Great Non-Fiction of the past year?

December 26, 2009 7:15 AM

The best non-fiction books of 2009? I'm in a Christmas coma and need something good.

I hope this hasn't been asked before, I'm headed to the bookstore soon so I'm looking for something stat. Thanks!

posted by Rocket26 to Writing & Language (13 answers total)

I have not read it yet, but I've heard great things about The Age of Wonder.

From Publishers Weekly review, quoted on the Amazon page: "The Romantic imagination was inspired, not alienated, by scientific advances, argues this captivating history. Holmes, author of a much-admired biography of Coleridge, focuses on prominent British scientists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including the astronomer William Herschel and his accomplished assistant and sister, Caroline; Humphrey Davy, a leading chemist and amateur poet; and Joseph Banks, whose journal of a youthful voyage to Tahiti was a study in sexual libertinism. Holmes's biographical approach makes his obsessive protagonists (Davy's self-experimenting with laughing gas is an epic in itself) the prototypes of the Romantic genius absorbed in a Promethean quest for knowledge. Their discoveries, he argues, helped establish a new paradigm of Romantic science that saw the universe as vast, dynamic and full of marvels and celebrated mankind's power to not just describe but transform Nature. Holmes's treatment is sketchy on the actual science and heavy on the cultural impact, with wide-ranging discussions of the 1780s ballooning craze, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and scientific metaphors in Romantic poetry. It's an engrossing portrait of scientists as passionate adventurers, boldly laying claim to the intellectual leadership of society."
posted by fantine at 7:48 AM on December 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'm quite happy to have received Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show On Earth, for Solstice.
posted by orthogonality at 8:45 AM on December 26, 2009

NYT The 10 Best Books of 2009 and NYT 100 Notable Books of 2009 (scroll down both lists for non-fiction)
posted by mlis at 9:25 AM on December 26, 2009

I've been really into Larry Harris' And Party Every Day. It's the inside story of Casablanca Records which was the disco powerhouse label in the 70's. A great fascinating read as told from the perspective of an insider.
posted by analogue at 9:26 AM on December 26, 2009

These a few that I really enjoyed in 2009:
Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine
posted by qldaddy at 9:56 AM on December 26, 2009

The Big Burn, about Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and the creation of the National Forest system in the US. It's very engaging US history.
posted by alms at 10:13 AM on December 26, 2009

The Columbine book has been recommended over and over here, because it really is that good. Heartbreaking, but excellent. If you're looking for something cheery, though, give it a skip. There were times when I had to read a couple of pages, put the book down for a few minutes, and then try again.
posted by sugarfish at 10:42 AM on December 26, 2009

Persian Fire by Tom Holland is pretty awesome.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:29 AM on December 26, 2009

Seconding the Columbine book, and adding the seasonally appropriate Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places- super-interesting. If you don't mind memoirs, Lit has gotten ridiculously favorable reviews for good reasons; I loved it. Zeitoun reads like non-fiction but is, in fact, not (and is pretty great).
posted by charmedimsure at 11:53 AM on December 26, 2009

Avoid John Keegan's 'The American Civil War.' Factually handicapped military history from an otherwise eminent writer.
posted by Darth Fedor at 12:27 PM on December 27, 2009

Oh, and for something to read: 'The Third Reich At War' by Richard J. Evans.
posted by Darth Fedor at 12:27 PM on December 27, 2009

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert was published in '08, but it was one of the better NF I read this year.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:13 AM on December 28, 2009

J. Maarten Troost. "The Sex Lives of Cannibals", "Getting Stoned With Savages", "Lost on Planet China".
posted by iam2bz2p at 10:36 AM on December 28, 2009