2015 Reading List?

[Strychnine]

I didn't get a chance to read nearly as much last year as I wanted so I've committed myself to at least one book per month this year. I'm working on my definitive 2015 reading list, but do any of you have some standout recommendations?

Non fiction only.


My list so far runs the gamut from a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the translated journal of Cabeza de Vaca on his 8 year trek across the southern US to a Navy SEAL's accounts of keeping his humanity while being one of the most skilled killers in war.

[talisman]

I'm sure you've read a couple of these, but maybe someone else hasn't. I found them all interesting. Your results may vary.

Go Like Hell
Into Thin Air
All The Presidents Men
The Right Stuff
Patriots : The Men Who Started The American Revolution
The Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test
The Perfect Storm
Touching The Void
Skunk Works
127 Hours
Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
Cannonball: Worlds Greatest Outlaw Road Race
Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil
Where Men Win Glory

[Mike K]

Navy SEAL's accounts of keeping his humanity while being one of the most skilled killers in war.

Which book is that? Sounds interesting.

[Gasser64]

I didn't get a chance to read nearly as much last year as I wanted so I've committed myself to at least one book per month this year. I'm working on my definitive 2015 reading list, but do any of you have some standout recommendations?

Non fiction only.


My list so far runs the gamut from a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the translated journal of Cabeza de Vaca on his 8 year trek across the southern US to a Navy SEAL's accounts of keeping his humanity while being one of the most skilled killers in war.

Audiobooks! I don't have time to read much but Im in the truck a lot just driving. Otherwise youre just sitting there listening to the radio or some song . . pop in an audiobook and you can catch up on your reading while you drive. Most of them can be downloaded off amazon or some such and just put on a flash drive

[Strychnine]

Go Like Hell
Into Thin Air
All The Presidents Men
The Right Stuff
Patriots : The Men Who Started The American Revolution[/B]
The Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test
The Perfect Storm
Touching The Void
Skunk Works
127 Hours
Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
Cannonball: Worlds Greatest Outlaw Road Race
Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil
Where Men Win Glory

Solid choices! I've read the highlighted ones and loved them all, and Touching the Void is actually on my list for this year.

I've thought about A Perfect Storm because I love Junger's writing but just haven't picked it up.

[Strychnine]

Here's the list so far. I'm hoping I mark these off quickly.

The Heart and the Fist: The education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL – Eric Greitens

THE HEART AND THE FIST shares one man’s story of extraordinary leadership and service as both a humanitarian and a warrior. In a life lived at the raw edges of the human experience, Greitens has seen what can be accomplished when compassion and courage come together in meaningful service. As a Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL, Greitens worked alongside volunteers who taught art to street children in Bolivia and led US Marines who hunted terrorists in Iraq. He’s learned from nuns who fed the destitute in one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the dying in India, from aid workers who healed orphaned children in Rwanda, and from Navy SEALs who fought in Afghanistan. He excelled at the hardest military training in the world, and today he works with severely wounded and disabled veterans who are rebuilding their lives as community leaders at home.

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World - Steven Johnson

In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes—from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life.

You Are Not So Smart – David McRaney

Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human. You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why - Laurence Gonzales

"Unique among survival books... stunning... enthralling. Deep Survival makes compelling, and chilling, reading."—Penelope Purdy, Denver Post
In Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzalez combines hard science and powerful storytelling to illustrate the mysteries of survival, whether in the wilderness or in meeting any of life's great challenges. This gripping narrative, the first book to describe the art and science of survival, will change the way you see the world. Everyone has a mountain to climb. Everyone has a wilderness inside.

