Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing!
HealthyDiamond2 on
*Sin and the Second City* by Karen Abbott
*The Castle on Sunset* by Shawn Levy
Brown_Ajah_ on
It gets thrown around a lot, but Bill Bryson is good for this! Any of his books really but “A walk in the woods” is particularly fun.
Someone has already said it, just to second them “Devil in the White City” is definitely in this camp.
I also really recommend “the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” about the history of HeLa cells used in research and I recently enjoyed “the mirage factory” about the boom of early Hollywood and the simultaneous building of the aqueduct that brought water to LA.
nightowl_work on
Kasher in the Rye is a great memoir that sounds like there’s no way it could be true.
grynch43 on
Into Thin Air
The Indifferent Stars Above
Taste-Boring on
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Edit: Spelling
jwl1965 on
Boys in the Boat
Forcult on
The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor is a semi fictionalized account of King Mithridates — only speculated in small parts because we know so little of him. If you are not enrapture by the third page I will eat my own ass on livestream.
Alannaxyz on
In Cold Blood is the best in this genre imo.
jstnpotthoff on
This isn’t incredibly helpful, but most memoirs written by somebody you haven’t heard of about something nobody should care about fit this.
Dave Eggers, Augusten Burroughs, Jeannette Walls, Nick Flynn
BossRaeg on
Anything by Ross King, John Julius Norwich, Simon Schama, Walter Isaacson, John Man, and John Keay
*Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane* by Andrew Graham-Dixon
*Bernini: His Life and His Rome* by Franco Mormando
*Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best* by Neal Bascomb
*Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East* by Amanda H. Podany
*The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness* by John Waller
*SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome* by Mary Beard
*Frederick the Great: King of Prussia* by Tim Blanning
*The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum* by James Gardner
*King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa* by Adam Hochschild
*Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society: America’s Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective Who Brought Them to Justice* by Victoria Bruce and William Oldfield
*Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia* by John Dickie
*The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty* by G. J. Meyer
Ahjumawi on
*Anansi’s Gold The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World* by Yepoka Yeebo about a massively successful Ghanaian con artist.
*Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe
15 Comments
The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
[The Devil In The White City by Erik Larsen](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/397483.The_Devil_in_the_White_City?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_8)
River of the Gods
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing!
*Sin and the Second City* by Karen Abbott
*The Castle on Sunset* by Shawn Levy
It gets thrown around a lot, but Bill Bryson is good for this! Any of his books really but “A walk in the woods” is particularly fun.
Someone has already said it, just to second them “Devil in the White City” is definitely in this camp.
I also really recommend “the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” about the history of HeLa cells used in research and I recently enjoyed “the mirage factory” about the boom of early Hollywood and the simultaneous building of the aqueduct that brought water to LA.
Kasher in the Rye is a great memoir that sounds like there’s no way it could be true.
Into Thin Air
The Indifferent Stars Above
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Edit: Spelling
Boys in the Boat
The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor is a semi fictionalized account of King Mithridates — only speculated in small parts because we know so little of him. If you are not enrapture by the third page I will eat my own ass on livestream.
In Cold Blood is the best in this genre imo.
This isn’t incredibly helpful, but most memoirs written by somebody you haven’t heard of about something nobody should care about fit this.
Dave Eggers, Augusten Burroughs, Jeannette Walls, Nick Flynn
Anything by Ross King, John Julius Norwich, Simon Schama, Walter Isaacson, John Man, and John Keay
*Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane* by Andrew Graham-Dixon
*Bernini: His Life and His Rome* by Franco Mormando
*Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best* by Neal Bascomb
*Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East* by Amanda H. Podany
*The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness* by John Waller
*SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome* by Mary Beard
*Frederick the Great: King of Prussia* by Tim Blanning
*The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum* by James Gardner
*King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa* by Adam Hochschild
*Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society: America’s Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective Who Brought Them to Justice* by Victoria Bruce and William Oldfield
*Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia* by John Dickie
*The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty* by G. J. Meyer
*Anansi’s Gold The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World* by Yepoka Yeebo about a massively successful Ghanaian con artist.
*Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe