863

The Wager by David Grann. Non fiction, but as gripping as a novel.

If war is your thing, then Stalingrad by Vasilly Grossman is mind boggling.

Have just bought that it sounds just up my street thanks @westfacing

Apologies if I'm repeating suggestions but I'm currently gripped by John Preston's book about Robert Maxwell called Fall. His book about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal (A Very English Scandal) is also good.

I also enjoyed Bringing Down the House by David Profumo about his father John and his mother Valerie Hobson.

All That Remains by Sue Black. Brilliant book and so accessible for a nonscientific mind. Loved it.

Thanks, @BeverleyCleverley. If private equity is definitely an issue there, I will do a separate top-post about Plunder. I refrained because the focus is American - but the underlying issues would apply anywhere.

I've just started reading Dead in the Water by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel. It's about the very murky goings-on of the global shipping industry. It's been quite eye-opening.

I recently finished Number Go Up by Zeke Faux about cryptocurrencies and the massive amount of fraud based on them. It's centred on Sam Bankfman-Fried and his criminal behaviour around his FTX crypto exchange but it covers a lot of areas. It's really well written and entertaining but also infuriating at how such a bunch of blatant scam-artists, drug-addled "visionaries" and flat-out idiots managed to blag their way to riches at the expense of millions of gullible punters.

This is the opening line from the prologue that very much sets the scene for the rest of the book:

"I'm not going to lie," Sam Bankman-Fried told me.
This was a lie.

It's All in Your Head: Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness and The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness - both by Suzanne O'Sullivan. Fascinating and really changed how I thought about psychosomatic illness