Week Eight, Assignment Three: Four nonfiction recommendations

"Choose any four of the 16 nonfiction genres ... list Dewey call numbers for those genres ....  Choose and recommend a book for someone who normally doesn't read nonfiction."

In a surprise move, Bryce chooses the genres of Sports (790s, generally), Faith (200s) ... and then resorts to the old faithfuls of History (900s) and Biography/Memoirs (which SLRC's video divides into two separate genres -- I disagree.  They live, in BCPL at least, in B or, in Dewey terms, the 920s, with some in other sections throughout the collection, depending on a myriad of reasons best understood by cataloguers -- as an example, if 51% of a biography is about the subjects fight against heroin addiction, you might find it in the "substance abuse" section, in the 616s).

In Sports -- and people who know me know I'm not a fan at all, really, but I do have an historical appreciation for Sports and can fake it when some jock wants to talk about how The Ravens, Orioles, Blackhawks, Lakers, or Pomona College Sagehens did last night -- I'd recommend Eliot Asinof's book on the Chicago "Black Sox" Scandal of 1919, Eight Men Out (796.357 A).  A detailed "book talk" will follow. 

In Faith -- and people who know me know I'm not a fan at all, really, but I do have an historical appreciation for Faith and can fake it when someone want to talk about the Torah, the Bible, the Lotus Sutra, or the Book of Mormon -- I'd recommend Bart D. Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (225 E). 

History is my "thing," I enjoy it a lot, and despite its somewhat dry reputation, there has been a lot of good narrative nonfiction in the discipline ever since Tacitus' time.  Fiction readers might be intrigued by Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World, about the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 (979.461 W), among literally thousands of others.

Memoirs and biographies are just "personal" histories, so semi-obviously a history nerd is going to enjoy them, too.  Truman, by David McCullough, tells in vibrant terms the story of "Give 'Em Hell Harry," the President perhaps best known for nuking Japan and firing General MacArthur for insubordination (Biography [or 920] TRUMAN).