Category: non-fiction
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The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World by Ben Macintyre tells the story of how six Arab gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 while the U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran was happening simultaneously. Not only did it change London forever afterwards because of…
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Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham details the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in February of 1986. I was excited to learn about this incident and knew the book and story were in good hands with Adam. Having read and absolutely loved…
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Yes, I’m a book nerd. Always have been and always will be. Ever since third or fourth grade, I remember having to do book reports and actually loving it while almost every other kid dreaded this horrible and time-wasting activity. While other kids selected the absolute thinnest of books that they could get away with,…
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Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie is a memoir going over the events before, during, and afterwards of the attempted murder of the author himself on August 12 of 2022. To be quite honest and clear, I had never heard of Salman Rushdie before this attack. I do remember getting notifications of…
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All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera goes into great detail on how the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 came to be. It was either this book or “Too Big to Fail” by Andrew Sorkin. I chose the former because it’s supposed to go…
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The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea talks about a true story in the early 2000s regarding a group of illegal “entrants” who tried their luck crossing the Mexican border into the United States and how horribly the mission went for many of them. The book became a national bestseller and even a Pulitzer finalist.…
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With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge is a memoir and recounting of the World War II battles at Peleliu and Okinawa Island. Private First Class E.B. Sledge, aka “Sledgehammer,” initially wanted to write the memoir to recount his hellish days of war for his family members only. He was then urged to publish the…
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Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang goes over the last few decades of China’s last dynasty, The Great Qing. Focusing squarely on the Empress Dowager Cixi, it covers the early days of her life to how she became the de facto ruler of China despite all odds. All roads…
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The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq by Steve Coll helps readers understand, as the title implies, the war against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and how the continuous search for weapons of mass destruction ultimately led to their invasion by the United States. The Achilles Trap presents us…
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Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom by McCracken Poston Jr. goes over a highly bizarre case in the mid-90s in Ringgold, Georgia, where Alvin Ridley, a much-feared man in his neighborhood and a recluse, was accused of murdering his wife, whom no one has claimed to have seen in public for…
The Mindless Catalog 