Non-Fiction

  • Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, The — H. Porter Abbot
  • A Glossary of Literary Terms, 8th ed, — M. H. Abrams, Geoffrey Galt Harpham
  • Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life – Theodor Adorno
  • Hand to Mouth — Paul Auster
  • Flying to America — Donald Barthelme
  • S/Z — Roland Barthes
  • Where Is Cinema? Vol. 1 — André Bazin
  • The History of the English Church and People — Venerable Bede
  • The Chrysanthemum and the Cross — Ruth Benedict
  • The Twilight of American Culture — Morris Berman
  • Fiction’s Present:  Situating Contemporary Narrative Innovation — R. M. Berry and Jeffrey R. Di Leo, eds.
  • Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan — Herbert P. Bix
  • Genius — Harold Bloom
  • Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human — Harold Bloom
  • With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker — Victor Bockris
  • The Creators — Daniel Boorstin
  • The Discoverers — Daniel Boorstin
  • The Seekers — Daniel Boorstin
  • The Rhetoric of Fiction — Wayne C. Booth, 2nd ed.
  • Collected Non-Fictions — Jorge Luis Borges
  • The Life of Johnson — James Boswell
  • Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763 — James Boswell
  • The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides — James Boswell
  • Manifestoes of Surrealsm — Andree Breton
  • ReJoyce — Anthony Burgess
  • Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity — Judith P. Butler
  • Creative Mythology: The Masks of God — Joseph Campbell
  • A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake — Campbell & Robinson
  • Notebooks 1935-1942 — Albert Camus
  • The Myth of Sisyphus — Albert Camus
  • The Rebel — Albert Camus
  • The Tongue Set Free — Elias Canetti
  • The Torch in My Ear — Elias Canetti
  • The Play of the Eyes — Elias Canetti
  • Failed States — Noam Chomsky
  • French Theory — François Cusset
  • The History of Wales — John Davies
  • Europe: A History — Norman Davies
  • The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins [LIB]
  • Writing and Difference — Jacques Derrida
  • A Derrida Reader:  Between the Blinds — Jacques Derrida. Peggy Ksamuf, ed.
  • Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed — Jared Diamond
  • Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard
  • The Story of Philosophy — Will Durant
  • Lawrence Durrell & Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence
  • Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory — Terry Eagleton
  • Six Walks in the Fictional Woods — Unberto Eco
  • Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why — Bart. D. Ehrman
  • Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers — David Edmonds & John Eidinow
  • Rousseau’s Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment — David Edmonds & John Eidinow
  • Seven Types of Ambiguity — William Empson
  • How to Be Alone — Jonathan Franzen
  • Anatomy of Criticism — Northrop Frye
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Edward Gibbon
  • The Madwoman in the Attic — Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar
  • Ulysses in Progress — Michael Groden
  • A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature — Guerin et al
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Alex Haley
  • Studying the Novel — Jeremy Hawthorn
  • Mein Kampf — Adolf Hitler
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas Hofstadter
  • I Am a Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstadter
  • Seven Ages of Paris – Alistair Horne
  • A History of the Arab Peoples — Albert Hourani
  • Pragmatism — William James
  • Modern Times — Paul Johnson
  • Selected Essays – Samuel Johnson
  • Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life — Erica Jong
  • Travels with Herodotus — Ryszard Kapuscinski
  • Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion — Liam Kennedy
  • Pieces of My Mind — Frank Kermode
  • Shakespeare’s Language — Frank Kermode
  • The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought — Lawrence D. Kritzman
  • Handbook of Literary Rhetoric:  A Foundation for Literary Study — Heinrich Lausberg
  • Seven Pillars of Wisdom — T. E. Lawrence
  • Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority — Emmanuel Levinas
  • The Practice of Writing — David Lodge
  • The Inhuman — Jean-François Lyotard
  • Dead Time : Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity — Elissa Marder
  • Capital Volume 1 — Karl Marx
  • Capital Volume 2 — Karl Marx
  • Capital Volume 3 — Karl Marx
  • Oulipo Compendium — Harry Mathews ed.
  • Annotations to Finnegans Wake — Roland McHugh
  • Annals of the Former World — John McPhee
  • Pragmatism: A Reader — ed. Louis Menand
  • On Liberty — John Stuart Mill
  • Representative Government — John Stuart Mill
  • The Subjection of Women — John Stuart Mill
  • On Narrative — W. J. T. Mitchell, ed.
  • The Complete Essays of Montaigne — Michel de Montaigne
  • Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature — Warren F. Motte, ed.
