From My Nonfiction Reading Pile

 

by Sybil Johnson

Lately I’ve been rereading my book that’s coming out in October, making sure I haven’t missed anything and looking at the formatted version to make sure everything looks okay. When I’m in this mode, I don’t have the mental energy to read fiction so I’ve been catching up on my nonfiction reading.

Here are some of the books I’ve read recently and enjoyed:

 

I’ll start with my most recent read, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. Grann has written a couple other books I’ve enjoyed: Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z. The former educated me about a horrible crime that I’d never heard of, the latter convinced me I never ever want to go into the Amazon jungle.

Like all of his other books, The Wager is interesting and easy to read. I felt like I was shipwrecked along with the sailors. I highly recommend it.

The next book is The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives. I’ve read tons of books on Tudor history, Henry VIII and all of his wives and children. I always felt that Anne Boleyn was the victim of Tudor propaganda, that our view of her comes from what the Tudors wanted us to believe about her. This book delves into whether or not the things we believe we know about her are backed up by historical documents. Of course, we can never really be sure about someone from that era, but I think it is a less biased approach than a lot of other books about her.

And, finally, there’s The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself by Philip L. Fradkin. I thought I knew something about the 1906 quake, but after reading this I realized how little I knew. Highly interesting and sad in a lot of ways.

I have a couple books I’ve got on my stack to read soon. I have no idea if these are any good, but they sound interesting.

First is Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra. This next one I heard about when listening to an episode of the History This Week podcast. Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum. The podcast talked about 3 of them: Hilary Clinton’s victory speech, a D-day didn’t work speech by Eisenhower and Nixon’s I’m going to continue being president speech. None of them were ever used, of course, but the book sounds interesting.

What nonfiction books have you all been reading lately? Any recommendations?