Everybody talking about books on here these days.

It's like I stumbled onto the Evelyn Wood forum.

But anyway,...what are some good books?

I prefer non fiction.

Most fiction books these days seem to fall into two categories,....unrealistic fantasy scribed by imbeciles,..or a collection of words intended to make middle aged women ovulate.

I prefer well constructed accounts of reality.

B, I can probably come up with a myriad of titles that are non-fiction and I thought compelling, that I could recommend. I'll try to get some together and post tomorrow.

It's past my bed time. And I'm not kidding.

Any think Robert Ruark wrote, "Horn of the hunter" is a good starting point, "The old man and the boy" another great read.


Or Hemingway, "For whom the bell tolls" those will get you started.

I'll check back in when you do.

An this is a hard one to put down, really an incredible account of a life I would have loved living.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/380913432603?lpid=82

I've tried to read Hemingway.

Farewell to Arms has been sittin' on the toilet tank for a year or more.

It just don't grab me.

read My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I know your eyes are wide-open, but this short story will help them open even wider.

well,....I looked into it.

,...seems that it's about a girl who communicates telepathically with a goe-rilla.

I keep a fairly open mind,...but at first glance it don't appear to be non fiction.

"I prefer well constructed accounts of reality".

http://nathanielphilbrick.com/books/in-the-heart-of-the-sea/

Like most good non-fiction authors that do their due diligence on the research end of things... he, puts you there.

I have several I have enjoyed.. The Avenging Fury of the Plains.. is a history of Liver Eating Johnson.. Also The Tiger of the Wild Bunch.. a biography of Harvey Logan..

Just read Wild Bill Hickok : Gunfighter.. I have also quite a collection on Tom Horn, and Doc. Holliday.. All interesting folks.. Maybe not the best folks, but darn sure interesting..

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon.

ok. then try Ishmael by Mr. Quinn. same story but from a young males perspective rather than the feminine. Ishmael was published first. it might appear to be fictional, but it's (both of'em) cult classics. but I accept they're not for everyone.

Now we're getting somewhere.

I'll check to see if there's Kindle versions of the books that you and add suggested.

"Flags of Our Fathers" or "Flyboys", the first about the squad that raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the second about pilots shot down over Chichi Jima, an island about 100 miles away, and what happened to them.

Any Stephen Ambrose history - "D-Day", "Citizen Soldiers" (especially recommended for a look at parts of the war most others gloss over), "The Wild Blue" about flying B-24's over Europe and of course "Band of Brothers".

"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, just light enough to understand but deep enough to make you put it down every few pages and think "what did I just read?"

Yeah,...those are good.

I've read all of them except "Flyboys".

I've been through A Brief History of Time a couple of times,...but even dumbed down, Steven Hawkins' stuff is difficult to decipher.

Bristoe

I highly recommend Cougar Dave, Mountain Man of Idaho by Pat Cary Peek.

Thanks,...it sounds like a good winter book to read by the fireplace.

Bristoe,
Try a Ken Follett book.
I got a review copy of "The Man From St. Petersburg" back in the early '80s and I've read quite a few more since then.
He also wrote a book based on the rescue of two of Ross Perot's employees in Iran called "On Wings of Eagles" that I found very interesting.
Check him out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Follett

Empire of the Summer Moon - about Quanah Parker and the Comanche wars in Texas.

The Big Sky and The Way West. Both by A.B.Guthrie Jr.

The Greatest Show On Earth, by Richard Dawkins

Our Enemy The State, by Albert Jay Nock

Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

I appreciate all of the recommendations.

I'll bookmark this thread and refer back to it.

Thanks,..

One of the best I've read along with Mere Christian, by Charles Colsen.

Ken Follet's Fall of Giants is a good read. It's well put together tale of the events leading up to and including some of WWI. It has many sub plots featuring several different individuals and how the events affect them personally.

Its fiction, but Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth and World without end are both excellent. I really enjoyed "Hunter" by J.A Hunter as well, if your into the whole African hunting thing,and its non-fiction.

Good.

But for back-and-forth, really enjoy the screw tape riffs...

Another great book.

