My Non-fiction Reading List

What follows is a list of over 310 of the books I have read or found useful and recommend. You also might find them interesting. I keep expanding it.

Aviation

Peter Aimer, "Wings of the Nation - A History of the National Airways Corporation, 1947-78" - New Zealand's State-owned domestic carrier

David F. Anderson and Scott Eberhardt, "Understanding Flight" - a scientific explanation without maths 

Wing Commander Ted Arundel, "The Sport of Kings" - flying in the RNZAF during the 1950s and 60s

Gordon Bethune with Scott Huler, "From First to Worst - Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback" - the turnaround at the US airline

Patrick Bishop, "Bomber Boys - Fighting Back 1940-1945"  

Patrick Bishop, "Fighter Boys - Saving Britain 1940"  

Eric 'Winkle' Brown, "Wings On My Sleeve" 

Eric 'Winkle' Brown, "Wings of the Luftwaffe - Flying the captured German aircraft of World War II" 

Stephen Budiansky, "Air Power"

Stephen Bungay, "The Most Dangerous Enemy - A History of the Battle of Britain" - includes good analysis of the reasons for the British victory

Simon Calder, "No Frills - The Truth Behind the Low-Cost Revolution in the Skies"

Jan Carlzon, "Moments of Truth" - the inspirational story of how SAS was turned around by the former President of the airline

Barbara Cassini with Kenny Kemp, "Go: An Airline Adventure"

Michael Clarke and Jack Woods, "Harry Ferguson - Before the Plough" - an Irish aviation pioneer before turning to farm machinery

Adam Claasen, "Fearless - The extraordinary untold story of New Zealand's Great War airmen" 

Roscoe Creed, "PBY - The Catalina Flying Boat" 

Richard de Crespigny, "QF 32" 

Roald Dahl, "Going Solo" - autobiography of experiences as an RAF fighter pilot 

Rigas Doganis, "Flying Off Course - The Economics of International Airlines" - second edition published in 1991, a very good text

Ian Driscoll, "Airline - The making of a national flag carrier" 

AVM Tony Dudgeon, "The War that Never Was" - the RAF in the Battle of Habbaniya, Iraq, 1941

AVM Tony Dudgeon, "The Luck of the Devil - An Autobiography 1934-41" - flying in the RAF

Jim Eames, "Taking to the Skies" 

Geoff Easdown and Peter Wilms, "Ansett - The Collapse"

James Fallows, "Free Flight - From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel"

Kevin & Jackie Freiberg, "Nuts! - Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success"

John Funnell, "Rescue Pilot - The Daring Adventures of a New Zealand Search and Rescue Pilot" 

Sir Hudson Fysh, "QANTAS Rising"  

Robert Gandt, "Bogeys and Bandits: The Making of a Fighter Pilot" - covers US Navy training to fly the F/A-18

Ernest K. Gann, "Fate is the Hunter" - flying airliners in the 1940s

Dick Georgeson and Anna Wilson, "The Leading Edge - An Adventure Story" - setting gliding records in New Zealand

Matt Hall with David Lyall, "The Sky is Not the Limit - the Life of Australia's Top Gun" 

James Hamilton-Paterson, "Empire of the Clouds - When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World"  

Pat Hanlon, "Global Airlines - Competition in a Transnational Industry" - published in 1996, this is the best recent book I have come across on the trend to form global alliances

Neil Hanson, "First Blitz - The Secret German Plan to Raze London to the Ground in 1918" 

Paul Harrison with Brian Lockstone and Andy Anderson, "The Golden Age of New Zealand Flying Boats" - the focus is on the RNZAF's Catalina and Sunderland operations

Peter Hart, "Bloody April - Slaughter in the Skies over Arras, 1917"

E. F. Harvie, "Venture the Far Horizon - Epic Flights by New Zealand's Pioneer Aviators"  

Loizos Heracleous, Jochen Wirtz and Nitin Pangarkar, "Flying High in a Competitive Industry - Cost-Effective Service Excellence at Singapore Airlines"

Carl Hoffman, "Hunting Warbirds - The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II"

R. A. "Bob" Hoover with Mark Shaw, "Forever Flying"

David Isby, "How to Fly and Fight in the F/A-18 Hornet"