Seven Men : And the Secret of Their Greatness - Eric Metaxas

Written in a beautiful and engaging style, Seven Men addresses what it means (or should mean) to be a man today, at a time when media and popular culture present images of masculinity that are not the picture presented in Scripture and historic civil life. What does it take to be a true exemplar as a father, brother, husband, leader, coach, counselor, change agent, and wise man? What does it mean to stand for honesty, courage, and charity, especially at times when the culture and the world run counter to those values?
Each of the seven biographies represents the life of a man who experienced the struggles and challenges to be strong in the face of forces and circumstances that would have destroyed the resolve of lesser men. The seven men profiled: George Washington, William Wilberforce, Eric Liddell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jackie Robinson, John Paul II, and Charles Colson

Bonhoeffer: A Biography - Eric Metaxas

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a pastor and author. In this New York Times best-selling biography, Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer’s life—the theologian and the spy—and draws them together to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil. Metaxas presents the fullest accounting of Bonhoeffer’s heart-wrenching decision to leave the safe haven of America to return to Hitler’s Germany, and sheds new light on Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the famous Valkyrie plot and in “Operation 7,” the effort to smuggle Jews into neutral Switzerland.

Wind, Sand & Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wind, Sand and Stars is an adventure story that also contains thoughtful observations about flying and about the remote areas of the world that SaintExupery visited in his travels. Since Saint-Exupery was one of the pioneers of flight (he patented a number of devices that helped to advance the technology of aviation and to make modern aircraft possible), his observations about flying are of historical interest.

Touching the void - Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave.

Young Men and Fire - Norman Maclean

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.

Castaways - Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

This enthralling story of survival is the first major narrative of the exploration of North America by Europeans (1528-36). The author of Castaways (Naufragios), Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition to claim for Spain a vast area that includes today's Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. A shipwreck forced him and a handful of men to make the long westward journey on foot to meet up with Hernán Cortés. In order to survive, Cabeza de Vaca joined native peoples along the way, learning their languages and practices and serving them as a slave and later as a physician. When after eight years he finally reached the West, he was not recognized by his compatriots.

Walking Home: A Traveler in the Alaskan Wilderness, a Journey into the Human Heart - Lynn Schooler

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey-first by boat, then on foot-into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear.But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories-of trappers, explorers, marooned sailors, and hermits, as well as the myths of the region's Tlingit Indians. Relating his journey, Schooler creates a conversation between the human and the natural, the past and the present, to investigate-on a remote and uninhabited shore-what it means to be not only part of nature's wild web, but also a member of a human community in the flow of history.

AWOL On the Appalachian Trail - David Miller

In 2003, software engineer David Miller left his job, family, and friends to fulfill a dream and hike the Appalachian Trail. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail is Miller's account of this thru-hike along the entire 2,172 miles from Georgia to Maine. On page after page, readers are treated to rich descriptions of the valleys and mountains, the isolation and reverie, the inspiration that fueled his quest, and the life-changing moments that can only be experienced when dreams are pursued. While this book abounds with introspection and perseverance, it also provides useful passages about safety and proper gear, with a view into a professional hiker's preparations and tenacity. This is not merely a travel guide, but a beautifully written and highly personal view into one man's adventure and what it means to make a lifelong vision come true.

[Strychnine]

Which book is that? Sounds interesting.

First one on the list above.

[talisman]

I really don't need more to read, but AWOL sounds like it is within my field of interests. Into the bottomless amazon cart it will go.

[Nash B.]

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom - Walter Alvarez

Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the genera of plants and animals on Earth had perished.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Crater-Doom-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691131031/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420224008&sr=1-1&keywords=trex+and+the+crater+of+doom[/ame]

[talisman]

Matt, out of all those books I listed, you really need to check out Go Like Hell. It was a really good read, and I think you would like it.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Go-Like-Hell-Ferrari-Battle/dp/0547336055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420240793&sr=8-1&keywords=go+like+hell[/ame]

[Strychnine]

Matt, out of all those books I listed, you really need to check out Go Like Hell. It was a really good read, and I think you would like it.

http://www.amazon.com/Go-Like-Hell-F...s=go+like+hell

Just took the Alaska book off the list and added this one.

[talisman]

Just took the Alaska book off the list and added this one.

Awesome.

[Sean88gt]

Provided I survive last semester, a lot of legal reading.

[Strychnine]

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens

E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but research suggests that reading on paper still boasts unique advantages

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

[dtlgxdylan]

The Alchemist

Conform- GB

The Giver

Ones I plan to read this year. Definitely shying away from autobiographies, my mind goes nuts listening to BS I know is not true.