<p>Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. I was just blown away by the perfection of the prose and by how completely captivating the story was.</p>
<p>I would also enthusiastically second Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between.</p>
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<p>Try his book on on John Adams. It was good enough that HBO made it into an excellent mini-series.</p>
<p>I also recommend The Six Frigates by Ian Toll as well as The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. </p>
<p>If you like a little clever, wry commentary along with your non-fiction, try just about any book by Sarah Vowell. She’s wonderful.</p>
<p>Not just Moutains Beyond Mountains, but go to amazon.com and order everything by Tracy Kidder - House, Hometown, The Soul of the New Machine…all are great.</p>
<p>I second the recomendation of Sarah Vowell. Fine scholarship with interesting observations. Wry is exactly the right word, coureur.</p>
<p>I recently enjoyed The Zoo Keeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman - about how the directors of the Warsaw Zoo used the facility to hide Jews during WWII. </p>
<p>Also - if you’re interested in Obama, his memoir Dreams from My Father is very good: beautifully written and very interesting.</p>
<p>Have read some of the above, and agree with most. One haunting book, as well as excellent author, is Jonathan Raban’s Passage to Juneau.</p>
<p>If you like Shackelton ( and frankly, I admit I had never heard of him until D’s biology teacher wrote this book- during her year that she was teaching slightly less because she was being treated for cancer- but don’t let that stop you from enjoying it)</p>
<p>Homerific style ( but shorter)
[Amazon.com:</a> What the Ice Gets : Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition 1914-1916: Melinda Mueller: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/What-Ice-Gets-Shackletons-Expedition/dp/0967702119]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/What-Ice-Gets-Shackletons-Expedition/dp/0967702119)</p>
<p>You might like ‘Here be Dragons’. Sorry i can’t remember the author, but it is based off of historical events between the english and the welsh.</p>
<p>love Diane Ackerman- her writing is so lush.
Also Joan Didion, Susan Sontag and Fran Leibowitz ( but she is more sardonic social commentary)
Oh if you haven’t read" A Baboon’s memoir" do.
Another Seattle public high school parent ( Tim Egan was another- I think it is all the rain, it makes some people very introspective)
He and his wife are actually the volleyball coaches ( and a stellar team team they do have)
I haven’t read it yet- but I did get the hardback for H for xmas and he liked it.
On American Soil by Jack Hamman.
Not everyday a book brings justice.
[Book</a> provided evidence for exonerating Fort Lawton veterans](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/local/372481_lawton28.html]Book”>http://www.seattlepi.com/local/372481_lawton28.html)
is</p>
<p>“What if?: A series of counterfactual arguments” </p>
<p>It’s a series of essays where historians in a particular era pick an event that could have plausibly occurred differently (say, had the weather not cleared at the right time before D-Day), and then write an essay on how things would have been different based on that changed event. The only rule they had was that the change had to have been plausible, and the smallest change possible, not “suppose Ghenghis Khan had machine guns.” I liked it a lot.</p>
<p>love Diane Ackerman- her writing is so lush.
Also Joan Didion, Susan Sontag and Fran Leibowitz ( but she is more sardonic social commentary)
Oh if you haven’t read" A Baboon’s memoir" do.
Another Seattle public high school parent ( Tim Egan was another- I think it is all the rain, it makes some people very introspective)
He and his wife are actually the volleyball coaches ( and a stellar team team they do have)
I haven’t read it yet- but I did get the hardback for H for xmas and he liked it.
On American Soil by Jack Hamman.
Not everyday a book brings justice.
[Book</a> provided evidence for exonerating Fort Lawton veterans](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/local/372481_lawton28.html]Book”>http://www.seattlepi.com/local/372481_lawton28.html)</p>
<p>oh duh
It is actually * A Primate’s memoir* by Robert M. Sapolsky.</p>
<p>Everything you know about the Great Chicago Fire is wrong, or at least incomplete.
This is a fascinating account of a weather/fire event in the Midwest that has striking similarities to the firestorms we experience in Southern California (and elsewhere these days.)</p>
<p>I’m in the middle of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” by MIchael Pollan and find it fascinating. Along the same lines, if you’re interested in food, is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”.</p>
<p>Also, concur with anything by Kidder and McPhee.</p>
<p>How about both Into the Wild and Into Thin Air by Krakauer–liked them both a lot.</p>
<p>Sorry about the commercial link (slaps own hand). The book is called Firestorm at Peshtigo.</p>
<p>Michael Pollan is a fun writer.
( trivia- he is Tracy Pollans brother- )</p>
<p>I also like ethnobotany books by Mark Plotkin, Sorcerer’s Appentice is the name of one I think.
If you like Into Thin Air, you might like some books-by other climbers, David Roberts is a great writer. I have Moments of Doubt
oh and how can I forget Annapurna : A woman’s place by Arlene Blum who is not only a mountaineer ( and a woman 
) but a Reedie!</p>
<p>Adventure nonfiction is especially compelling- Sebastian Junger is another one, besides the Perfect Storm which of course was made into a movie, Fire<br>
I bought it for my nephew who is a firefighter,
which reminds me of another book/writer [An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan by Jason Elliot](<a href=“http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780312288464”>http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780312288464</a>)
One that we read for book group and even the Austen lovers enjoyed</p>
<p>David McCoulough’s Adams Biography is one of my favorite books I have read.</p>
<p>Seconding (or is it thirding?) Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Also:
<p>I enjoyed Diamond’s Collapse as well. I’ve skimmed Blink. Really enjoyed Freakonomics. Still working away at Obama’s two books. If you haven’t read them - Oliver Sachs, Richard Feynman and Lewis Thomas (Lives of the Cell), Stephen J. Gould all write well on various science and medical subjects.</p>
<p>A book for booklovers: Ann Fadiman’s* Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader*. I’ve heard great things about her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, but I haven’t read it.</p>