Some of the non-fiction books I've felt compelled to read more than once:

Son of the Morning Star, Evan S. Connell
Rising Tide, John M. Barry
Isaac�s Storm, Erik Larson
The Class of 1846, John C. Waugh
The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
The Scramble for Africa, Thomas Pakenham
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, several versions
South, Ernest Shackleton
The Exploration of the Colorado River, John Wesley Powell
Scouting on Two Continents, Major Frederick Russell Burnham
Journal of a Trapper, Osborne Russell and Aubrey L. Haines
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
A History of Britain, Simon Schama
Ends of the Earth, Roy Chapman Andrews
My India, Jim Corbett
The Lost Explorer, Conrad Anker
The Tiger, John Vaillant

Thanks Mule Deer! For some reason I did not realize "Scouting On Two Continents" was still in print!!!!

I understand that felling, I didn't care for A Farewell to Arms at all. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a much better read. Whatever you do, don't look at To Have and Have Not, I quit reading Hemingway after that one.

Dreadnought by Massie, A Distant Mirror by Tuckman and Manchester's biographies of Winston Churchill are among my favorite non-fiction.

Oh, and Killer Angels by Shaara.

kaywoodie,

As far as I know, Scouting on Two Continents isn't still in print. But copies aren't hard to find.

Easily in the top 10 best Christian books in the last 1900 years. Probably in the top 5.

Yes I just looked again! And I see they are used copies! Thanks!!! One of my old boyhood heroes, that Burnham!

Ok, I'm still up. Lord Grizzly, a true story of a frontier scout malled by a Great Plains grizzly at a water hole in the Dakotas and left for dead by his young compatriots, details his crawling two hundred miles toward a fort, driven by revenge on those who left him for dead.

Must read for the likes of here..!

I just finished "The Windward Road" by Archie Carr.

It is a look at the non-pc world of yesteryear, written by a man of science who pursued conservation of the oceanic turtles. He also obviously admired the cultures which hunted and subsisted on their hunting of those same turtles.

Would that be the book from which "Man in the Wilderness" was made?

Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose

An excellent detailing of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
I recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it. There are so many fascinating little details of the expedition that most people don't even know.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0310519608/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3521239345&ref=pd_sl_3d0s4hirli_bb

http://www.amazon.com/Quantrill-Mis...r=1-1&keywords=quantrill+of+missouri

http://www.amazon.com/Southern-Grac...mp;keywords=southern+by+the+grace+of+god

Here is a couple nonfiction books that I could not put down. Like you, I have a hard time reading fiction anymore... Too much real stuff has happened that is worth reading about.

http://www.amazon.com/Skeletons-Zah...1-1&keywords=skeletons+on+the+zahara

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Tru...eywords=the+long+walk+by+slavomir+rawicz

Go to Guttenburg Project.
Check the most downloaded Non Fiction.
30,000 free books.

For good non fiction.
Even the Last Six. A collection of true stories by Bob Bell.
Outdoor writer.
Not Bob Boozer Bell, that's someone else.
Anybody won a hat from Elmer is fun to read.

Any of Malcolm Gladwells books.

Thomas Mertons books.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T. E. Lawrence.

Tim Cahill. A Wolverine is eating my leg. You'll find him.

Emergency Sex.

Not much sex.

You'll need a drink before it's over.

It is not a light read. Be warned.

Scouting on Two Continents

Sir Fredferick Russel Burnham, DSO

Link: http://www.pinetreeweb.com/burnham.htm

I should have read page 2 before posting Burnham, again.

Bristoe,....have you read EVERYTHING that H. Rider Haggard ever wrote ?

GTC

no,..I'll check him out.

Dick and Jane, or The Adventures of Babar, would probably be about your speed Bristoe.

I'm currently reading History of the English Speaking People by Churchill. I'm about halfway through vol II and I switch back and forth between it and No Place to Hide about Edward Snowden. Have not been able to make up my mind about Snowden yet and may never come to a firm conclusion.

Thanks a million for the link, Greg!

Jim, I don't know about that. Read LG in high school or college. It's a fascinating account!

I strongly recommend The Frontiersman by Allen W. Eckert. It is a part of the Winning of America series. His books document frontier warfare in early American history from the French and Indian War through the early 1800s, including the Revolution and War of 1812. There is a heavy emphasis on the Indian wars and shows the perspective from both sides.

Eckert's books almost read like novels, but, everything is factual and documented. When people speak in the books, their words are straight from period letters, journals, etc. The Frontiersman tells the story of Simon Kenton and Tecumseh in frontier Kentucky and Ohio. Simon Kenton feats as a hunter and Indian fighter made Daniel Boone look like a sissy and he actually saved Boone's life twice. Tecumseh could predict the future and nearly used that ability to unify all of the Indians in a plan to wipe out all the whites in America. You will be both entertained and educated by the Eckert books. However, be aware that there are many detailed, graphic accounts of battles, massacres and Indian tortures.