Lois Jones, "easyJet - The story of Britain's biggest low-cost airline"

John Karsada and Greg Lindsay, "Aerotropolis - The Way We'll Live Next"  

AVM C. E. Kay, "The Restless Sky"  

William Langewiesche, "Fly by Wire - The geese, the glide, the 'miracle' on the Hudson"  

Wolfgang Langewiesche, "Stick and Rudder - an Explanation of the Art of Flying" - the basics of flying

Cecil Lewis, "Sagittarius Rising" - flying with the RFC in the First World War

Matthew Lynn, "Birds of Prey: The War between Boeing and Airbus"

Alexander McKee, "The Mosquito Log"

Sir Peter Mansfield with Bill Gunston, "Flight Path"

Errol W. Martyn, "Swift to the Sky - New Zealand's Military Aviation History" 

Margi Moss, "Freedom of the Skies - Adventures Around the World in a Light Aircraft" - a Brazilian-based couple circle the Southern Hemisphere

John Newhouse, "Boeing Versus Airbus - The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business"

Vincent Orange, "Park - The Biography of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park" - a New Zealander who held key RAF commands during WWII

James Ott and Raymond Neidl, "Airline Odyssey - The Airline Industry's Turbulent Flight into the Future" - published in 1995, takes a less USA-centred approach than Petzinger

Thomas Petzinger, Jr., "Hard Landing - The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos" - discover what a game of musical chairs management of the US airline industry has been

Alfred Price, "The Hardest Day - The Battle of Britain, 18 August 1940"  

P. R. Reid, "Winged Diplomat - The Life Story of Air Commodore 'Freddie' West, V.C." 

Dawna L. Rhoades, "Evolution of International Aviation - Phoenix Rising" 

Chris Rudge, "Missing! Aircraft Missing in New Zealand 1928-2000"

Karl Sabbagh, "Twenty-First-Century Jet - The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777" - Boeing's latest new aircraft

Charles Scott, "Scott's Book - The Life and Mildenhall-Melbourne Flight of C.W.A. Scott" 

Rick Searle, "The Man Who Saved Smithy" - biography of Australian aviator Sir Patrick Gordon Taylor

Janine Shepherd, "Never Tell Me Never" - first volume of autobiography of an Australian who is seriously injured then takes up flying

Janine Shepherd, "Dare to Fly" - second volume of autobiography

Don Simms and Nick Lee-Frampton, "Skyhawks - The History of the RNZAF Skyhawk"  

Roy Sinclair, "Journeying with Aviators in New Zealand"

Chesley Sullenberger, "Sully" 

Joe Sutter with Jay Spenser, "747 - Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation"

Frank Tredrey, "Pilot's Summer - A Central Flying School Diary" - learning to be an RAF flying instructor in the 1930s

Mark Vanhoenacker, "Skyfaring - A Journey with a Pilot" 

Sam Howe Verhovek, "Jet Age - The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World" 

Patty Wagstaff with Ann L. Cooper, "Fire and Air : A Life on the Edge" - the autobiography of a three time US aerobatic champion

Graham Wallace, "Flying Witness - Harry Harper and the Golden Age of Aviation" - covers the period 1906-1914

Douglas Waller, "Air Warriors - The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot"

Richard Waugh with Peter Layne & Graeme McConnell, "NAC - The Illustrated History of New Zealand National Airways Corporation 1947-1978"

Alexander Wells, "Air Transportation - A Management Perspective" - third edition published in 1994, a good basic text but orientated towards the US industry

G. N. Wells, "Head in the Clouds" 

Rowland White, "Vulcan 607" - bombing Port Stanley airport in the Falklands

Rowland White, "Phoenix Squadron" - the Royal Navy saves Belize from invasion   

Robert Wilcox, "Wings of Fury"  - covers USAF and US Navy fighter pilots in the post-Vietnam War era through to the Gulf War

James Wynbrandt, "Flying High - How JetBlue founder and CEO David Neeleman beats the competition - even in the world's most turbulent industry"

Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan with Phil Patton, "Voyager" - building and flying the aircraft that made the first non-stop aerial circumnavigation of the world without refueling

Computing

Tracey Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine" - the making of a new mini computer at Data General

Bill Gates, "Business @ the Speed of Thought"

