This month some bloggers have been participating in Nonfiction November, a series of queries hosted by “Based on a True Story“. The last question asks for nonfiction titles that have recently found themselves on our to-be-read pile. I think it’s supposed to be the last ten books or so, but I’m going to publicly shame myself in the hopes of doing better. Consider this my “Books I Have to Read Before I Can Buy Any More Books, At Least Until my Resolve Weakens and I Surrender Like the Craven Addict I am”. Those with a purchase date past six months (everything after High Price of Materialism) are technically old enough to be Mount Doom titles, and will be considered such in 2024.

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, Claude S. Fischer.

Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone, Satya Nadella

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, William Manchester. Technically a re-read.

Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects us and Undermines Democracy. Purchased for class.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Purchased for class.

A Brief History of Nakedness, Philip Carr-Gomm. I was going to pair it with Naked at Lunch, but now it’s just standing awkwardly in the corner holding a magazine in front of itself.

The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser. Waiting for Advent so I can be all subversive and countercultural.

Plato, not Prozac: Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems, Lou Marinoff

Live, From New York! An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Tom Shales.

Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail, Stephen Taylor. Purchased for Read of England.

The Stonemason: A History of Building Britain, Andrew Ziminski. Purchased for Read of England.

The Royal Society and the Invention of Modern Science, Adrian Tinniswood. Purchased for Read of England.

The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, Leo Damrosch. Purchased for Read of England.

The Vision: Reflections on the Way to the Soul, Kahlil Gibran

Human Scale Revisited: A New Look at the Classic Case for a Decentralist Future, Kirkpatrick Sale

Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, Lee Siegel

The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America, Alan Ehrenhalt

Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar. Purchased for science survey/anthropology.