[MicroPsycho]

I'm doing my final of 3 major book reports for my english. This book needs to be non-fiction(factual) or at least contain or atleast be based on true events. I have about 1 1/2 months to read this thing and my dad will be nagging me that whole time if I don't find a book. I don't really read many non-fiction books and I have no idea what to read. I'm thinking some sort of Ancient Greek or Egyptian myth or something but any interesting will do. I'm not looking for a massive book, something between 350-500 pages if possible. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[YodaSean]

I read this interesting book called "Skunk Works" once.  It's by this guy who worked at Lockheed's secret airplaning designing place and how they did everything.  Very interesting.

Recently I found a book "Entanglement", it talks about quantum entanglement and the development of quantum theory in general(going back to around the ancient Greeks I thinK), its interesting but somewhat hard to understand parts of it.

Another good one is "South".  It has Ernest Shackleton writing about his voyage down to the Anatarctic back in the early 1900's, basically his ship got crushed in ice and he and his crew camped out on ice-bergs and sailed in small life boats and things for months to survive and get back to civilization.  It makes people from all those other survival stories look like wimps(admittedly they were very well prepared for any sort of disaster, but still...)

[Ghost]

Read "Flags of our Fathers," by James Bradley. It chronicles the lives of the 5 Marines and the 1 Navy Corpsman(author's father) that raised the flag on Iwo Jima. It reads like a story, and I was finished within a day.


...I need to read that again.

[Deepblue]

"Airborne" by Tom Clancy. All you ever need to know about paratroopers.

"Ghost Soldiers." Book about prison camp and green beret rescue I believe.

"Flags of our Fathers." Book about Iwo Jima I believe.

I have not read the last two. Scary, I had a very similar assignment to this in 9th grade...

EDIT: Damn! Ghost beat me to it.

[Rictor]

Mein Kampf

[IceFire]

"The Big Show" By Pierre Closterman

Its the story of the WWII French Fighter ace who flew with the RAF frm about the beginning of 1943 to the end of the war.  Its very detailed, very exciting, very sobering, its quite possibly the best memoire I've ever read.

Its essentially the reproduction of his war diary with some visible editing (he'll make a comment or a point of history) here and there to fill out the details.  Its quite spectacular.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by Rictor
Mein Kampf

Actually, I heard that blew ass... It was just Hitler ranting and raving and being is usual insane self.

[NGTM-1R]

"The Washing of the Spears" by Donald R. Morris. The rise, history, and fall of the Zulu. All told with a wonderful lack of moral indignation for anything. Slightly more pages then you want, I think: 614 pages content and another twenty-five or so of appendices and sources, but it's worth it.

"Operation Drumbeat" by Micheal Gannon. The story, largely untold, of the U-boat war off the US Eastern Seaboard during WWII, seen partly through the eyes of the crew of U-123. Forget Pearl Harbor, this is the greatest defeat the US Navy ever suffered. About 450 pages.

"Black May" by Micheal Gannon. The climactic month of May 1943 in the Battle of the North Atlantic, and the story of the convoy ONS.5 (Outward North atlantic Slow 5), the largest convoy battle ever fought. Slightly less then 500 pages.

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Ghost
Read "Flags of our Fathers," by James Bradley. It chronicles the lives of the 5 Marines and the 1 Navy Corpsman(author's father) that raised the flag on Iwo Jima. It reads like a story, and I was finished within a day.


...I need to read that again.

The scary thing is that I was about to recommend this as well. Another good read from my AP US History days is The Crossing, by Howard Fast; it's a detailed account of Washington and the Continental forces during the crossing of the Delaware River and the battle of Trenton.  It really helps you get an impression of Washington as a regular guy instead of just a figurehead.  If you're into World War II, a non-fiction book that impressed me like no other was D-Day by Stephen Ambrose.  It contains hundreds of eyewitness accounts; not only is it very factual, it's also an incredibly good read.

[MicroPsycho]

Thanks, this will help choosing a novel a lot easier, I'll probably go pick one up this weekend.

It was hard to choose a book for my last report, it had to be about a social issue, so I did it on The Sum of All Fears, I got a 98% on it without reading it (sort of OT but interesting nonetheless, I thought so anyway)

And yes, I do plan to read this one, bull****ting TSoAF after reading the first and last page of each chapter of a 900-page book is tough.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainance. - Robert M. Pirsig
In search of Schrodinger's cat. - John Gribbin.

Both are fascinating reads but be warned, both are also fairly heavy content wise.
[/color]

[Sandwich]

Fighting Terrorism - How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism
by Benjamin Netanyahu

180 pages of whoop-ass reading.