The Winning of America series has six different books that can read individually or as a series:

The Frontiersmen
Wilderness Empire
The Conquerors
The Wilderness War
Gateway to Empire
Twilight of Empire

I've read each of them three or four times. Following the Frontiersman, my second favorite is the Wilderness Empire which documents the life of Sir William Johnson and the Indian warfare in the NY area during the French and Indian War. Johnson lived a dual life between the whites and Iroquois, became an adopted chief, led them in bloody battles and was said to have sired a 1,000 Indian children!

"A Sorrow in our Heart" is Eckert's bio on Tecumseh. Excellent read!


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/055356174X?pc_redir=1401001158&robot_redir=1

"The Crow Killer" is another another good read about the life of John Johnston (Jeremiah Johnson).

"A Sorrow in our Heart" basically excerpts the parts of "The Frontiersman" about Tecumseh and expands upon them somewhat. Eckert did the same thing with his book on Blue Jacket, the story of the white youth who became the Shawnee war chief, although that one was intended for juvenile readers.

For a quick read, Eckert's "Incident at Hawk's Hill" is interesting. It's the true story of a lost boy raised by badgers, believe it or not!

I liked that one too. For anyone who likes the "Jeremiah Johnson" movie (hint, one of my kids is named Jeremiah) it's interesting to read about the real Liver Eatin' Johnson. Although there are many who question the accuracy of "The Crow Killer," I like to believe it!

I also enjoyed "the Court-martial of Daniel Boone".

Bristoe,

My brother told me, "This book is so good I couldn't put it down! It caused me to challenge my own Christianity." my wife said, "It is so good it's like someone else wrote it." It is And These Signs Will Follow by Rich Coyle.

"Men to Match My Mountains" by Irving Stone is another entertaining and informative read. It tells the story of some of the remarkable men men who built the West, particularly the railroads. The book will give you a huge respect for what they accomplished.

A little more on this. The man was Hugh Glass and he was attacked by a female grizzly in the early 1800's near the Moreau River near the current town of Lemon, SD. He crawled south to the Cheyenne River after his companions left him for dead. He constructed a raft and floated with the current to Fort Kiowa, just downstream of Big Bend, where he recuperated through the winter. His wounds were tended by maggots as he crawled which undoubtedly spared him infection, sepsis and a second chance at death.

That should get you started. Compelling story.

"Tough Trip Through Paradise 1878-1879", Andrew Garcia

Life as a trader & "squaw man" in Montana and surrounding western territories during that time period.

I have a couple on the "Life of Alex Stewart". Not really a biography but more of a way of life in this region that is all but gone. Really enjoyed those.

ive turned a few people onto this guy, unfortunately other than this book his others are hard to find in the states and i hope to track them down while im in OZ.....if you like old west type books but want something different this is the book to pick up as its a guys autobiography of Australia's "Old West" period.....driving cattle, fixing telegraph lines via camel back, hunting water buffalo and crocodiles for hides.....only complaint is its a fairly short book but everyone ive mentioned it to thats picked up a copy or borrowed mine has loved it:

http://www.amazon.com/Hell-West-Cro...r=8-1&keywords=hell+west+and+crooked

Bristoe
I would bet "Longitude: the True Story of a Lone Genius Whom Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" would be right up your alley.

Making a clock accurate enough to allow ships to calculate their longitude was a big deal in the 17th century. Building the small parts required was an interesting part of the book, and I have been known to build some small parts, too. By that I mean the writing was not too ridiculous in describing something you likely understand much better than the writer.
http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-Problem/dp/080271529X

Hemingway is very readable if you pick up "In Our Time" first...

Would add Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" to his "Botany of Desire" that Mule Deer mentioned.

B, here's a list of my good reads in the last couple of years or so in no particular order:

John Adams (McCulough)
Life in a Medieval City (Gies)
1776 (McCulough)
The Covenant (Michener) read a long time ago. For me his best.
Undaunted Courage - re Lewis & Clark (Ambrose)
The Old North Trail (McClintock)
Great Gun Fighters Of The Kansas Cow Towns 1867- 1886
Team Of Rivals - re Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
The Next 100 Years - geopolitics (Friedman)
A good series:
The Real Benjamin Franklin
The real George Washington
The Real Thomas Jefferson (each a full length book)
Cain At Gettysburg ( R Peters)
Bones of Contention - an eye-opener in regard to paleo-anthropology and what we've seen written as fact and been taught.
The Complete Short Stories (E Hemingway)
Alexis De Toqueville - Democracy in America
Best Guns - shotguns (McIntosh)
White Hunter (Herne)
The Death of The West (Buchanan)
Dangerous Game Rifles (Wieland)
African Game trails (T Roosevelt)

And Lord Grizzly as mentioned above. Start with Unbroken by Hillanbrand, a WWII true story, autobiography. An absolute page-turner!

