I'm reading Elon Musk biography - out of my typical range but very well written and a great insight to how brilliance actually works.

Caused me to question genius: is it a chemical difference? Or are some people just more motivated and well organized.

Would love to hear from others who have read this book.

Anonymous wrote:Into the Wild (or anything by Jon Krakauer)
The Warmth of Other Suns
My Family And Other Animals
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Dark Star Safari
Guns, Germs and Steel

If going with something by Jon Krakauer, I'd recommend Into Thin Air (which is so fascinating and disturbing that I read it in a single go, staying up all night, and then immediately re-started reading it again from the beginning) or Under the Banner of Heaven. I think both are more page-turners than Into the Wild (which is good, too, just not as riveting).

Into Thin Air got me into reading books about high-altitude climbing, and the second best one I've read is Touching the Void by Joe Simpson.

Some other page-turners:

In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick)
Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (Peter Maass)
Columbine (Dave Cullen)
The Devil's Teeth (Susan Casey)
Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 (Daniel James Brown)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

That's fiction, and pretty bad.

OP, try The Making of Asian America, by Erika Lee. I'm reading it right now, and enjoying it and learning a ton!

(I'm not Asian, btw)

Wouldn't take a rec from this person, who is either confused, stupid, or racist.

OP, decide for yourself.

"The first Asians to come to North America, Lee writes, were Filipino sailors. They came aboard Spanish ships in the late fifteen-hundreds, and were subjected to such a torrent of vermin and filth on these vessels that half died en route; when they got to colonial Mexico, many refused to cross the Pacific again. They settled in Acapulco and married local women. Asian America began in desperation...

In the eyes of some, Asians in America are, Lee writes, “perpetual foreigners at worst, or probationary Americans at best.” If Asians sometimes remain silent in the face of racism, and if some seem to work unusually hard in the face of this difficult history, it is not because they want to be part of a “model minority” but because they have often had no other choice."

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-two-asian-americas



"He associates this clichéd suburban idyll with what he calls “the Dream” — not the American dream of opportunity and a better life for one’s children; not Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of freedom and equality (which the Reverend King observed was “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream”), but instead, in Mr. Coates’s somewhat confusing use of the term, an exclusionary white dream rooted in a history of subjugation and privilege....There is a Manichaean tone to some of the passages in this book, and at times, a hazardous tendency to generalize."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/books/review-in-between-the-world-and-me-ta-nehisi-coates-delivers-a-desperate-dispatch-to-his-son.html

The Boys in the Boat
Devil in the White City

Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Harari

Factual and literate

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

That's fiction, and pretty bad.

OP, try The Making of Asian America, by Erika Lee. I'm reading it right now, and enjoying it and learning a ton!

(I'm not Asian, btw)

Wouldn't take a rec from this person, who is either confused, stupid, or racist.

Anonymous wrote:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Another vote. This is my go to recommended book.

I just finished Far from the Tree which is very good but nearly 1,000 pages of intense reading. Each chapter is basically its own book though so you can pick what interests you most. The two chapters I learned the most from were: Chapter 2 Deaf and Chapter 9 Rape.


http://www.farfromthetree.com

Into the Wild (or anything by Jon Krakauer)
The Warmth of Other Suns
My Family And Other Animals
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Dark Star Safari
Guns, Germs and Steel

Anonymous wrote:Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

That's fiction, and pretty bad.

OP, try The Making of Asian America, by Erika Lee. I'm reading it right now, and enjoying it and learning a ton!

(I'm not Asian, btw)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Anything by Michael Lewis that's written about finance. Liar's Poker, The Big Short, Flash Boys, etc.
They read light-fast-and-funny, even though they're about serious stuff. You'll definitely learn something.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Astronaut Wives Club
The Hare With Amber Eyes

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Heart of the Sea.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations. Looking for something you can't put down.