Bill Gates, "The Road Ahead", second edition - a thoughtful read with a focus on the Internet and the future

Walter Isaacson, "The Innovators - How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution" 

Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs" 

Tim Jackson, "Inside Intel - How Andy Grove built the world's most successful chip company"

David Vise, "The Google Story"

Economics

W. Brian Arthur, "The Nature of Technology - What it is and how it evolves" 

Robert J. Barro, "Getting It Right - Markets and Choices in a Free Society"

Eric D. Beinhocker, "The Origin of Wealth - Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics" 

Peter L. Bernstein, "Against The Gods - The Remarkable Story of Risk"

Peter Bernstein, "The Power of Gold : The History of an Obsession"

Alan S. Blinder, "Hard Heads, Soft Hearts - Tough-Minded Economics for a Just Society"

Alan Bollard with Sarah Gaitanos, "Crisis - One Central Bank governor & the global financial collapse"  

Samuel Brittan, "Against the Flow" - economic commentary

Todd G. Buchholz, "New Ideas from Dead Economists - an Introduction to Modern Economic Thought"

Frances Cairncross, "The Death of Distance : how the communications revolution will change our lives"

Richard Cockett, "Thinking the Unthinkable - Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931-1983" - an intellectual history of the so-called "New Right" with a British focus

Diane Coyle, "The Soulful Science - What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters"

Diane Coyle, "The Economics of Enough - How to Run a Country as if the Future Matters" 

Alan Greenspan, "The Age of Turbulence - Adventures in a New World"

Tim Harford, "The Logic of Life - Uncovering the New Economics of Everything" 

Tim Harford,  "The Undercover Economist" 

Paul Krugman, "Peddling Prosperity - Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations"

Paul Krugman, "The Accidental Theorist - And Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science"

Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics"

David Landes, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" - economic history

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner, "Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner, "SuperFreakonomics - Illustrated Edition"

Sylvia Nasar, "Grand Pursuit - The Story of Economic Genius"  

Paul Ormerod, "Butterfly Economics"

Paul Ormerod, "Why Most Things Fail - Evolution, Extinction and Economics"

Robert J. Schiller, "Irrational Exuberance"

Arthur Seldon, "Capitalism" - by the intellectual leader of the Institute of Economic Affairs 

David Warsh, "Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations - A Story of Economic Discovery" 

Bob Woodward, "Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom" 

Entertainment

Anne Hart, "Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot"

David Marshall, "Shaggy Dogs & Other Stories - Tales of a Kiwi Vet"

Barry Paris, "Audrey Hepburn"

History

Peter Ackroyd, "London - The Biography"

Stephen E. Ambrose, "Nothing Like it in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869"

Rollo Arnold, "New Zealand's Burning - The Settlers' World in the Mid 1880s"

Correlli Barnett, "Engage the Enemy More Closely - The Royal Navy in the Second World War"

Jacques Barzun, "From Dawn to Decadence - 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present"

James Belich, "Making Peoples - A History of the New Zealanders - From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century"

James Belich, "Paradise Reforged - A History of the New Zealanders - From the 1880s to the Year 2000" 

James Belich, "Replenishing the Earth - The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783-1939" 

Elmer Bendiner, "A Time for Angels - The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations"

William Bernstein, "A Splendid Exchange - How Trade Shaped the World"

William J. Bernstein, "The Birth of Plenty - How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created"

John Bierman, "Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire" - biography of the man who ruled France from 1848 to 1870

Geoffrey Blainey, "A Short History of the World" - very readable from the eminent Australian historian

Geoffrey Blainey, "A Short History of the 20th Century"

H.W. Brands, "The Age of Gold" - Californian history

Bill Bryson, "Mother Tongue" - about the development of the English language

Bill Bryson, "Made in America" - about the development of American English

James Burke, "The Pinball Effect : how renaissance water gardens made the carburetor possible - and other journeys through knowledge"

Stephen Bungay, "Alamein"

Thomas Cahill, "How the Irish Saved Civilization" - the foundation and influence of Irish monasticism

John Charmley, "Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power 1874-1914"

Christopher Clark, "The Sleepwalkers - How Europe Went to War in 1914" 

Ron Crosby, "The Musket Wars - A History of Inter-Iwi Conflict 1806-45" - an excellent account of Maori history at the time of early European contact

