I'm really into politics and history. Any war interests me a lot, and I am a libertarian so recommending me a Paul Krugman book won't interest me. Liberty Defined by Ron Paul, Freedom Answer Book by Andrew Napolitano and Miracles+Massacres by Glenn Beck are my most recent readings. Or anything like the Cracked de-text book, that was interesting.
I just bought "A Short History of the World" by HG Wells off eBay today...I feel I am in general too ignorant regarding world history, hopefully this will help. Maybe since you are already into history though you will have read it or know about most of what it tells of.
The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo Democrips and Rebloodicans, and 63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read by Jesse Ventura 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick. If you enjoy the Cracked writing style, you'd love this. It's pretty short, just laying out the basics the said 100 things, but I guarantee you'd learn some interesting things. Russ Kick may or may not still have website with quite a bit of free content as well.
The Big Burn by Timothy Egen I just started it. It's pretty interesting all about the beginnings of the forest service thanks to Teddy Roosevelt.
If you like a mix of fiction and non-fiction, I recently rediscovered (couldn't remember the name of the book or the author, took ages to track this one down again) a WW2 book that I'd read in highschool called, 'In The Labyrinth' by John David Morley. "Based on months of taped conversation with its real-life protagonist, 'In the Labyrinth' is the fictionalized memoir of Hungarian-born, German businessman Josef Pallehner who, due to bureaucratic inertia and his own guilty conscience, gets lost for six years in a maze of eastern Czechoslovakian prisons in the wake of the Second World War."
I think it's called The Rape of Nanking but I'm not 100% positive on that. Very good historical book about the Japanese occupation of China in WW2. Had to read it for a class in college and it's one of the few I'll always remember.
I am more of a liberal, and can't stand Glen Beck. However, my best friend likes Beck. He tried to get me to read Beck's book "The Overton Window." I made it through about half of it, and it wasn't horrible like I expected it to be.
A good friend wrote a book called 'the if man' author Chris Ash, it's about the guy the poem 'if' is about. A good read too! Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Jared diamond is a modern gem. Also by him: The world until yesterday. Another book by a similar author: Bowling alone by Robert D. Putnam
The Things They Carried If I Die In A Combat Zone Both outstanding Vietnam books by Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried is a mix between fiction and non-fiction and gets pretty meta is some parts whereas If I Die... is one of the author's memoirs of the war.