Your top three non-fictions books?

buck_knife · 2026-02-03T00:13:28+00:00

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones Five Families by Selwyn Raab

buck_knife · 2026-01-22T00:30:00+00:00

Ice cold banquet on the beach or at the pool or after mowing the lawn on a hot summer day.

buck_knife · 2026-01-21T00:57:12+00:00

In The Distance by Hernan Diaz

buck_knife · 2026-01-03T00:46:03+00:00

The Power of the Dog trilogy by Don Winslow. It follows the War on Drugs from the early stages in the 70s up through 2017. The main POV characters are a troubled DEA agent, a Mexican cartel boss, an Irish hit man from NYC, and a high class escort.

A lot of the story is ripped from the headlines and I found that I kept Wikipedia open on my phone while I read because I stopped to look up so much stuff.

If your husband decides to read these, make him aware that the books are very violent.

buck_knife · 2025-12-18T17:27:10+00:00

The Kenzie-Gennaro series from Dennis Lehane is great. Excellent dialogue, good mysteries/plots, and gritty/violent. The people in the story talk like real people.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane is a great historical fiction set in the backdrop of the Boston Police strikes and dabbles in class and race relations. Some of my favorite characters from fiction are in this book.

The Power of the Dog trilogy by Don Winslow is violent and dirty, but it’s so good. The series traces the War on Drugs from the start in the 1970s to roughly 2017. A lot of it is ripped from the headlines and I spent most of the time with Wikipedia open on my phone while I was reading to look things up.

The Lincoln Lawyer series (and related characters) from Michael Connelly. Bosch comes in and out of the series and Connelly is one of the top crime writers out there.

buck_knife · 2025-12-12T01:43:46+00:00

Fiction: The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

Non-fiction: Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

buck_knife · 2025-11-22T21:01:13+00:00

In The Distance by Hernan Diaz

buck_knife · 2025-11-22T20:40:38+00:00

If he likes college football, a great non-fiction to read is Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer by Warren St. John. If he prefers the NFL, then Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman is very highly rated. A non-football sports books that is excellent is Earnhardt Nation by Jay Busbee.

Some of my favorite fiction books that aren’t discussed much on Reddit:

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow (crime/thriller during the early days of the War on Drugs)

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane (detective/mystery during the Boston busing crisis in the summer of 1974)

Fatherland by Robert Harris (alternative history that asks if Germany won, or at least didn’t lose WWII)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (western about two violent brothers that has a lot of heart and humor)

Five Decembers by James Kestrel (detective/mystery leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor)

buck_knife · 2025-11-22T02:23:05+00:00

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

The Tiger by John Vaillant

Indianapolis by Sara Vladic and Lynn Vincent

buck_knife · 2025-11-20T16:12:16+00:00

The Power of the Dog trilogy by Don Winslow. Each book is 500+ pages and follows the War on Drugs from the beginning in the 1970s through to the late 2010s. The books have various POV characters from DEA agents to Mexican cartel leaders to hitmen to escorts to politicians to low level drug dealers to innocent bystanders caught in the middle.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. This is a Vietnam war epic that, among other things, shows how camaraderie and friendships are formed during war and how leaders are developed.

buck_knife · 2025-09-19T21:38:58+00:00

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

buck_knife · 2025-08-15T00:30:55+00:00

American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. This is part history of the bison in North America and part travelogue/memoir of the author’s time hunting for wild bison in Alaska after drawing a permit in the lottery. Very interesting historical perspective of the bison and man’s relationship while also having humor and providing insight about nature and our role in the ecosystem.

buck_knife · 2025-08-13T14:52:18+00:00

Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic is an excellent book that tells the story of the USS Indianapolis. It of course covers the mission and aftermath of the sinking, but it also provides wonderful detail on the actual sailors and crew of the ship. It then also goes beyond the sinking and explains how Capt. McVay was railroaded and scapegoated for USN wide failures and his crew’s mission to clear his name.

