What Non-fiction books do you hold in high regard?

My "reading for fun" time is mostly made up of fantasy and a few science fictions works, but I'm thinking that maybe non-fiction can be entertaining and riveting as well. Plus it's informative about the real world and may be somewhat applicable? So some recommendations would be appreciated.

I'm quite fond of Malcolm Gladwell's books: "The Tipping Point," "Blink" and "Outliers" are all excellent examinations of various social and psychological phenomena.

E.H. Carr's What is History?

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential

... I don't know, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a book that wasn't gimmick crap right?

Montaigne's Essays is a pretty fantastic place to start. Since you're here, Tom Bisell's Extra Lives is a wonderful collection of game essays.

Others:

Rise of the Videogame Zinestar - Anthopy

Rubicon: Last Years of the Roman Republic - Holland

The Histories - Herodotus

How To Do Things with Videogames - Bogost

Why Read the Classics - Eco

Selected Non-Fictions - Borges

Confessions of an English Opium Eater - De Quincy

I'll make myself stop.

Friday Night Lights.

I enjoy biographies of interesting people, two that pop into my head immediately are 'Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla' and 'Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club', on the other side of the spectrum.

Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. Both Non-Fiction but it unfolds like a novel.

Bruce Cumings' Origins of the Korean War is a two-volume piece of writing good enough to ensure he could just copypasta pieces of it into new books for the next three decades and still hold a tenured position at the University of Chicago. It's amazing.

Freakanomics.

Anything by Malcolm Gladwell.

I also tend to read more fantasy but one of the first non-fictions I can think of is Angry White Pyjamas.

English guy goes to japan to take part in a year long intensive course in Akido.

Though a bit dated, Everything Bad is Good for You is still my favorite weapon in the "pop culture doesn't rot your brain" argument.

The Death of Satan - Andrew Delbanco

Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation of Hertitics - Ross Douthat

The Intolerance of Tolerance - D. A. Carson

Were some of the best non-fiction books I read last year.

I can't recommend The Intolerance of Tolerance enough.

The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea andDeng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China are two interesting books that look at the great modernizers of Asia during the last half of the 20th century. Both are written or edited by Ezra Vogel, so you know it's good stuff.

Also recently read Escape from Camp 14 which I'd highly recommend.

Friday Night Lights.

Any of Feynman's stuff is pretty great - the Adventures books, The Feynman Lectures, etc. I enjoy Morris Kline's humorous jabs in his books, and I learned how to do calculus because of his book Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach; an absolutely phenomenal first-look type dealy if you have any interest in physics. I'm super intrigued to read Principia but I doubt any modernization will do anything for me other than be a historical read. Then again, to see interpretations before Euler or Cauchy sounds kind of cool.

If I'm going to get my hipster philosophizer hat on, then Nicomachean Ethics and Descartes' Meditations are my favorites.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin is brilliant. Literally anything by David McCullough is fantastic too.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great read if your into science or history. Anything written by Danny Wallace (Or Shaun Hastings from the Assasins Creed universe) tend to be hilarious tales of his life.

Anything by Ayn Rand.

I haven't read all of it, but If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of A B-Movie Actor, Bruce Campbell's autobiography, is a real fun and interesting read if you're curious about low-budget film making. Campbell's very humble and self-deprecating and the book's just got a good tone.
 
I also enjoyed The Last Gangster, by George Anastasia. It's been ages since I read it, but it was a pretty captivating read about a bizarrely jolly dude risking his life every day to wear a wire and take down the mob in Philadelphia. Some of his stories are so god damn ridiculous they're hilarious.

Survival in the Killing Fields by Hang Ngor. An incredibly personal account of the Khmer Rouge, its rise to power and the culling of the intellectuals. The author, as a true survivor of the experience, details the trials he and his family had to undertake to live in a world gone completely upside down in a matter of minutes.

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. It's a classic for a reason, Pale Blue Dot is also good.

The Law of Superheroes is a good recent book if you aren't in a scientific mood.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote is the first book that springs to my mind.

