Your list reminds me that I haven't updated my "Conspicuous Consumption" list in ages. Must do soon!

I was right, dammit. I did forget a very important book. I just recently finished
"An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey," by Robert Meeropol.

Liz and I went to a benefit in June for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, on the 50th anniversary of the execution of his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I picked up the book and couldn't put it down. I subsequently gave it to my son for his birthday. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

- Groucho: The Live and Times of Julius Henry Marx, by Stefan Kanfer
- Napalm & Silly Putty, by George Carlin
- The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers From 1870 to today, by Bill James
- The Amoral Elephant: Globalizatin and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century, by William K. Tabb
- Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, By Jane Leavy
- Once Upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age, by Herbert Mitgang
- There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs, by Michal Schumacher
- King David: The Real Live of the Man Who Ruled Israel, by Jonathan Kirsch
- Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel, by Yaron Ezrai
- Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit against Anti-Humanism, misanthropy, mysticism and primitivism, by Murray Bookchin
- The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball, by Charlie Rosen
- The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast
- Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader, by Roger Angell
- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, by Richard Feynman
- Capitalism, Democracy and Ecology: Departing from Marx, by Timothy W. Luke (one of my thesis advisors)
- She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan (a schoolmate)
- Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950's and 1960's, by Gerald Nachman

I hope you find this helpful.

Your post made me stop and think about all the books I have read in the last couple of years, and I made a partial list. I don't think of myself as particularly reading a particularly sizable number of books, the list surprised me.

Aside from an occasional Harry Potter or an historical novel (sorry, but I didn't like "The Alienist"), all I read is non-fiction. Since you are looking for non-fiction, here is a partial list of books I read over the last couple of years and recommend. Of course, I will think of a handful more as soon as I hit post. Ish will force me to do this in two installments, I'm sure:

- Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House, by Steve Stoliar
- Robert Kennedy : His Life, by Evan Thomas
- The Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era by Murray Bookchin
- Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, by Neil Baldwin
- The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist, by Fred Jerome
- A Patriot's Handbook (well, much of it :-) ), Edited by Caroline Kennedy
- Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers, by Simon Louvish
- Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000, by Alan Dershowitz
- Win Shares, by Bill James and Jim Henzler
- The New Bill James Historical Abstract, by Bill James
- The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, by David McCullough
- Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, Edited by Kristina Borjesson
- Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate, by Bob Woodward
- Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964, Edited and with Commentary by Michael Beschloss

As my friend Hope Cohen said, "All I ever really needed to know, I learned from The Power Broker, by Robert Caro."

You think I am joking.

I jsut finished reading "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed along with our families" (non-fiction, about Rwanda). It blew me away, but was still manageable (I didn't go to bed sobbing every night). I keep meaning to blog about the book, but let this serve as a placeholder until I do.

I did a "reading list" some time ago over at ashidome -- if you scroll down you can find mine.

My father introduced me to the "Anonymous Rex" books, and I have to say they're surprisingly good, and I'm surprised they got published, since it sounds like such a crackpot idea.

I used to have a page of books I loved and recommended, but it's hard to come up with a general list that might appeal to everyone/anyone. So I gave up and just started listing everything I read on the side of my blog with links to the post in which I discussed each book. The list only goes back two years and omits dozens and dozens of Mss, obviously.

My random recommendations for you (even though I don't know you) are Good Faith, by Jane Smiley; The Language Police, by Diane Ravitch; Interracial Intimacies, by Randall Kennedy; Double Fold, by Nicholson Baker; The Price of Motherhood, by Ann Crittenden; The Middle of Everywhere, by Mary Pipher; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie; and Ship Ablaze by Edward O'Donnell. Those are some of my favorite recent non-fictions; with fiction as well because you can't live without fiction.

--Emily, former editor-in-chief of Facets