Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 If I had hesitated in including this amongst my reads for the Science Book Challenge, my doubts were laid to rest when I realized that Guns, Germs and Steel won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. (There must
Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing HarperCollins, 2009 "Examining everything from free lunches to military spending, from love to television, The Value of Nothing reveals the hidden social consequences of our global culture of 'freedom' and explains why prices are always at odds with the true value of what matters
Norman Doidge's The Brain that Changes Itself Penguin, 2007 As Olduvai suggests here, there is something different about writing a response to non-fiction, just as I have found a difference in the way that I approach reading it. She's right: it's not as though we are being graded. But, I want
Donez Xiques' Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer Dundurn Press, 2005 There are many biographical and critical works about Margaret Laurence. If you're interested in her writing, you might appreciate the pioneering works of Clara Thomas, her 1969 biography, named for her subject, or The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence (1975).
Louise Doughty’s A Novel in a Year (2007) Pocket Books - Simon & Schuster 2008 Feeling indecisive about where to jump in with Louise Doughty's fiction (news about her appearance at the festival this year brought her work to my attention), I gravitated towards her one non-fiction book. If you're