  • Metaphysics As a Guide To Morals — Iris Murdoch
  • The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism — W. W. Norton & Co.
  • The Best American Essays of the Century — Joyce Carol Oates, ed.
  • Istanbul: Memories and the City — Orhan Pamuk
  • The Stuff of Thought — Steven Pinker
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values — Robert M. Pirsig
  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals — Michael Pollan [LIB]
  • Tactical Readings: Feminist Postmodernism in the Novels of Kathy Acker and Angela Carter — Nicola Potchford
  • The Rise and Fall of Athens — Plutarch
  • Fall of the Roman Republic — Plutarch
  • Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoires of Anthony Powell — Anthony Powell
  • A Concise History of France — Roger Price
  • The Letters of Abelard and Heloise — Betty Radice, trans.
  • Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature — Jill Robbins
  • Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon — Carl Rollyson & Lisa Paddock
  • Orientalism — Edward W. Said
  • Culture and Imperialism — Edward W. Said
  • The Novel in the Balance — Arthur M. Saltzman
  • The Age of Reason — Jean Paul Sartre
  • Course in General Linguistics — Ferdinand de Saussure
  • Campo Santo — W. G. Sebald
  • On the Natural History of Destruction — W. G. Sebald
  • Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters — Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames, eds.
  • Modern Philosophy: Introduction and Survey — Roger Scruton
  • The Bookseller of Kabul — Asne Seierstad
  • Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to “in Search of Lost Time” — Roger Shattuck
  • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
  • Theory of Prose — Viktor Shklovsky
  • Where the Stress Falls — Susan Sontag
  • Against Interpretation and Other Essays — Susan Sontag
  • On Photography — Susan Sontag
  • Styles of Radical Will — Susan Sontag
  • Under the Sign of Saturn — Susan Sontag
  • Something Said: Essays — Gilbert Sorrentino
  • The Koran for Dummies — Sohaib Sultan
  • Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk — Joseph Tabbi
  • Marcel Proust: A Life — Jean-Yves Tadié
  • Kingdom of Fear — Hunter S. Thompson
  • The Great Shark Hunt — Hunter S. Thompson
  • Generation of Swine — Hunter S. Thompson
  • History of the Peloponnesian War — Thucydides
  • A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake — William York Tindall
  • Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self — Claire Tomalin
  • Due Considerations — John Updike
  • Lives of the Artists — Giorgio Vasari
  • The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 — Gore Vidal
  • The United States: Essays 1952-1992 — Gore Vidal
  • Imperial — William T. Vollmann
  • Poor People – William T. Vollmann
  • An Afghanistan Picture Show or, How I Saved the World — William T. Vollmann
  • Consider the Lobster and Other Essays — David Foster Wallace
  • A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life — Arnold Weinstein
  • Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain — Maryanne Wolf
  • James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:  A Casebook — Mark A. Wollaeger, ed.
  • The Novels of Hermann Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure — Theodore Ziolkowski
  • Why We Read Fiction — Lisa Zunshine

4 thoughts on “Non-Fiction”

  2. Hi, I read your blog frequently, I like it a lot.

    I´m 29, and most of what I read is fiction, I´m reading The lost steps by Carpentier now, but I will like to start reading some non-fiction as well, particularly world history.

    Almost everything I learned in school has now vanished, so a introductory and readable book will be great.

    Can you give me some recommendation on that?

    PS
    I saw a H.G. Wells book, A short history of the world, and thought it can be a good option.

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    Reply

    1. An excellent, classic work is Gods, Graves and Scholars by C. W. Ceram. This nonfiction book reads like a novel and is a very pleasant introduction to classical times and the archeological studies of the last couple of centuries. Another excellent overview, this time of more modern events, is Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel.

      The Wells is not really non-fiction and you might watch the Mel Brooks’ movie, The History of the World Part Two, to get a funnier and more irreverent version of history.

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      1. I saw the first one in Amazon, and yes, apparently it is focused on archeology, which is another way to study history. But I´m not really interested in it.

        I´m looking for something like Gombrich´s The Story of Art, but in this subject.

        I know he wrote A little history of the world, but is a book for kids. And, who knows, maybe I should start with that.

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