Can anyone recommend a good non-fiction book?

[dblack]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - my very favorite book of all time.

 

[leecross]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

Anything by Erik Larson

I found 3 books by Erik Larson that looked interesting--"The Devil in the white City," In the Garden of Beasts", And "Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lithuania. I just found all 3 on Amazon and put an order in. Sometimes they go through and sometimes they don't when you order books through bargain sellers. We'll see what the mailman brings.
Thanks for the tip. I read their short content notes--two deal with issues during World Wars, and one deals with a serial killer in a big city fair in the 1890s.

Erik Larson’s ‘Dead Wake,’ About the Lusitania




Credit John Shuley & Company/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

By Hampton Sides

March 5, 2015

One day seven years ago, while on a magazine assignment, I found myself on a boat off the coast of Ireland, bobbing in dark, heavy seas 300 feet above the slumbering wreck of the R.M.S. Lusitania as sport divers returned triumphantly to the surface. When they came aboard, the gleeful explorers, part of a marine archaeology expedition sanctioned by the Irish government, produced a piece of history — a plastic container holding a handful of .303 rounds they’d found inside the plankton-hazed ruins, rounds that had been manufactured in America and bought by the British to kill Germans during World War I. One of the divers peeled back the lid, and the corroded ammunition greeted fresh air for the first time in 93 years. “There’s thousands of cases of ammo down in that hole!” one of the Irish divers cried out. “You could just scoop the stuff up!” But then he turned somber. Even though he had dived the great wreck dozens of times before, the expression on his face was that of a spooked man. “It will always be a scary place, a daunting place,” he told me. “There’s a lot of lost souls down there.”

Few tales in history are more haunting, more tangled with investigatory mazes or more fraught with toxic secrets than that of the final voyage of the Lusitania, one of the colossal tragedies of maritime history. It’s the other Titanic, the story of a mighty ship sunk not by the grandeur of nature but by the grimness of man. On May 7, 1915, the four-funneled, 787-foot Cunard superliner, on a run from New York to Liverpool, encountered a German submarine, the U-20, about 11 miles off the coast of Ireland. The U-boat’s captain, Walther Schwieger, was pleased to discover that the passenger steamer had no naval escort. Following his government’s new policy of unrestricted warfare, Schwieger fired a single torpedo into her hull. Less than half a minute later, a second explosion shuddered from somewhere deep within the bowels of the vessel, and she listed precariously to starboard.

The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes. Nearly 1,200
...

More at link.

Erik Larson’s ‘Dead Wake,’ About the Lusitania



After watching "A Night to Remember" over the years since it's 1958 debut, and the various documentary accounts of the Titanic tragedy, I never once felt any interest in watching the Leonardo DiCaprio film. And to date I still have not seen it.

But the story of the Lusitania sinking has always tantalized me and seemed just as tragic.

I believe it actually WAS bearing military armaments, but still...

 

[williepete]

1491

Eye opening. If 1491 whets your appetite, there is a follow on book, 1493.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

1421: the year the Chinese discovered America

 

[Vastator]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

The Bell Curve.

 

[Wry Catcher]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

For our times, ON VIOLENCE By Hannah Arendt

From the review:

"Dr Arendt discusses the theories about violence in historical perspective and re-examines the relationship between war and politics, violence and power."

It is not an easy read.

The final paragraph of On Violence: is enlightening. In short ..."those who hold power and feel it slipping from their hands, be they the government or the people being governed, have always found it difficult to resist the temptation to substitute violence for it"

 

[Wry Catcher]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

Anything by Erik Larson

I found 3 books by Erik Larson that looked interesting--"The Devil in the white City," In the Garden of Beasts", And "Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lithuania. I just found all 3 on Amazon and put an order in. Sometimes they go through and sometimes they don't when you order books through bargain sellers. We'll see what the mailman brings.
Thanks for the tip. I read their short content notes--two deal with issues during World Wars, and one deals with a serial killer in a big city fair in the 1890s.

Erik Larson’s ‘Dead Wake,’ About the Lusitania




Credit John Shuley & Company/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

By Hampton Sides

March 5, 2015

One day seven years ago, while on a magazine assignment, I found myself on a boat off the coast of Ireland, bobbing in dark, heavy seas 300 feet above the slumbering wreck of the R.M.S. Lusitania as sport divers returned triumphantly to the surface. When they came aboard, the gleeful explorers, part of a marine archaeology expedition sanctioned by the Irish government, produced a piece of history — a plastic container holding a handful of .303 rounds they’d found inside the plankton-hazed ruins, rounds that had been manufactured in America and bought by the British to kill Germans during World War I. One of the divers peeled back the lid, and the corroded ammunition greeted fresh air for the first time in 93 years. “There’s thousands of cases of ammo down in that hole!” one of the Irish divers cried out. “You could just scoop the stuff up!” But then he turned somber. Even though he had dived the great wreck dozens of times before, the expression on his face was that of a spooked man. “It will always be a scary place, a daunting place,” he told me. “There’s a lot of lost souls down there.”

Few tales in history are more haunting, more tangled with investigatory mazes or more fraught with toxic secrets than that of the final voyage of the Lusitania, one of the colossal tragedies of maritime history. It’s the other Titanic, the story of a mighty ship sunk not by the grandeur of nature but by the grimness of man. On May 7, 1915, the four-funneled, 787-foot Cunard superliner, on a run from New York to Liverpool, encountered a German submarine, the U-20, about 11 miles off the coast of Ireland. The U-boat’s captain, Walther Schwieger, was pleased to discover that the passenger steamer had no naval escort. Following his government’s new policy of unrestricted warfare, Schwieger fired a single torpedo into her hull. Less than half a minute later, a second explosion shuddered from somewhere deep within the bowels of the vessel, and she listed precariously to starboard.

The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes. Nearly 1,200
...

More at link.

Erik Larson’s ‘Dead Wake,’ About the Lusitania



After watching "A Night to Remember" over the years since it's 1958 debut, and the various documentary accounts of the Titanic tragedy, I never once felt any interest in watching the Leonardo DiCaprio film. And to date I still have not seen it.

But the story of the Lusitania sinking has always tantalized me and seemed just as tragic.

I believe it actually WAS bearing military armaments, but still...

I read it on a cruise to Alaska, historical fiction but very interesting especially when read by someone who also served on a Tin Can doing ASW patrol.

 

[Blackrook]

So the Daddy is black, Mommy is Asian and the baby is white? WTF???

 

[leecross]

I just read 'Fear' (great book) and have some extra online freebies coming but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions...but please make it non-fiction?

For our times, ON VIOLENCE By Hannah Arendt

From the review:

"Dr Arendt discusses the theories about violence in historical perspective and re-examines the relationship between war and politics, violence and power."

It is not an easy read.

The final paragraph of On Violence: is enlightening. In short ..."those who hold power and feel it slipping from their hands, be they the government or the people being governed, have always found it difficult to resist the temptation to substitute violence for it"

That is an interesting observation.



Sent from my LG-M154 using Tapatalk

 

[leecross]

So the Daddy is black, Mommy is Asian and the baby is white? WTF???

Somehow I can imagine it vying for credibility in a young atheist's mind (such as our youngest are being bred to be) with the story of Mary's immaculate conception (Jesus' virgin birth).

Sent from my LG-M154 using Tapatalk