Who are your favorite non-fiction authors?

Question

In science, history, journalism, whatever.

Some of mine are Simon Winchester, Niall Ferguson, Erik Larson, and Hampton Sides, and John Keegan.

Answer 1

I was racking my brain to figure out who my favorite is, darling...and then I saw the other answers and realized that, yes, it's totally Bill Bryson. I learn stuff and laugh my butt off when I read his books, which I consider to be a win-win.



My beloved has been jonesing on Malcolm Gladwell and Jared Diamond, and as soon as I finish up with something I've been plodding through, I'm borrowing whatever he's willing to let out of his sight. He says I'll love their work.



(((eric)))

Answer 2

Favorites?



Science: Carl Sagan.

Gotta love that man.

And some of Hawking's stuff.

Oh, and Asimov.



History: Hm.. maybe David McCullough.

I also liked Winchester's The Professor and the Madman.

I'm a big Oxford fan.



Journalism: Absolutely Christopher Hitchens.

No doubts there.

Thomas Wolfe is up there too though..

Answer 3

History: Herodotus and Edward Gibbon. I'm unfortunately lacking in my knowledge of modern historians.



Science: Richard Feynman--I think he had an almost perfect balance as a popular science writer between being accessible and informative.



Philosophy: Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege. I guess a lot of atheists have probably read 'Why I Am Not a Christian' by Russell but personally I prefer 'Is There a God?'. I like his style.



Politics/Economics: Rothbard, Max Weber, von Hayek, James Mill, Peter Kropotkin. I find a lot of liberal/Austrian School economists were great writers, which is primarily why I have included a number of them, even though I don't particularly adhere to their economic philosophy.



Misc: Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco. Borges' 'A New Refutation of Time' is one of my favourite essays.

Answer 4

Bill Bryson's "A short story of nearly everything"



As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. "This is a book about how it happened," the author writes. "In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson's distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers. (Publishers Weekly)



I also love his books about traveling.