Oh yea, for light ?, Non-fiction African adventure, Capstick is so readable, particularly, Warrior.

Have at it bud.

Washington's Secret Six is surprisingly good.



Travis

Lex Rex, Samual Rutherford.

The Scots Worthies, by Howie

"Life in a Medieval City (Gies)"

Being over in Germany recently and seeing all the old cities along the Rhine piqued my interest in medieval life. Just checked and our library has this one on the shelf. Thanks for the recommendation.


Overall, there are enough books recommended in this thread to keep me occupied all weekend...

There's another of this genre - 1000 years AD (or so). Bedbugs, garbage, and offal... But no IRS! grin:

It's also very good.

Getting a good list accumulated here.

My Kindle bill is gonna be a bitch.

Yea, but with Kindle, you can have a much smaller house.

Public libraries - you head down figuring you'll check out the one book you have in mind. Zip zop, in and out, 5 minutes.

Two hours later you head home with a stack of books checked out after having skimmed through probably 25 more.

I know e-readers are great, got nothing against'em, but I still like perusing through the shelves of a library and taking home a physical book or two (or three or four or five).

STXHunter's post reminded me of Krakatoa by Simon Winchester.

Another, he puts you there, author (roots via Outside magazine)...

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Summer-Madness-Exaltation-Fishing/dp/B003IWYGQG

Based on your wit B, perhaps pretty much anything by this fella:
http://www.amazon.com/David-Sedaris/e/B000AQ3YUW

That Dark and Bloody River by Allan Eckert is excellent.

My daughter gave me a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day a few years ago.

The chapter titled, "You can't kill the Rooster" had me guffawing and stomping my foot.

Took me a half a book to realize he bats for the other team - not that there is anything wrong with that.

I read that a few years ago.

I've got it around here somewhere.

It's time to dig it out and read it again.

I thought the description of the Mingo tribe was interesting.

Basically, a mercenary tribe made up of established badasses.

The Shawnee were pretty badass too.

In bed, after much rather loud personal laughter (and farting)...

wife asks me, "what the hell you reading?"

I found part of it here:

http://www.youcantkilltherooster.com/stories.php?story=10&disp=f

Bristol,

One of the absolute best 'fiction' books I've ever read...

Doesn't take long to realize it's way too realistic not to be mostly autobiographical.

I told her, "this guy writes like he was there with our family".

I completely agree. I do actually have a room that is my library and will never abandon completely hard copy tomes.

B.

Got to review my own "product", once.



RIOTOUS read, once one figures out the (totally authentic) vernacular.

Book Review, �Old Wolfville�, Chapters from the fiction of Alfred Henry Lewis

I came across something very special and probably rare a few weeks ago. In the process of getting a buddy�s black powder project happening, I managed to trade myself into three cases of books. The larger quantity are in six inch by nine inch paperback format, but there are also some beautiful clothbound hard cover examples as well. The icing on that sweet morsel is that some of the cloth bound books even have there original paper dust jackets! Let me quote a bit of text from the inner face of one of these very attractive artifacts:

� Alfred Henry Lewis (1858-1914) grew up in Ohio, became a lawyer, and then went west with his family, where he became an itinerant cowboy and journalist. These years of wandering the Southwest provided the material for his greatest yarns, a broad sampling of which are presented here.
Wolfville was in reality Tombstone, Arizona, in its heyday a crossroads of western life more populous than San Francisco. It was the town of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and a colorful flow of other cowboys, gamblers, adventurers, cavalrymen, Indians, miners, and entertainers. They emerge in Lewis� stories as a memorable cast of characters � Doc Peets, Faro Nell, Dave Tutt, Texas Thompson, the town marshall Jack Moore, and the old Wolfville chief, Old Man Enright. But his most memorable character was the Old Cattleman who narrates most of the stories with an eye and ear as keen as a jackrabbit�s and a wit as dry as the desert air. �

And from the introduction �The West Belongs to All of Us� by Lewis Filler :

� Stand at the bar in the Crystal Palace Saloon in Tombstone, and order a drink. Look at the original bullet hole in the big, antique mirror. Let your mind relax and blur until you hear the tramp of cowboy boots in and out of the big bar, the pounding of the piano, the mounting roar of conversation about silver mines, dance hall girls, outlaws, roundups, famous westerners and unknowns � listen to the flip of the cards, the clatter of horses hooves outside, the routine sounds of what was once the main crossroads of cowboy country in the southwest. �

I�ve saved the best, for last. These books feature illustrations by Frederic Remington.