Gregor Dallas, "1815 - The Roads to Waterloo"

Gregor Dallas, "1918 - War and Peace"

Gregor Dallas, "Poisoned Peace: 1945 - The war that never ended"

Norman Davies, "The Isles - A History" - a sweeping account that gives Scottish, Irish and Welsh history their due weight

Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs and Steel - A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years"

Stella Dong, "Shanghai 1842-1949 - The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City"

David Edgerton, "Britain's War Machine"  

Charles Emerson, "1913 - The World before the Great War"

Nicholas Faith, "The World the Railways Made"

Niall Ferguson, "Colossus - The Rise and Fall of the American Empire"

Niall Ferguson, "Empire - How Britain Made the Modern World"

Niall Ferguson , "The Pity of War" - an excellent historical analysis of the First World War

Niall Ferguson, "The War of the World - History's Age of Hatred"

Will Ferguson, "Canadian History for Dummies"

Shelby Foote, "The Civil War - 1"

Stephen Fox, "The Ocean Railway - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Samuel Cunard and the Revolutionary World of the Great Atlantic Steamships"

Robert Gildea, "France since 1945"

David Gilmour, "The Ruling Caste - Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj"

Peter Hall, "Cities in Civilization"

Max Hastings, "Catastrophe - Europe Goes to War 1914" 

Peter Hennessy & James Jinks, "The Silent Deep - The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945" 

Alistair Horne, "Seven Ages of Paris - Portrait of a City"

Lawrence James, "Raj - The Making and Unmaking of British India"

Paul Johnson, "The Birth of the Modern - World Society 1815-1830"

Paul Johnson, "A History of the American People"

Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, "The Year 1000 - what life was like at the turn of the first millennium" - Anglo-Saxon England

Stewart Lamont, "When Scotland Ruled the World"

Torbjörn Lundmark, "Quirky Qwerty - The story of the keyboard @ your fingertips"

Jim McAloon, "No Idle Rich - The Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago 1840-1914"

Walter A McDougall, "Let the Sea Make a Noise - A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur"

Evan McHugh, "Outback Pioneers - Great achievers of the Australian bush" 

Margaret MacMillan, "Paris 1919 - Six Month that Changed the World"

Malcolm McKinnon, "Treasury - The New Zealand Treasury 1840-2000"

Gavin McLean, "The Southern Octopus - The Rise of a Shipping Empire" - the Dunedin-based Union Steam Ship Company

Robert K. Massie, "Dreadnought - Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War"

Robert K. Massie, "Castles of Steel - Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea"

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, "The Company - A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea"

Caroline Moorehead, "Dunant's Dream - War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross"

Prof. W.P. Morrell, "The Provincial System in New Zealand 1852-76"

James Morris, "Heaven's Command - An Imperial Progress" - a history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1897 - the first book in the trilogy

James Morris, "Pax Britannica - The Climax of an Empire" - the second book in the trilogy - focusing on the British Empire in 1897

Jan Morris, "Fisher's Face"

Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, "The Story of French - The Language that Travelled the World"  

Robin Neillands, "The Great War Generals on the Western Front 1914-1918"

Alan Palmer, "Metternich - Councillor of Europe"

Alan Palmer, "Twilight of the Hapsburgs - The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph"

Francis Parkman edited by John Tebble, "The Battle for North America"

Clive Ponting, "Thirteen Days - Diplomacy and Disaster - The Countdown to the Great War"

Gay Salisbury & Laney Salisbury, "The Cruellest Miles" - Alaska

Simon Schama, "A History of Britain - At the Edge of the World? 3000BC - AD1603"

Simon Schama,  "A History of Britain - The British Wars 1603 - 1776"

Michael Smith, "New Cloak, Old Dagger - How Britain's Spies Came in from the Cold"

Julian Thompson, "Dunkirk - Retreat to Victory"  

Robert & Isabelle Tombs, "That Sweet Enemy - The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present" 

Barbara W. Tuchman, "The First Salute" - the American War of Independence

Barbara W. Tuchman, "The Proud Tower" - a portrait of the world before World War I: 1890-1914

Barbara W. Tuchman, "The Guns of August" - the start of World War I in 1914

Peter Watson, "A Terrible Beauty - The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind - A History"

