Nonfiction November - Week 4

Our host this week is She Seeks Nonfiction. 

One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is learning all kinds of things about our world which you never would have known without it. There’s the intriguing, the beautiful, the appalling, and the profound. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Do you think there is a book that should be required reading for everyone?

There are 2 books that come to mind as having influenced my view of the world:

• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubbner which I read in 2008 definitely gave me a different perspective on how the world works. Looking at "the hidden side" of things is a fascinating way to consider things that seem true but actually aren't. 
  
  
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson explains where the troubles in the Middle East began and it wasn't at all what I would have assumed before reading this book. The Eastern front of World War I (where Britain and France were battling the Ottoman Empire) was not something I knew much about. This book did a good job of unraveling a very complicated situation in a clear and compelling way.

As far as a book that is required reading for everyone I don't think so. There are certainly things I think everyone should know about, but since everyone is in a different place in their journey toward understanding the world there is no one book that everyone needs to read. I needed the background of Lawrence in Arabia to understand that part of the world, but other readers may have a solid grasp on that history and need to read about something else that I do already know. To paraphrase Ranganathan: Every reader their book, every book its reader.

For an overview of #NonFicNov visit She Seeks Nonfiction.