There aren�t many of �em, and I�m going to sell �em off on a first come , first served basis. They�ve been lurking somewhere close around, or in Tombstone, since 1968, and while they�re new, are somewhat �Shopworn�. Look at it this way, they�re all rubbed down with honest to goodness Cochise County, Arizona dust and grit, and there�s no extra charge for that. Note that the paperbacks are a little more beat up than the hard covered.

Paperbacked, in �Good� condition, $25.00 + $5.00 USPS Mailing

Cloth Bound, Hard Cover in Very good condition, with Dust Jacket,
$40.00 + $5.00 USPS Mailing

Horse trades on interesting artifacts, widgets, and assorted plunder entertained .

Greg *******

Since writing that, I've gifted about as many as I've sold. A small horde of "Fire Types" have em' now. Did YOU ever get a copy of this JEWEL ?
It's written in the vernacular of the times ,....e.g. the way they actually SPOKE, in those frontier outposts.

I traded BP for cases of books, which is a rather interesting back story.

If you don't have a copy, I'll fire one off in your direction,....doubt you'll find it on "Kindle".

PM an Addy

GTC

I'm honored.

PM sent.

Bristoe - it's a wonderful read.

Mark

Wifey just came in and told me she just ordered me a copy off amazon. I kinda dropped her the hint to put it on my wish list. She's too good to me! She ordered me my fav Remington arms co. Print the other day off eBay! The "right of way" model 8 print!!! I think it's one of the repros from the 60's!

"The Guards Themselves" and "Honor Among Thieves" by WF Waldrip, available on Amazon. In full disclosure, I am WF Waldrip.

I got this one in todays mail, Will start reading tonight..
Purchased on recomendations from ranchers in Montana and Idaho

http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Wolf-Economics-Co-Existing/dp/159152122X

LOL

Yeah, I remember bits of that one...

For the most part, an extraordinarily talented writer.

Lonesome Dove ------ Larry McMurtry
Soldier Ask Not ---- Gordon R Dickson
Kings Coat --------- Dewy Lambdin
Killer Angels

I'm surprised this one has not popped up yet. kwg

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

The Rivers Ran East...... Leonard Clark

Book of Eskimos...... Peter Freuchen

Sacajawea (Lewis & Clark Expedition).... Anna L. Waldo


All super Non-Fiction books

There is a lot of good military history being written now. New sources and the work of archeologist and reenactors have given recent historians views that are often very different from traditional scholarly historians. "A Devil of a Whipping", and "Long, Obstinate and Bloody" by Lawrence E. Babits about the American Revolution in the South are good examples. For pure entertainment, military oriented science fiction from David Weber (well researched) and Elizabeth Moon (a former Marine married to an ex Army officer) are my favorites.

I'm fascinated with the Guadalcanal campaign of WWII. One of the better books is "Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal".

How many of us read Tregaskis' book "Guadacanal Diary" when we were kids in school??? I think I first read it like in the 4th grade! That was like it back then!!!

I read "Guadacanal Diary" in elementary school,..but I didn't really understand the situation the Marines were in until much, much later.

It's kind of mind boggling to read up and soak all that stuff in,..and come to the realization that damn near everything planned by the American military leadership was a clusterfug,...including D-Day,..

But the rank and file military overcame, regardless.

As for the Marines who were doing the Island hopping,...they didn't really know what they were in for until Okinawa.

After Guadacanal and Peleliu, the Marines understood that there was somewhere around 100,000 Japanese troops on Okinawa,...and they pretty much had to kill every last one of them before they could go home.

Bushido didn't allow for surrender.

It was a tough lesson for the Marines to learn,...but they finally got it.

With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okanawa, by Eugene B. Sledge, is the best account of it that you'll find.

"The Longest Silence" by Thomas McGuane.

"With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa" was bone chilling in a hot climate. Those Men were tough and callused.