I love books from Dan Brown, ie - Da vinci code, Angels and demons, Lost symbol and his new that i just start reading, INFERNO

Malcolm X's autobiography is really good if you've never read that.

Dan Brown is certainly epic nonfiction. I learned much about the church.

I've been really enjoying reading about 'the age of sail', and 'age of discovery'. You can find some pretty amazing translations of first hand journals that are interesting to read because it's not as cut and dry as a history book. The abject racism, horrendous situations, and obsession with native's lady parts (sometimes for pages at a time) oozes off of every page. If you're more intrigued by the ships themselves, there's a wealth of info on the construction, and lives of the vessels. It's quite the rabbit hole, as I probably have 100 such books on my shelf.

Anything Wade Davis is worth a read. Wonderful writer, and always interesting subjects. 'One River' is a favourite that mixes coca, ethnobotany, three points in history, travel, and humour into one great book.

+1 for autobiography of Malcolm X

Robert Carrow's biographies of Lyndon Johnson are great. That'll keep you occupied for a while.

I really liked into thin air, by Jon Krakauer. Pretty good book, i would definitely recommend it.

I thought Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez was fascinating.

I would recommend Manning Marable's prize-winning biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. It points out the many liberties Malcolm X and Alex Haley took with the "autobiographical" genre.

Another non-fiction favorite that is easy to read (i.e. written by a journalist rather than a historian) is Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. Tons of history but full of links to contemporary times and the choices you make. You will never look at a banana the same after.

And nothing Dan Brown has ever written can be called "non-fiction."

check out from pieces to weight by 50 cent

Fooling Houdini if you have any interest in psychology or magic tricks. Fantastic book.

I'm currently reading Thinking Fast & Slow, which is about our two modes of thinking: intuition/quick decisions and reasoning, and the resulting cognitive biases resulting from these two.

"the post american world" is pretty cool if you care about economic superpowers

i dont like steve jobs but his biography by walter isaacson is REALLY good

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden.

I have a thing for real life horror stories, I guess.

Any intro-level college history text book would be a great read on the middle east.

If you can handle holocaust literature, Primo Levy's "Is this Man" is perhaps one of the best nonfiction works of the 20th century - along with most of the other stuff he wrote.

Most of my nonfiction picks tend to be historically based because well, that's what I do.

Molotov Remembers by Felix Chuev

Georgi Zhukov's Memoirs (second Ed. - 1st ed is heavily censored).

Against Hitler? By Ivan Maisky

Sarah Nomberg also has some pretty good holocaust literature.

Winston Churchills memoirs are a pretty good read if nothing else than for his one-liners.

10 Days that Shook The World - John Reed

I also have tons of Communist related stuff, but I won't list that all out unless you want it - tons of interesting stuff about Gurley Flynn, Joe Hill, John Reed, Paul Robeson, WEB Du Bois, Willy Foster, Gus Hall, etc.

Paul Robeson is just generally a great subject to study lol - especially in relation to modern pop culture.

"When China Rules the World" by Martin Jacques was really interesting if you like cultural studies / international studies. It's all about the differences between western and eastern modernity. It talks about race, culture, and economics through historical and modern examples. It's pretty dry though.

Not strictly non-fiction, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was really phenomenal. It's one of those books that kind of makes you sit there for a while and just contemplate things. Sort of like Night by Elie Weisel, but it's less depressing and more plain and stark. Also The Gulag Archipelago is another deep cutting Solzhenitsyn book.

Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola

great read on metahistory and the world of tradition

the communist manifesto

up from slavery

with the old breed At peleliu and okinawa

sea of thunder

helmet for my pillow

mein kampf, its really boring though

Guadalcanal, by Richard B Frank

the jefferson bible is pretty interesting, not really non fiction though i guess

cultures of war

war without mercy

dangers hour

amelia lost, its about amelia earhart

and uh this http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Desert-Shield-Storm-Chronology/dp/0313296065/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1372037844&sr=8-7&keywords=desert+storm+book

but it's really fucking expensive for some reason

most of these are about the pacific theater of war in ww2 if youre into that sort of thing