Sunday, January 11, 2009

Non-Fiction Acquisitions

Between the postman, the holidays and the bookstore, I've bought a lot of non-fiction this month. Let's see when I get to them!

Leo Hollis: London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London. Inspired both by Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle and a couple of books by Lisa Jardine, I had this one (and a couple of similar volumes) on my wish list.

Michael D. Lemonick: The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos. This one will link into a life-long interest in astronomy, as well as a more recent interest in England (especially spurred by The Baroque Cycle of Neal Stephenson) and the tales of Patrick O'Brian (Caroline Herschel makes an off-stage appearance).

Justin Marozzi: The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man who Invented History. Following on last year's read of a book on Herodotus comes this. Hopefully, as a travelogue, it will fair better with me than a previous travelogue. NYT review here.

Henry Petroski: The Toothpick. Having plumbed the depths of the pencil, Petroski turns his attention to some smaller engineering. Like Mark Kurlansky and Salt (or other subjects) or Mark Pendergrast and Coffee, I get a lot out of these "micro-histories".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would be curious to hear how the Hollis book is.

Frederick Paul Kiesche III said...

Have you read the Lisa Jardine volumes? How about the diary of Pepys or The Baroque Cycle?

All of that is set in the same period. An interesting time!