Probably this one

First non-fiction book I ever loved

I've been reading a lot of nonfiction lately. I'm not sure what prompted this shift from fiction and poetry,which have typically been my primary interests. Nonetheless, as of late I have found Ken Robinson's The Element, G.K. Chesterton's What I Saw In America, and Alan Jacobs' The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction to be all quite stimulating. I would even call the first and last items to be essential reading for anyone anywhere living in any context under any condition; regardless of whether you agree with their arguments and ideas, your response to them will absolutely give you a more informed perspective on your life and how you are living it.

All that said, I've always found the works of Bill Bryson to be both fascinating and delightful. He is a fantastic writer and has a penchant for making seemingly mundane subjects shockingly interesting. He writes a lot about history, culture, and language.

Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers

I highly recommend Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man. It's a must-read for those who have an interest in primates. You'll learn a lot, but it still manages to be entertaining.

One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick.

If you want to know what it's like to be a Marine Corps Officer, a Recon Marine, or what it was like in the early War on Terror days, you should read this book.

Masters of Doom is good if you want to read about Doom and how all of that was started.

None

BaneFireLord: Malcolm Gladwell's books: "The Tipping Point," "Blink" and "Outliers"

I'd agree with that. Fun, readable and you feel like you're learning stuff.

I also liked Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics. I seem to remember liking Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely as well (listened to the audio book).

if you like historical non-fiction i really recommend "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" by William Rosen, it's a great book about how the industrial revolution came to be and how all the changes and creations and inventions of the time finally came together in the creation of Rocket, the prototype for what would become the locomotives.

america the book by jon stewart

If your looking for non-fiction I highly suggest reading Guns Germs and Steal (Amazon) It's a really interesting look at why some societies rose in power and technology while others did not. I don't think I could summarize it well, but it looks at it as a divide created by environmental differences. It's quite an interesting read, but it is non-fiction and can some times be a bit dry.

@tunaburn: A great book as well as I Am America (And So Can You!) well worth reading if you haven't yet.

All the President's Men is a favorite of mine. It's a first hand account of the reporting done by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward on the Watergate Scandal.

I'm not exactly an inveterate devourer of non-fiction, but I can think of a book or two to recommend:

• August 1914 (The Guns of August) by Barbara Tuchman.
• Surviving Treblinka by Samuel Willenburg.
• The Richard J. Evan's Third Reich trilogy (I've only read the second book, but that alone was enough to convince me of its indisputable value).
• Any Laurence Rees book.
• Holocaust: A New History by Doris Bergen.
• Myths about Suicide by Thomas Joiner.

Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving taught me that, as of yet, I am semantically unable to love. But one day I will be able, and that will be the happiest day of my life.

@DarthOrange said:

Anything by Ayn Rand.

Did Ayn Rand write any non-fiction? Maybe she put out a collection of essays called something like, "Why Being a Sociopath is Somehow a Legitimate Philosophy"?

@l4wd0g said:

The Death of Satan - Andrew Delbanco

Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation of Hertitics - Ross Douthat

The Intolerance of Tolerance - D. A. Carson

Were some of the best non-fiction books I read last year.

I can't recommend The Intolerance of Tolerance enough.

Carson's really just one of these jerkbags like Bill O'Reilly who laments that western society is very gradually coming to the conclusion that it's uncool to be a pushy asshole about your beliefs, even if that belief is shared by the majority. He just gussies up that same crud with politeness and scholarly language, but it's the same ugliness at its root. I think that the type of person who would agree with Carson's thesis is usually also the type of person who thinks calling a person who wants to prevent other people from having equal rights a bigot is itself a kind of bigotry. But hey, that's just what I think.

Autobiographies of rock stars can be pretty great...

Marilyn Manson's autobiography is an excellent read.

There are some really interesting Biographies out there. One of my favorite's is Jackie Chan's Who am I?

I just started reading in cold blood and it seems to be really interesting but have to see how it will turn out.

The Bible is certainly a personal favorite.

@Aegon:

"God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens

"1776" by David McCullough

I guess I should mention I'm pretty religious, so there's not much point recommending books that are anti-religion and all that.

Do religious texts count? Cause the Qur'an is pretty alright.

If you've never read it, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman is one of my favorite books ever, non fiction or otherwise. And even if you have read it, go read it again. It's really good.

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild is good if you want to be really depressed and hate humanity (it's about the exploitation of the area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, natch)