Good non-fiction book?

[liliaceae]

Looking for recommendations for an interesting book that's easy enough for a sleep-deprived mama to get through. Any subject except Parenting.

[philomom]

The Story of Salt

The Big Oyster

Cod

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kurlansky

or

A Natural History of the Senses

The Natural History of Love

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ackerman

and I was crazy about ....
Small Things Forgotten
http://www.shop.com/small+things+for...113141080&k=24

[Bokonon]

"The Gastronomy of Marriage" by Michelle Maisto. It's a wonderful memoir, written by a dear old friend of mine, but I would have enjoyed it anyway!

[RiverSky]

Lies My Teacher Told Me

I just finished reading it tonight and was fascinated the entire book.

[A&A]

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

[CrunchyChristianMama]

Hot Zone is really interesting if you are at all into science and pandemics.

[notjustmamie]

Some of my all-time favorites:

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
The Mother Tongue:English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home by Erma Bombeck
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

[mamatoablessing]

Anything by Jon Krakauer:

Into the Wild
Into Thin Air
Under the Banner of Heaven

All fabulous books.

[Manonash]

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (or anything by Pollan)

Icebound by Dr. Jerri Nielson

A Year By the Sea by Joan Anderson
An Unfinished Marriage by Joan Anderson (sequel)

The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton (heavy science)

[philomom]

Oh, I love A Year By The Sea!

[Amaranth]

Stiff, by Mary Roach (it's about cadavers. But funny and fascinating. Her books on ghosts - "Spook" and on sex "Bonk" - are equally good)

The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Sierstad

The Kid, by Dan Savage (about adoption - his other book on gay marriage and the seven deadly sins are also very good)

Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen (about the Iditarod)

All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, by Rachel Manija Brown (growing up in an ashram in India)

Monkeyluv, by Robert Sapolsky (short, wonderful essays on nature & nuture, apes & humans, stress, sex, etc.)

[mamatoablessing]

Originally Posted by Manonash

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

YES! I always forget this book is non-fiction. One of my top 10 greatest reads.

[Sativarain1]

Michael Pollen has a newer book out, it looks good. Sorry I do not remember the name of it but it's about him building a house in the woods.

[Manonash]

Oooh, a new Pollan book? Interesting. I'll have to check that out.

Amaranth, I'll have to check out some of those you recommended -- they sound like books I'd like. DH read Stiff and loved it, so I'll have to show him those others by that author.

I love A Year By the Sea too. I've read it like 3 times!

[Thalia the Muse]

Spook was fun, and I also recommend Will Storr Vs. the Supernatural in a similar vein.

Here are some I loved. I'm trying to avoid anything you would not want to read while sleep-deprived and hormonal, so nothing with children or babies in peril!

Guns, Germs, and Steel
The Orchid Thief
Devil in the White City
Salvation on Sand Mountain
The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio
My Life in France (Julia Child -- oh, this book is wonderful!)
Anything by M.F.K. Fisher
Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and lots of others by Tim Cahill
West with the Night
Animals in Translation
Everyday Life in Early America
Confederates in the Attic
Wolf Willow

Amaranth, I never knew that Gary Paulsen wrote nonfiction! That sounds really interesting.

I second the recommendation for anything by Jon Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven features something very upsetting involving a toddler, is my only warning.

[Drummer's Wife]

I really enjoyed Heroin Diaries -- but it may be too raw for many people.

[raksmama]

Both of these Non Fiction Books read like novels and are real page turners!
Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of A Harem Girlhood
by Fatima Mernissi

http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Trespas.../dp/0201489376

Amazon.com Review
In 1940, harems still abounded in Fez, Morocco. They weren't the opulent, bejeweled harems of Scherezade, but the domestic sprawl of extended families encamped around a walled courtyard that marked the edges of women's lives. Though born into this tightly sheltered world, Fatimi Mernissi is constantly urged by her rebellious mother to spring beyond it. Worried that Mernissi is too shy and quiet, her mother tells her, "You must learn to scream and protest, just the way you learned to walk and talk." In Dreams of Trespass, an enjoyable weave of memory and fantasy, it is clear that Mernissi's fertile imagination let her slip back and forth through the gates that trapped her restive mother. She spins amiable, often improbable tales of the rigidly proper city harem in Fez and the contrasting freedoms of the country harem where her grandmother Yakima lives. There, one of Yakima's cowives rides like the wind, another swims like a fish, and Yakima relishes twitting the humorless first wife by naming a fat, waddling duck after her.

The wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill-A Love story with Wings by Mark Bittner
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Parrots-T.../dp/0609610554
From Publishers Weekly
In this appealing, heartfelt account of one man's attempt to bond with wildlife, the author tells how he made friends with a flock of birds and in the process found meaning in his own life. In the early 1990s, Bittner, a 42-year-old who was still living like a "dharma bum," discovered that there were wild parrots in the trees and on the power lines near the house he was caretaking on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. Having nothing else to do, he decided to feed the birds on his fire escape and occupy his time by observing them. Soon they appeared every day, noisily demanding seeds, and for the next few years, he devoted most of his time to the wily and comical birds, which turned out to be cherry-headed and blue-crowned conures-escapees that originally had been caught in South America-and their progeny. Crowds gathered outside his house to see him with the parrots perched on his arms and head taking seeds from his hands, and he became famous as "the birdman of Telegraph Hill." Because he found that each bird had its own personality, he named them according to their individual characteristics, and in this charming record of their activities, they seem almost human. At a time when he lived like a hermit, the birds brought him joy and became his only friends. It's a bittersweet story-that is, until a documentary filmmaker shows up at his doorstep.

[lakeruby]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to second the vote for The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton! It's amazing-- I am learning to much.

I also really liked Nurture Shock, even though, I guess it's technically a parenting book.

I'm also reading The Surprising Power of Family Meals: How Eating Together Makes us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier and Happier by Miriam Weinstein. I love it!

[sellendie]

The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Zen of Fish, both by Trevor Corson are great

[tammyw]

I loved Enslaved by Ducks. I found it so funny!