a short history of nearly everything.

you’ll learn lots, and its an easy read

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder is excellent for this. It is a novel that is also an introduction and history of philosophy. You will learn a lot, but have a great mystery read at the same time. VERY enjoyable book.

I enjoy historical fiction, including that by authors such as Dorothy Dunnett, Alison Weir (Innocent Traitor), Margaret George (The Autobiography of King Henry VIII —> excellent!!).

Alison Weir has also written a great deal of non-fiction that is highly readable: The Princes in the Towers, The 6 Wives of Henry VIII, The Wars of the Roses, etc.

For American history, try A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. It’s comprised of essays, which keep it from seeming textbook-ish.

A fun book to read was The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs. The author decided to read the entire 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, appx. 32,000 pages!! It’s both funny and interesting in that it details his own story, but he relates much of what he learned, too. I just read, too, that he has a new book out called The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. I will definitely read that one for both humor and learning.

The Innocent Man by John Grisham is suspenseful reading, but tells a true story. It’s in the “true crime” genre, so I don’t know that you will learn *facts* so much, but it was still interesting and enlightening in a different way than pure facts.

Have fun!

Confederate in the Attic by Tony Horwitz: This is a hilarious book about modern day confederate supporters (and thus in turn touches a lot on modern society in those regions and the Civil war in general).

The Tailor-King by Anthony Arthur: Not so funny but still very interesting. It is a “history book” on the Anabaptist revolution in Munster but it is narrative heavy and reads more like a fictional story than a history.

The Language of God by Francis Collins: Dr. Collins was the head of the Human Genome project and he is a leading scientist of the current day. He essentially states and argues that science does not preclude religion (his intent is to put a scientists mind at ease, rather than to convert anyone).

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn: It is fiction, but a very realistic fiction depicting like in the gulag under the USSR.

Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerass: Another work of fiction. Written by a scientist who’s goal was to present the inner workings of the scientific world to the general public in a palatable way. It is a cross between a romance novel, a thriller, and a dissertation on the scientific community.

Whoops! If you take a course in modern literature you might encounter a “textbook” called “Catcher In The Rye.” A “textbook” is any book used as a basis for a course of study. Most “good” books will eventually fall into that category. A book that involves something you like will be interesting and you will probably learn something. A book about something that you don’t like or are not interested in will teach you something if you are motivated to learn regardless of the source. You can learn from almost any well researched and well written book. Science fiction novels ofter glimpses into what can be and well written science fiction novels will have a good basis in science. See almost anything by Arthur Clark. A good detective mystery may show you much about the operation of police departments. They’ll often have much that is bs so you must be the arbiter and sort the wheat from the chaff. Did you have a specific subject in mind?

There are SO many good non-fiction books out there, I wish I had a better idea of what you liked.
If you like economics, read “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
He also wrote “Blink” which is about how people think and make decisions. I really enjoyed both of those.
Some interesting science books are “Voodoo Science” by Robert Park and “The Universe Next Door” by Marcus Chown.
If you’re interested in anthropology, try “The Forest People” by Colin Turnbull.
Those are just a few that I really liked, if you tell me your interests, I will try to recommend some more books. : )