Readings 2011 - Nonfiction

This is my list of nonfiction books that I read in 2011, however, only one of these books were published in 2011.  This is not a best or favorites list for the year but rather a snapshot of some of my reading habits of the year. Actually I read more fiction this year but that is another list. It also doesn't count books I might have read for work or the many Drupal manuals I spent so many hours with this year.

Compiling this list is very easy because I've been keeping track of my readings for decades. I initially used notebooks but later in word processor documents to maintain lists of my readings. The lists contains the book title, author, date of publication and the month I completed reading it all separated by years. All fiction books are in italics to distinguish them from non-fiction at a glance. So it's easy to compile lists
.
1493 was a wonderful eye-opening look at how the world changed after the discovery of the New World and the resulting globalization that started then and continues today. It was a fascinating exploration of our world and contains an enormous amount of facts, insights, provocative arguments, great storytelling and mind boggling details. I had previously read Mann's 1491 which was a description of the New World before Columbus. I also thoroughly enjoyed Atlantic which I read right before 1493 and was what could be called a biography of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a book of history, geography, science and literature.

I'm always up for a good political tirade and Naomi Klein certainly provided one in The Shock Doctrine. The book was published in 2007 but it was very pertinent to the events happening while I was reading it in 2011 with the Republicans creating a fake disaster over the debt ceiling. This is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the motivation of the GOP as a control mechanism for the corporatist elite.

1. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles Mann, 2011
2. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein, 2007
3. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - Jeffrey Toobin, 2008
4. John Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, 2007
5. A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire - Amy Butler Greenfield, 2005
6. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories - Simon Winchester, 2010
7. God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215 - David Levering Lewis, 2010
8. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder, 2010

I only have 8 books listed here which is an usually small number of non-fiction books I usually read during a year. There is also only one biography but it was a good one. That one was the third biography of John Coltrane that I've read but the one that concentrated the most on his music. I got a couple of Coltrane box sets as a result.

I always enjoy reading history and this year's list as usual had a few. Bloodlands was the incredible story of suffering of Central Europe stuck between the genocidal policies of Hitler and Stalin. A different perspective on a war we think we know about. Sort of the same with God's Crucible which was a balanced perspective of Europe in the "Dark Ages" and the Islamic culture of the Iberian peninsula.  A Perfect Red is another one of the books I love to read that takes a simple thing or idea and exams all the historical and cultural possibilities. In this case the subject is red dye.

The Nine was a real eye opener. The Supreme Court certainly has it's share of political hacks. Scalia and Thomas most of all. I always felt that George Bush stole the election and now I know for sure that it was done. Activist judges indeed.

A post of my fiction readings for the year coming up with 25 books on that list.