Geoffrey Wawro, "The Austro-Prussian War - Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866"

Rowland White, "Storm Front" - the secret war in Oman (1971-72) 

John E. Wills, Jr, "1688 - A Global History"

H. W. Wilson, "Battleships in Action - Vol. 1"

Christian Wolmar, "Fire & Steam - How the Railways Transformed Britain"  

Christian Wolmar, "Blood, Iron & Gold - How the Railways Transformed the World" 

Christian Wolmar, "Engines of War - How Wars were Won & Lost on the Railways" 

Christian Wolmar, "The Great Railroad Revolution - The History of Trains in America" 

Christian Wolmer, "To the Edge of the World - the Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway" 

Admiral Sandy Woodward with Patrick Robinson, "One Hundred Days" - an account of the battle for the Falklands in 1982

Management and Other

Chris Anderson, "The Long Tail - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More"

Tom Bower, "Branson" - a critical account

Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, "Barbarians at the Gate" - the battle for control of RJR Nabisco in 1988

Tony Buzan with Barry Buzan, "The Mind Map Book" - a great method for organising your thoughts and for exam preparation (it helped me get an 'A+' and an 'A' in my Economics papers in 1995)

Bill Emmott, "20:21 Vision - The Lessons of the 20th Century for the 21st"

Atul Gawande, "The Checklist Manifesto - How to get things right" 

Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers - The Story of Success"   

Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference"    

Michael Lewis, "Liar's Poker" - an insight into life as a financial market dealer in New York and London

Michael Lewis, "The Big Short - Inside the Doomsday Machine" 

Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman, "Negotiation Genius"

Ira Matathia and Marian Salzman, "Next: Trends for the Future" - the writers are in the advertising industry

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, "The Witch Doctors - What the management gurus are saying, why it matters and how to make sense of it"

Peter Schwartz, "The Art of the Long View - Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World" - the focus is on the use of scenarios

Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Too Big to Fail - Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street"  

Edward Tufte, "Envisioning Information"

Richard Saul Wurman, "Information Anxiety" - from the designer of the Access travel guides

Pets

Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier, "Cesar's Way - The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems"

Charlotte Schwartz, "A New Owner's Guide to Poodles"

Philosophy

Luciano de Crescenzo, "The History of Greek Philosophy Volume I - the Pre-Socratics"

Luciano de Crescenzo, "The History of Greek Philosophy Volume II - Socrates and Beyond"

Jostein Gaarder, "Sophie's World" - a Norwegian novel and an introduction to philosophy

F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom" - not a easy read but worth it to understand the criticisms leveled at economic central planning

Janine Shepherd, "Reaching for Stars - Reflections on a journey through life and living"

Politics

John Ardagh, "France in the New Century"

Jim Bolger, "Bolger - A View from the Top" - autobiography of the former New Zealand Prime Minister

Gyles Brandreth, "Breaking the Code - Westminster Diaries May 1990 - May 1997"

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, "Predictioneer" - applied game theory 

Simon Carr, "The Dark Art of Politics" - by a former a speech writer for Prime Minister Bolger

William Easterly, "The White Man's Burden - Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good"

Bill Emmott, "Rivals - How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan will Shape Our Next Decade" 

Len Fisher, "Rock, Paper, Scissors - Game theory in everyday life: strategies for co-operation" 

Thomas Friedman, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" - a look at globalisation by the NYT foreign affairs columnist

Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat - A Brief History of the Globalized World in the 21st Century"

Bernard Ingham, "Kill the Messenger" - memoirs of Margaret Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary

Nigel Lawson, "The View from No.11 - Memoirs of a Tory Radical" - good insights into economic policy making from a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

Mary Matalin and James Carville, "All's Fair - Love, War, and Running for President" - they were key figures in the 1992 election campaigns of Bush and Clinton and later they married

Austin Mitchell, "Pavlova Paradise Revisited"

Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson, "Parting Shots" - diplomacy

Bruce D. Porter, "War and the Rise of the State - the Military Foundations of Modern Politics" - this could equally be listed under History

Richard Prebble, "What Happens Next" - thoughts from the leader of ACT

Stella Rimington, "Open Secret" - former Director-General of the UK Security Service (MI5)

Bob Woodward, "The Agenda" - the development of economic policy in the early days of the Clinton Administration

