Nonfiction Open Thread
By 
Our esteemed colleague howard (Further research shows it was Patricia and not howard and I thank you very much!) recently purchased for me the first volume of the Library of America collection of the science writer Loren Eiseley. I am immediately enchanted by his amazing writing. Someone else (was it also howard? I can’t remember now, sorry!) Patricia also bought for me not too long ago the LOA collection of the African-American essayist Albert Murray, which after reading The Omni-Americans, completely blew my mind with its razor sharp critique of race in 1970, including a contempt for social sciences that far surpasses my own skepticism (this was right after the Moynihan report and between Daniel Patrick Moniyhan and Stanley Elkins, this was an infuriated response).
Anyway, this all made me realize that I need to expand my reading a bit into good quality literary nonfiction. And while I can find all the US history you can want (see tomorrow’s post listing my reading from 2016), what else should I be reading from the last 50 or 75 years? Could be something published last week or it could be some great piece from 1946. So consider this an open thread on non-fiction for a Friday evening.