non-fic book recs for insmallpackages
i have muffin! i had to bake them in cupcake liners because i don't have any baker's joy to grease my muffin tin, and for some reason they turned out much better-looking than usual. maybe because i baked them in little paper cups and they felt all cosseted. who knows!
anyway. one of the wishes i grabbed for insmallpackages is my top five non-fiction books. so here they are. :D
driving with the devil: southern moonshine, detroit wheels, and the birth of nascar, by neal thompson - did you know that nascar started with good ol' southern boys racing around red dirt tracks in their souped-up whiskey fords during the depression? and that they'd started racing by virtue of having to outrun the feds so they could deliver their (illegal, and then legal but untaxed) moonshine? because i didn't. neal thompson was lucky enough to be able to talk to some of the guys who were there in the beginning, and the story they tell is fascinating. it's full of cars and dirt-poor southern boys and backbiting and infighting and death and people being unable to race because they've left the state to avoid getting thrown in jail, or because they are in jail.
prince borghese's trail: 10,000 miles over two continents, four deserts, and the roof of the world in the peking to paris motor challenge, by genevieve obert - in 1907, when the automotive industry was in its infancy - never mind any kind of highway network - prince borghese organized a race from beijing (then peking) to paris to show that the car was actually a good way to travel. (i think there were five cars, and maybe three of them made it to paris.) in 1997, someone organized a rerunning of the race, with significantly more than five cars. genevieve obert is a car journalist, and she and her co-driver (they didn't know each other before the race) were one of only two all-female teams. the book is mostly about the race - where they drove, what conditions were like, who were the other drivers/teams, what kind of shenanigans went on, how badly some of it was organized - mixed in with an account of the original rally. it's kind of a combination international travelogue, road trip story, and historical account.
public enemies: america's greatest crime wave and the birth of the fbi, 1933-1934, by bryan burrough - just what it says. :D everyone's favorite depression-era bank robbers and gangsters, and how they prompted hoover to bulk up the fbi into the juggernaut we know today. all of a sudden criminals were stealing cars and taking them across state lines, and the law-keeping organizations of the day at first had no idea how to deal with that or how to stop it. eventually they kind of learned. sort of. (the fbi was a bit of an embarrassing mess in the early days.) i love this book. i wrote my first bigbang because of this book. bryan burrough does not think much of bonnie and clyde or how they've been mythologized in popular culture, so if you're a huge fan of theirs you might be disappointed. (i was just interested in how the conception of their story has changed.) burrough based a lot of his research on recently-declassified information, which means a. accuracy, and b. pretty interesting footnotes.
to end all wars: a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918, by eric hochschild - the pacifist movement in the uk during ww1. you get pacifists, anarchists, socialists, communists, suffragists, army deserters, and a lot of people getting shot, going to jail, and dying. (conscientious objectors could land in jail and might get sent to the front anyway. and as in the us, there was not a lot of mainstream patience for anarchists, communists, and suffragists.) there's a lot of stuff leading up to the war, and then a lot of stuff about the war, but it's mostly relevant stuff, and since i know pretty much nothing about ww1, it was all helpful to me. altho i did occasionally wish there was more about the home front and less about the western front.
the cartoon history of the universe (books i-iii), by larry gonick - an illustrated history of pretty much everything. book i starts with the big bang and book iii ends with columbus sailing off to find india. not exactly exhaustively researched - i mean, you're not going to get a thorough history of, say, the renaissance or the rise and fall of the roman empire or ancient egypt or the life of the buddha - but entertaining and funny and occasionally irreverent. also, not just western history. "the universe" means, you know, everything, everywhere.
anyway. one of the wishes i grabbed for insmallpackages is my top five non-fiction books. so here they are. :D
driving with the devil: southern moonshine, detroit wheels, and the birth of nascar, by neal thompson - did you know that nascar started with good ol' southern boys racing around red dirt tracks in their souped-up whiskey fords during the depression? and that they'd started racing by virtue of having to outrun the feds so they could deliver their (illegal, and then legal but untaxed) moonshine? because i didn't. neal thompson was lucky enough to be able to talk to some of the guys who were there in the beginning, and the story they tell is fascinating. it's full of cars and dirt-poor southern boys and backbiting and infighting and death and people being unable to race because they've left the state to avoid getting thrown in jail, or because they are in jail.
prince borghese's trail: 10,000 miles over two continents, four deserts, and the roof of the world in the peking to paris motor challenge, by genevieve obert - in 1907, when the automotive industry was in its infancy - never mind any kind of highway network - prince borghese organized a race from beijing (then peking) to paris to show that the car was actually a good way to travel. (i think there were five cars, and maybe three of them made it to paris.) in 1997, someone organized a rerunning of the race, with significantly more than five cars. genevieve obert is a car journalist, and she and her co-driver (they didn't know each other before the race) were one of only two all-female teams. the book is mostly about the race - where they drove, what conditions were like, who were the other drivers/teams, what kind of shenanigans went on, how badly some of it was organized - mixed in with an account of the original rally. it's kind of a combination international travelogue, road trip story, and historical account.
public enemies: america's greatest crime wave and the birth of the fbi, 1933-1934, by bryan burrough - just what it says. :D everyone's favorite depression-era bank robbers and gangsters, and how they prompted hoover to bulk up the fbi into the juggernaut we know today. all of a sudden criminals were stealing cars and taking them across state lines, and the law-keeping organizations of the day at first had no idea how to deal with that or how to stop it. eventually they kind of learned. sort of. (the fbi was a bit of an embarrassing mess in the early days.) i love this book. i wrote my first bigbang because of this book. bryan burrough does not think much of bonnie and clyde or how they've been mythologized in popular culture, so if you're a huge fan of theirs you might be disappointed. (i was just interested in how the conception of their story has changed.) burrough based a lot of his research on recently-declassified information, which means a. accuracy, and b. pretty interesting footnotes.
to end all wars: a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918, by eric hochschild - the pacifist movement in the uk during ww1. you get pacifists, anarchists, socialists, communists, suffragists, army deserters, and a lot of people getting shot, going to jail, and dying. (conscientious objectors could land in jail and might get sent to the front anyway. and as in the us, there was not a lot of mainstream patience for anarchists, communists, and suffragists.) there's a lot of stuff leading up to the war, and then a lot of stuff about the war, but it's mostly relevant stuff, and since i know pretty much nothing about ww1, it was all helpful to me. altho i did occasionally wish there was more about the home front and less about the western front.
the cartoon history of the universe (books i-iii), by larry gonick - an illustrated history of pretty much everything. book i starts with the big bang and book iii ends with columbus sailing off to find india. not exactly exhaustively researched - i mean, you're not going to get a thorough history of, say, the renaissance or the rise and fall of the roman empire or ancient egypt or the life of the buddha - but entertaining and funny and occasionally irreverent. also, not just western history. "the universe" means, you know, everything, everywhere.