Science

Phillip Ball, "Critical Mass - How One Thing Leads to Another"

David Bodanis, "E=mc2 - A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation"

David Bodanis, "Electric Universe - How Electricity Switched On the Modern World"

Bill Bryson, "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

Mark Buchanan, "Nexus - Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks"

Brian Cathcart, "The Fly in the Cathedral - How a small group of  Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom"

Jared Diamond, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee"

James Le Fanu, "The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine" - covers medical advances in the second half of the 20th century

Richard P. Feynman, "Surely you must be joking, Mr Feynman" - memoirs of a great theoretical physicist with a sense of humour

Richard P. Feynman, "What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Further adventures of a curious character" - the second half focuses on his role in the inquiry into the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Peter Galison, "Einstein's Clocks, Poincairé's Maps"

James Gleick, "Chaos - Making a New Science"

Richard Hamblyn, "The Invention of Clouds" - covers the classification of clouds

Steven Johnson, "Emergence - The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software"

Eric Lax, "The Mould in Dr Florey's Coat" - penicillin

Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson, "Napoleon's Buttons - 17 molecules that changed history"

Gavin Pretor-Pinner,  "The Cloudspotter's Guide"

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, "The Wavewatcher's Companion" 

John Felix de Lisle, "Sails to Satellites - A history of meteorology in New Zealand"

Allan and Barbara Pease, "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"

Bill Phillips and Michael D'Orso, "Body for Life" - physical fitness and diet advice

Ian Sample, "Massive - the Hunt for the God Particle"  

Bryan Sykes, "The Seven Daughters of Eve" - DNA and human evolution

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable" 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "Fooled by Randomness - The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets"

Tom Vanderbilt, "Traffic - Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)"

Edward O. Wilson, "Consilience - The Unity of Knowledge"

Travel

Bill Bryson, "A Walk in the Woods" - hiking in the Eastern USA

Bill Bryson, "Notes from a Small Island" - around the UK

Bill Bryson, "The Road to Little Dribbling - More Notes from a Small Island" 

Bill Bryson, "Down Under" - around Australia

Victoria Clark, "The Far-Farers - A Journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem"

Jeremy Clarkson, "Clarkson on Cars"

Katie Daynes and Nicole Irving, "Usborne Easy French"

Alexander Frater, "Beyond the Blue Horizon - on the Track of Imperial Airways" - the author follows as closely as possible the original air route from London to Brisbane, Australia. This book could equally be listed under Aviation or History

Roy Jenkins, "Twelve Cities - A Memoir"

Bernard Levin, "To the end of the Rhine" - from the Alps to Holland with a top British journalist

Bernard Levin, "Hannibal's Footsteps" - across Southern France on foot

Bernard Levin, "A Walk up Fifth Avenue" - an in depth look at one of the best known streets in New York

Peter Mayle, "A Year in Provence" - a former advertising executive and his wife escape to live in Southern France

Peter Mayle, "Toujours Provence" - the sequel which follows a year in their new life

Peter Mayle, "Encore Provence"

Peter Mayle, "Bon Appetit - Travels through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew"

Jan Morris, "Fifty Years of Europe: An Album"

Jan Morris, "Sydney" - this Welsh travel writer has an excellent sense of the history of the cities s/he writes about

Jan Morris, "A Writer's World - Travels 1950-2000"

Theodore Zeldin, "The French" - not strictly a travel book but a great introduction to the French people

To Non-Fiction Reading

Back to Home Page 

To be sorted

Raymond Baxter, "Tales of My Time" 

George Dyson, "Turing's Cathedral - The Origins of the Digital Universe"  

Nate Silver, "The Signal and the Noise" 

Tim Harford, "Adapt - Why Success Always Starts with Failure" 

Dave Greenberg, "Emergency Response - Life, Death and Helicopters"

Steve Lohr, "Data-ism - Inside the Big Data Revolution" 

Dave Baldwin, "The Flying Doctor" 

Greg Milner, "Pinpoint - How GPS is changing technology, culture and our minds" 

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, "The Second Machine Age - Work, Progress and Prosperity in the Time of Brilliant Technologies" 

Bill Parkes, "The Fair Beginning of a Time" - autobiography of a Northland doctor 

Last updated on 16 July 2023