Must.Read.Non.Fiction (textbook, best, author, great)

[southwest88]

Originally Posted by chicagoliz

Read Bitter Fruit, also by Kinzer. It is about the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Excellent, excellent book. I have Shah's Men sitting on my shelf, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Yes, both of the Kinzer books are very good. Another for the reading list, if you're interested in US intel issues:

Secrecy : the American experience / [book] Daniel Patrick Moynihan; introduction by Richard Gid Powers. Yale U. Press, c 1998, 352.379 Moyn

Subjects

• Official secrets -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
• Executive privilege (Government information) -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
• Security classification (Government documents) -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Length ix, 262 p. :

He's very good on the problems inherent in Congressional (& gov. in general) oversight of top-secret activities/programs. It's a problem that still hasn't been resolved, although Pres. W liked to put just-retired or active-duty military in charge of intel agencies. Likely a good thing - they have honor & duty drilled into them @ the military academies. The real issue will come if we ever have someone in charge interested in building their own little fiefdom in one of those agencies.

[ylisa7]

Originally Posted by chicagoliz

Read Bitter Fruit, also by Kinzer. It is about the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Excellent, excellent book. I have Shah's Men sitting on my shelf, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Thanks that is also on my list.

Originally Posted by i_love_autumn

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer
With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the country's elected prime minister, ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah, and stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the "Washington Post" and "The Economist," it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...the_Shah_s_Men

It was good wasn't it?

Originally Posted by netwit

How old is that book? I saw a review on Amazon dated 2003 but I seem to remember reading that book many more years ago than that. But I couldn't locate the original publication date.

The book I read was published in 2004.

[southwest88]

Quote:
Originally Posted by netwit
How old is that book? I saw a review on Amazon dated 2003 but I seem to remember reading that book many more years ago than that. But I couldn't locate the original publication date.

c2003, John Wiley & Sons. That's also the date @ Wikipedia - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men for more data. An excellent book, & more reason to look very carefully into British international stratagems & planned operations - especially if we (the US) do the heavy lifting. More fool us, I suppose - but even so, I resent being played the fool, even retrospectively.

The events described mostly take place in 1953CE. Maybe that's the confusion?

[netwit]

Originally Posted by southwest88

Quote: Originally Posted by netwit
How old is that book? I saw a review on Amazon dated 2003 but I seem to remember reading that book many more years ago than that. But I couldn't locate the original publication date.

c2003, John Wiley & Sons. That's also the date @ Wikipedia - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men for more data. An excellent book, & more reason to look very carefully into British international stratagems & planned operations - especially if we (the US) do the heavy lifting. More fool us, I suppose - but even so, I resent being played the fool, even retrospectively.

The events described mostly take place in 1953CE. Maybe that's the confusion?

Maybe it was a another book I read but I read some book that sounds very similar at least (I thought) as far back as the 90s unless my memory is playing tricks on me (which is entirely possible). i don't remember the book I read as being in a "breezy" style though.

[southwest88]

Maybe see https://www.theguardian.com/world/ir...953-coup-books

"In Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, published in 1990, historian Homa Katouzian argued Mossadegh took up where the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-9 had left off before Reza Shah established the Pahlavi monarchy. For Katouzian, the overthrow of Mossadegh broke the link between constitutionalism, if not democracy, and national self-determination, so paving the way for a growing Islamic opposition to the Shah’s increasingly dictatorial rule."

This is the only one of the five reviewed that meets the criterion. Otherwise, there are a lot of books out there, & this is only the non-fiction.

[i_love_autumn]

Yes,ylisa7....All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer has definitely joined my favorite nonfiction books, and since it was so good, now I have placed his Bitter Fruit on my list! Thanks chicagoliz for recommending that one.


Such books really causes disgust with our country's history, but I guess most countries have skeletons in their closets, just proves what nonsense the saying about "the basic goodness of man" is! Man is NOT basically good, as history has proven! The truly good people are those who choose to resist evil tendencies, and especially those who are able to influence others to also resist.

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett(review-Dec.2012)
As a former evangelical Christian, now a new atheist(Naturalist-believing nothing exists outside the Natural World) this is one of my three new favorite nonfiction books.
Along with Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary and The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C.Dennett are the top three books that I feel every skeptic/new atheist needs to have in their personal library.
I read my library's copy of this book, but I just ordered my own copy as I know that I will want to re-read these books, as much as I used to study my Bible! They are a joy to read, since they make so much sense and are not full of contradictions like the Bible is.
Breaking the spell did an awesome job of showing the similarities of religion to mythology and superstition, in easy to understand language, and that is where I found the greatest enlightenment and value.

