Book Recommendations - Non-Fiction

Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body.

— Brian Tracy

The Lobotomist

By Jack El-Hai

“In some ways he was a pioneer...but in others he did a disservice and slowed the pace of development by being too much of a cowboy and acting too exuberantly without scientific foundation.”

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms.
Amazon Link: Here

The Crusades

By Thomas Asbridge

By now the crusaders had christened the most powerful French catapult 'Mal Voisine', or 'Bad Neighbour', while nicknaming the Muslim stone-thrower that targeted it for conter-bombardment 'Mal Cousine', or 'Bad Relation'.

The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge - a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) - covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, listenable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history.
Amazon Link: Here

Cosa Nostra

By John Dickie

Above all, mafiosi in both Sicily and the US continued to think of themselves as a breed apart from other human beings and even other criminals. American or Sicilian, to be a man of honour means to operate beyond society’s measures of right and wrong.

— John Dickie, Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia: A History of the Sicilian Mafia

Amazon Link: Here

The Five Families

By Selwyn Raab

Seizing on the reduced-ranks situation, Gotti urged Gigante to reinforce his family with forty additional men. Sammy the Bull Gravano knew that Gotti was scheming to undercut Gigante and to court loyalty from the new Genovese cadre by informing them that he was responsible for their admission into Cosa Nostra.

Amazon Link: Here

Blitzed

By Norman Ohler

“Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.

Amazon Link: Here

The Drunken Botanist

By Amy Stewart

“In 1897, a Scientific American reporter wrote that “mezcal is described as tasting like a mixture of gasoline, gin and electricity. Tequila is even worse, and is said to incite murder, riot and revolution.”

Amazon Link: Here

The Butchering Art

By Lindsey Fitzharris

Liston’s speed was both a gift and a curse. Once, he accidentally sliced off a patient’s testicle along with the leg he was amputating. His most famous (and possibly apocryphal) mishap involved an operation during which he worked so rapidly that he took off three of his assistant’s fingers and, while switching blades, slashed a spectator’s coat. Both the assistant and the patient died later of gangrene, and the unfortunate bystander expired on the spot from fright. It is the only surgery in history said to have had a 300 percent fatality rate.

Amazon Link: Here

No Stone Unturned

By Steve Jackson

Project PIG officially got underway with its first meeting at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department.
All told, there were a dozen people, most of them strangers to each other and identified by pink name tags cut in the shape of pigs.

Amazon Link: Here

The Generals

By Thomas E Ricks

The Vietnam War certainly was not one long, steady descent into a quagmire, as some books, films, and songs would have us believe. Rather, it was a series of complicated interactions between four major military forces: the South Vietnamese forces, the American military, the Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese Army.

— Ricks, Thomas E.. The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today

Amazon Link: Here