NonFic of the week 4 December 2023

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

Light NF week for me: Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya-Powles. It's sort of a cross between a travel journal and a food memoir about a year of eating in Shanghai.

So what non-fiction is everyone else reading this week?

[EverHopeful]

1. High Conflict: Why we get trapped and how we get out

By Amanda Ripley. One of the most useful books I've read lately. If I won the lottery I'd buy thousands of copies and give them out to anyone hoping to heal our dysfunctional situation.

[Timeflyer]

2. Humanly Possible: seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope, by Sarah Bakewell.

[intheflow]

3. Still Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton.

Listening to it as an audio book. Wheaton, for anyone wondering, played teenage whiz kid Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation. As he re-reads his autobiography (written when he was 29 in the early 2000s), he adds both sweetly reflective and hysterically funny updated commentary revisiting his youthful "wisdom". Two thumbs up for any ST:TNG fans!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Watergate: A New History

by Garrett M. Graff.

I was already an adult by time Nixon was elected (turned 20 in 1968) and especially since I lived in the DC area, worked at DCA as a ticket agent, I remember his presidency and the many events related to Watergate. But this book is eye-opening in that I didn't fully appreciate just how criminal Nixon and his staff were, how blithely they ignored laws, how many truly incompetent people were promoted to high office. Wow.