[KathrynAragon]

I'm currently on an Elizabethan kick - well, a British history kick (which has lasted most of my life but I REALLY twisted off on it a few weeks ago!).

I'm on a Tracy Borman kick, to be exact. In the past few weeks I've read:

King's Mistress, Queen's Servant (bio about Henrietta Howard)
Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen
The Private Lives of the Tudors: Uncovering the Secrets of Britain's Greatest Dynasty

I've got Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant but I haven't read it yet. I was going to read it next, but then I kept hearing about The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez, ordered it, and couldn't resist flipping through it and reading the first few pages. WOW, what great style. So I really think I'm going to have to read that next.

I also got in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg, because so many people raved about it (tended to be the same folks who, like me, found Hillbilly Elegy very evocative) but the book has pretty mixed reviews so it's down my list. I don't think it will be a hard read. I just hope it's not as stupid and trite as this review says it is:
'White Trash' Review: Nancy Isenberg's New Book Is Bad History | National Review

[Mikala43]

Not sure if it's been mentioned but my choice would be A Short HIstory of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

He made the boring interesting, and the interesting relevant.

[southwest88]

A fast read:
Literary rogues : a scandalous history of wayward authors / Shaffer, Andrew, author, c2013, Harper Perennial, 820.9 SHAF 2013.

Subjects

• Authors -- Anecdotes.
• Authors -- Conduct of life.
• Authors -- Humor.
• Scandals -- History.
• Scandals -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
• English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
• English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
• American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.

Notes

• The vice lord: Sade -- The opium addict: Coleridge -- The pope of dope: De Quincey -- The apostle of affliction: Byron -- The romantics: the Shelleys -- American Gothic: Poe --The Realists: Balzac, Flaubert, and Sand -- The fleshly school: Baudelaire -- The French decadents: Rimbaud and Verlaine -- The English decadents: Wilde and Dowson -- The lost generation: the Fitzgeralds -- Flapper verse: Parker and Millay -- Bullfighting and bull****: Hemingway -- The Southern gentleman: Faulkner -- Deaths and entrances: Thomas -- The beat generation: Kerouac and Ginsberg -- Junky: Burroughs -- Dead poets society: Berryman and Sexton -- The merry pranksters: Kesey -- The new journalists: Mailer and Capote -- Freak power: Thompson -- The workshop: Cheever and Carver -- The toxic twins: McInerney and Ellis -- Prozac nation: Wurtzel -- The bad boy of American letters: Frey -- Postscript: where have all the cowboys gone?

Summary

• Rock stars, rappers, and actors haven't always had a monopoly on misbehaving. There was a time when authors fought with both words and fists, a time when poets were the ones living fast and dying young. This witty, insightful and wildly entertaining narrative profiles the literary greats who wrote generation-defining classics such as The Great Gatsby and On the Road while living and loving like hedonistic rock icons, who were as likely to go on epic benders as they were to hit the bestseller lists. Literary Rogues turns back the clock to consider these historical (and, in some cases, living) legends, including Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bret Easton Ellis. Brimmming with fascinating research, Literary Rogues is part nostalgia, part literary analysis, and a wholly raucous celebration of brilliant writers and their occasionally troubled legacies - Publisher's description.

Length

• xvi, 297 pages ;

A romp through literature - you can read through, or just browse the ones you're interested in.

[chicagoliz]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

I also got in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg, because so many people raved about it (tended to be the same folks who, like me, found Hillbilly Elegy very evocative) but the book has pretty mixed reviews so it's down my list. I don't think it will be a hard read. I just hope it's not as stupid and trite as this review says it is:
'White Trash' Review: Nancy Isenberg's New Book Is Bad History | National Review

I really liked White Trash and personally found the history fascinating -- I was struck by the idea/reality that the poor were sent here to be poor and there was never any intention of having them move up in society. They've always been scapegoats, and there's always been this undercurrent of 'they're poor because they're inferior and lazy.'

I think the reviewer went into the book with different expectations for the book. And then I noticed it was in National Review, and I'd always take what they have to say with a grain of salt.