MY FAVOURITE
NON-FICTION BOOKS
Same rules apply, unless stated:
Books in alphabetical order, and only one per author.
All are books I have not only read but actually enjoyed,
or which have otherwise made a lasting impresssion, rather than ones that have been
merely edifying. Suffice to say, I do not necessarily agree with any of them.
I will admit to having included one book of which I am
the translator, because I honestly believe it to be the best of its type around
and the only one with substantial additions to previous works.
I will admit to having consulted other lists to jog my
memory, but have left out books which people often seem to vote for but I
honestly cannot believe so many have read, like Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Hofstadter,
or Marx’s Das Kapital.
Likewise, books I have given up on or haven’t got around to
reading yet do not make it.
These are all for the general reader, so text books or
other reference works – like dictionaries and cook books – don’t make it either.
Titles are quoted first in the language in which I read
them, with translations into English where available.
1. ¡Indignaos! (Time for
Outrage!) Stéphane Hessel
2. A Brief History of Time,
Stephen Hawking
3.
A
Good Man in Evil Times, José-Alain Fralon
4. A Journey Through
Economic Time, J.K. Galbraith
6.
A Social History of England, Asa Briggs
7.
A Violent Life, Pier Paolo Pasolini
8.
Adiós Muchachos: Una Memoria de
la Revolución Sandinista (Adios Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution), Sergio Ramírez
9. Austerity Britain:
1945-51, David Kynaston
10. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
11.
Butcher
& Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Failure in Afghanistan, David Loyn
12. Civilisation, Kenneth
Clarke
13.
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
14. Compa Nicaragua
(Nicaragua for Beginners), Rius
15. Confieso Que He Vivido (Memoirs),
Pablo Neruda
16. Darwin and Intelligent Design,
Francisco José Ayala
17. Departures and Arrivals,
Eric Newby
18. Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion, David Hume
19.
Einstein for Beginner, Joseph Schwartz and
Michael McGuiness
20. El
Emperador (The
Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat), Ryszard Kapuściński
21. El Escudo de la
República, Ángel Viñas
22. España: República de
Trabajadores, Ilya Ehrenburg
23. Essays, Thomas Babington
Macaulay
24. Faith of Our Fathers:
Football as a Religion, Alan Edge
25. Fallen Angel: The Passion
of Fausto Coppi, William Fotheringham
26.
Good-bye to All That, Robert Graves
27.
Guerra y Vicisitudes de los Españoles, Julián
Zugazagoitia
28.
Guevara,
También Conocido Como El Che (Guevara, aka Che, translated by me), Paco Ignacio
Taibo II
29. Hiroshima, John Kersey
30. Historia de España en el
Siglo XX, Casanova y Andrés
31.
Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Alan Bullock
32.
Hitler: My Part in His Downfalll, Spike Milligan
33.
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
34. Israel: la
guerra más larga, Jacobo Timerman
35. La montaña
es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, Omar Cabezas
36.
Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, Eduardo Galeano
37. Memoirs of a British
Agent, R.H. Bruce Lockhart
38. Memoirs of An Anti-Semite, Gregor von
Rezzori
39. Memories and
Studies of War and Peace, Archibald Forbes
40. Miracles of Life, J.G. Ballard
41. My Family and Other
Animals, Gerald Durrell
42. Napoleon's Cursed War: Popular
Resistance in the Spanish Peninsular War, Ronald Fraser
43. Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
44.
Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky
45. No Boots To
My Feet, Bob Clark
46.
Orientalism, Edward Said
47. Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography, Patrick O'Brian.
48. Portrait of a Turkish Family, Irfan
Orga
49. Protest and
Survive, E.P. Thompson
50. Rejoice! Rejoice!:
Britain in the 1980s, Alwyn W. Turner
51. Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a
Pro Cyclist, Paul Kimmage
52. Russell's
Despatches from the Crimea 1854-56, William
Howard Russell
53. Second
Front, Censorship
and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, John R. MacArthur
54. Sex, Lies
and Handlebar Tape: The Remarkable Life of Jacques Anquetil, Paul Howard
55. Shankly, Bill Shankly
56.
Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana (Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality), José
Carlos Mariátegui
57. Stalin, Isaac Deutscher
58. Stalingrad, Anthony
Beevor
59.
Storm of Steel, Ernst Jünger
60.
Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History
and the David Irving Trial, Richard J. Evans
61. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, Eric Hobsbawm
62. The Ascent of Man, Jacon
Bronowski
63. The
Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999; Misha Glenny
64. The Bible in Spain,
George Henry Borrow
65. The Common
People, Asa Briggs
66. The Communist Manifesto,
Marx and Engels
67.
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
69. The End of Faith, Sam
Harris
70.
The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley
71. The Great Bike Race, Geoffrey
Nicholson
72.
The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion, Arthur
Schopenhauer
73. The Life and Death of the
Spanish Republic, Henry Buckley
74. The March of Folly, Barbara W. Tuchman
75. The Origins of the Second
World War, A.J.P. Taylor
76. The Paris
Commune 1871, Robert Tombs
77.
The Portable Hannah Arendt
78. The Road to Nab End,
William Woodruff
79. The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of
Affluenza, Oliver James
80. The
Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
82. The Skin, Curzio
Malaparte
83. The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler
84. The Spanish
Civil War, Paul Preston
85. The Spanish
Cockpit, Franz Borkenau
86. The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of
the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War, Gerard Brenan
87. The Strange Death Of Liberal England, George Dangerfield
88.
The Truce, Primo Levi
89. The World Turned Upside Down, Christopher Hill
90. The World We’re in, Will
Hutton
91. The Worldly Philosophers,
Robert Heilbroner
92. Think: A
Compelling Introduction to Philosophy,
Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackburn
93. Under Fire, Henri Barbusse
94. Veinte de Cobre, Fritz
Glockner
95. Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
96. War on Iraq, Scott Ritter
97. When the Lights Went Out: Britain in
the Seventies, Andy Beckett
98. Why I Am
Not A Christian, Bertrand Russell
99. Why Nations
Go To War, John G. Stoessinger
100.
Zapata and The Mexican Revolution, John Womack
