If you want to read non-fiction where do you look?  Well in the library you check out the Dewey Decimal call numbers that begin with 000 Generalities, move through 001 Knowledge all the way to 999 Extraterrestrial worlds.  (not sure what the non-fiction might be on that one)

But pretty much the world’s your oyster – if there is a subject you are interested in there is a book about it – probably an entire shelf of books.  So this month we have choices, choices, choices.

We have mentioned lots of non-fiction titles under our other categories.  Check out the archives for those titles.

What are your favorites.  Is there an author that you depend on when you want to check out a topic?  Do you find yourself browsing the shelves and finding things you never thought you were interested in that just look fascinating?

Wide ranging historical periods and subjects discussed today.  Here is a list of most of them (titles were hot and heavy and I may have missed some of them).  I generally feel that just giving you a title without any content isn’t as helpful as we’d like to be  but there are way too many titles to provide a description.  For that, you need to come to the book group and hear people talk about why they like or dislike a book.

The Yellow-lighted Bookstore – Lewis Buzbee

Pink Chimneys: A Novel of Nineteenth Century Maine – Ardeana Hamlin Knowles

When Red is Black – Qui Xiaolong

The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in China before Mao – Charles N. Li

The History of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma – Thant Myint-U

Where China Meets India: Burma and the new Crossroads of Asia – Thank Myint-U

The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds – Jonathan D. Spence (not recommended)

A History of China – J. A. G. Roberts (recommend the 2nd half)

Mao Zedong – Jonathan D. Spence

The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800 – Pamela Kyle Crossley (not recommended)

The Chinese Century: A photographic history of the last hundred years – Jonathan D. Spence, Annping Chin

Wealth & Power: China’s Long March to the 21st Century – Orville Schell – John Delury (highly recommended)

The Question of Hu – Jonathan D. Spence

Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci – Jonathan D. Spence

Wild Swans  – Jung Chang

Garden of the Beasts – Erik Larson

Berlin Embassy – William Russell

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

First with the Most – Robert Selph Henry

Hawaii and Centennial –  James A. Michener

And the Band Played on – Randy Shilts

The Sand Castle Girls – Chris Bohjalian

Good Lord Bird – James McBride

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie

Killing Mister Watson – Peter Matthiessen

To Say Nothing of the Dog – Connie Willis

Books by R. F. Delderfield – God is an Englishman, Serve Them All My Days

Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay

Georgette Heyer – April Lady, The Nonesuch

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway

Claude & Camille – Stephanie Cowell

The Aviator’s Wife – Melanie Benjamin

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie – Ayana mathis

Rules of Civility – Amor Towles

Thunderstruck – Eric Larson

The Devil and the White City – Erik Larsson

The Paris Wife – Paula McLain

The Lost City of Z – David Grann

River of Doubt, Destiny of the Republic – Candice Millard

State of Wonder – Ann Patchett

Bel Canto – Ann Patchett

Smoking Ears & Screaming Teeth – Trevor Norton

Ahab’s Wife – Sena Jeter Naslund

The Tapir’s Morning Bath – Elizabeth Royte

Two Years Before the Mast – R. H. Dana, Jr

In the Fall – Jeffrey Lent

At Some Disputed Barricade – Anne Perry

We Shall Not Sleep – Anne Perry

Strength in What Remains –  Tracy Kidder

The Air We Breathe – Andrea Barrett

Skeletons at the Feast – Chris Bohjalian

Stones from the River – ursula Helgi

Bird Song – Charlotte Gray, Girl at the Lion D’or, Human Traces – Sebastian Faulks

Sea Biscuit – Laura Hillenbrand

The Given Day, Live by Night – Dennis Lehane

In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower  – Nathaniel Philbrick

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million – Daniel Mendelsohn

Marching Home – Kevin Coyne

Ghost Soldiers – Hampton Sides

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Annie Barrows

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Slacks – Rebecca Skloot

The Hare with Amber Eyes – Edmund de Waal

Unbroken – Lauren Hillenbrand

People of the Book, Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks

The Warmth of other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson

Lost in Shangri-La – Mitchell Zuckoff

Caleb’s Crossing – Geraldine Brooks

The Things We Cherished, The Kommandant’s Girl – Pam Jenoff

The Time in Between – Maria Duenas

The Madonnas of Leningrad – Debra Dean

The Lady in Gold – Ann-Marie O’Connor

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper – Harriet Scott Chessman

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb – Melanie Benjamin

The Glass Room – Simon Mawer

Garden of Evening Mist, The Gift of Rain – Tan Twan Eng

The Winds of War – Herman Wouk

Yellow Birds – Kein Powers

Citizens of London – Lynn Olson

Pale Battalions – Robert Goddard

The Son – Philipp Meyer

Frozen in Time – Mitchell Zuckoff

The Spy Who Loved the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville – Clare Mulley

Hellhound on his Trail – Hampton Sides

The Black Count – Tom Reiss

The Long Way Home – David Laskin

The Avengers: A Jewish War Story – Rich Cohen

The Boys in the Boat – Daniel James Brown

The Boy on the Wooden Box – Leon Leyson

The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul – Robert Olen Butler

The Cartographer of No Man’s Land – P. S. Duffy

The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century – David Laskin

I am Malala – Malala Yousafzai

Mrs. Poe – Lynn Cullen

The Monuments Men – Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

Dancing with the Enemy – Paul Glasser

The Wind is Not a River – Brian Payton

The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd

Gone to Soldiers – Marge Piercy

The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory

The Secret River – Kate Grenville

The Path Between the Seas – David McCullough

Cleopatra – Stacy Shciff

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove – Laura Schenone

We will be talking about history books – real history and imagined history – please plan to join us at 10:30 in the Roosevelt Room at the Maynard Library – 77 Nason Street

 

Do you read history to learn from it, to understand your own world better, to see a world you’ve never known?

 Wikipedia lists 44 biographies of Adolph Hitler (and that doesn’t include Springtime for Hitler).  One bookseller lists 34 titles about Winston Churchill.  This is just a tiny peek at what falls into the history category.  So how do you choose what you want to read?

 Are you especially interested in a particular time period?  Is there a location that you find fascinating?  Is it the people who fashion history that draw your attention?

 Share your choices – curious people want to know.