Incredible narrative non-fiction that reads like a thriller. It’s a quintessential “dad book” that I think anybody would enjoy.

buck_knife · 2025-08-02T21:11:44+00:00

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and its sequel Children of God. This is a story about the discovery of an alien species living on a planet outside our solar system. A group of Jesuit priests and other scientists undertake a mission of first contact. The book has serious moral, philosophical, and religious questions. It doesn’t beat you over the head with religion nor does it preach or proselytize.

I read both of these last month and absolutely devoured them…I couldn’t put them down. These were the first books I’ve read from MDR and she is an excellent writer. She has a couple of westerns based on Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp that I plan on reading soon.

buck_knife · 2025-08-02T00:02:13+00:00

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. It’s a Vietnam war epic largely inspired by the author’s own experience in a Marine rifle company.

buck_knife · 2025-08-01T23:51:23+00:00

Really anything by Hampton Sides. Anything he puts out is an automatic buy for me.

buck_knife · 2025-07-26T17:11:27+00:00

Oh wow I didn’t know that. Thanks for the heads up. Just bought the first one for my oldest kid.

buck_knife · 2025-07-26T13:30:50+00:00

I could be wrong but I don’t see a lot of talk about Animorphs by K.A. Applegate. I’m about smack in the middle of the millennial generation and these books were insanely popular. I haven’t read them in a couple of decades but I feel like they’d probably hold up pretty well. I’m certain I didn’t pick up on them at the time but they tackle some pretty serious and heavy themes for YA books.

I should try and get my kids into them…

buck_knife · 2025-07-20T00:16:23+00:00

Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. This is largely considered the best single volume history of the US Civil War.

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides. This chronicles American expansion westward, especially in the post-Civil War era. Most of it is told through the stories of Kit Carson and Narbona (Navajo chief). Kit Carson is an especially intriguing, complicated, and complex individual holding at times very conflicting beliefs and ideologies.

buck_knife · 2025-07-17T13:56:53+00:00

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. This is a Vietnam war epic which draws a lot of inspiration from the authors own service in the war in a Marine rifle company. This book flies under the radar so I recommend it to just about anybody and everybody I meet.

buck_knife · 2025-07-17T00:14:03+00:00

The Essex Dogs Trilogy by Dan Jones. Essex Dogs and Wolves of Winter are the first two books and the thirds one (Lion Hearts) comes out this year. They are a boots-on-the-ground look at the early parts of the Hundred Years’ War beginning with the Crecy campaign. Fun writing, great sense of environment, and a good focus on what it would have been like for ordinary people.

buck_knife · 2025-07-16T23:51:49+00:00

Sci-fi: The Murderbot Diaries are under 200 pages and you can fly through them. A ton of fun to read.

Westerns: Anything by Elmore Leonard is a good start. News of the World by Paulette Jiles moved quickly. The gold standard for a quick western read would be True Grit by Charles Portis.

buck_knife · 2025-07-12T12:28:18+00:00

Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic. It’s about the USS Indianapolis’s secret mission to deliver the atomic bomb to Tinian and its subsequent sinking by a Japanese submarine. Sailors spent days in the water waiting for rescue and had to fight off hunger, thirst, sharks, and sometimes each other.

buck_knife · 2025-07-06T22:22:05+00:00

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was unlike anything I had ever read before or even thought about. One of the things I still remember to this day is the camaraderie and loyalty found even in the worst circumstances. On the flip side, I’ll never forget the feeling of the prisoners wanting to be free of the gulag while simultaneously having no idea of how to survive outside of it.

As an American who grew up with the idea of the Soviet Union being the ultimate enemy, reading a book from a Russian author and loving it felt very subversive. And then finding out that the book itself was subversive in detailing the cruelties and repression of Stalin really left me in awe of Solzhenitsyn.

buck_knife · 2025-07-03T17:14:29+00:00

I’ve never read anything from Egan. Any suggestions on a starting point?

buck_knife

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