What nonfiction book are you currently reading?

[Sukerkin]

Bill O'Reilly! For Gods sake ... nah, that's all the word play I can muster on that one ... the tide must be out :lol:

Remember the "Non-fiction" part of the title for this thread

 

[blindsage]

Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman

 

[blindsage]

Corporations Are Not People by Jeff Clements

Highly, highly recommended read.

 

[billc]

Thomas Sowell has just released and expanded edition of his book, "Intellectuals and Society." He has four new chapters in the book so if you waited, now you get a bonus.

http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals...767&sr=1-1&keywords=intellectuals+and+society

In "Intellectuals and Society", Thomas Sowell not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. Ultimately, he shows how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan by Fu Zhongwen

 

[blindsage]

A History of American Law by Lawrence M. Friedman

 

[Shuto]

I recently finished Confront and Conceal by Sanger. It is about Obama's foreign policy issues and actions. You may have heard of it since it was recently in the news for reporting that the US and Israel created the Stuxnet worm.
The book is organized into sections by counties. There are sections on Pakistan, Iran, China, and others. Each section goes into a lot of detail about each country's issues vis a vis the US. I found Pakistan section absolutely fascinating due to it's insight into how the Pakistani's try to manipulate the US by leveraging their nuc capability.
While the book is about foreign policy, it is written in a very personable style. For example, the writer had you attending key meeting where issues and actions are discussed. It does not read like a dry text book.
I found the book to be slanted possitively towards Obama but that is to be expected. People who leak information will try to put themselves in a positive light and these leakers are, or were, key players in the Obama Administration. I don't think much of the data came from disgruntled employees. :shrug It was similar to Obama's War in that respect. Keeping this perspective in mind, I think a lot of insight can be gleaned from this book both in regards to the Obama Administration as well as our various foreign policy challenges. I definitely recommend it.

 

[elder999]

Paul Was Not A Christian, by Pamela Eisenbaum.

 

[billc]

Spreading the Wealth, by Stanley Kurtz...

http://www.amazon.com/Spreading-Wea...1&keywords=stanley+kurtz+spreading+the+wealth

In the eyes of Obama’s former mentors—fol*lowers of leftist radical Saul Alinsky—suburbs are breeding grounds for bigotry and greed. The classic American dream of a suburban house and high quality, locally controlled schools strikes them as selfishness, a waste of resources that should be redirected to the urban poor.

The regulatory groundwork laid so far is just a prelude to what’s to come: substantial redistribution of tax dollars. Over time, cities would effectively swallow up their surround*ing municipalities, with merged school dis*tricts and forced redistribution of public spending killing the appeal of the suburbs. The result would be a profound transforma*tion of American society.

Kurtz shows the unbroken line of continuity from Obama’s community organizing roots to his presidency. And he reveals why his plan to undermine the suburbs means so much to him personally.

 

[Blindside]

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

I am in his early life so far, pretty interesting stuff with some good insights into the historical Mongol culture.

 

[arnisador]

That Used to Be Us, Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

 

[billc]

Ann Coulter's new book "Mugged."

http://www.amazon.com/Mugged-Racial...ie=UTF8&qid=1348793266&sr=1-1&keywords=mugged

Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama [Kindle Edition]

If you want to understand how democrats, (the political party that supported slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow Laws, lynching, keeping African Americans out of public schools, and now keeping them in those schools now that these schools are horrible by opposing school choice), pulled off the greatest political magic trick by convincing the world that their party actually cared about Civil Rights, this is a good place to start.

 

[arnisador]

An Honorable Defeat, William C. Davis

A detailed look at the flight of Davis and Breckinridge and the shutting down of the CSA govt. at the end of the Civil War.

 

[DennisBreene]

Well the pile of books next to me includes Funikoshi's "The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate" and " The Essence of Karate", "Hidden Karate: The True Bunkai of the Heian Katas and Naihanchi" by Gennosuke Higaki, George Dillman's "Pressure Point Fighting Secrets of Ryukyo Kempo" and Hwank Kee's volumes 1& 2 on Tang Soo Do. I'm doing a little research on Bunkai. And for fun I'm reading "Jesus the Man: Decoding the Real Story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene" by Barbara Theiring

 

[GrandmasterP]

The Way of the Ancient Healer (2010) by Virgil Mayor Apostol. Traditional healing practices in the Phillipines, loads of pictures and the first book on the subject in English that I've come across. Fascinating.

 

[crushing]

Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I borrowed it from the library mostly because I've become interested in meme replication, particularly on the internet and in the media, and it is the first work to use the word meme. It has been a fascinating and enlightening book. I will be checking out more works by Dawkins.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D

 

[GrandmasterP]

Just finished Dingle's 'My Life in Tibet', amazing stuff, an ancient book, he was there in the 1900s but he tells a good tale.

 

[stickarts]

Great minds of the eastern intellectual tradition

 

[arnisador]

Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War.