Literary nonfiction

Everything is Tuberculosis was such well written!

I’ll suggest The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Interested in the origins of World War I?

Barbara Tuchman wrote the old classic on the subject: *The Guns of August*. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

T. G. Otte wrote a new classic: *The July Crisis: The World’s Descent into War, Summer 1914.* Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Both are extremely well written, but in a very different style. The first is high literature and genius. The second is clever, but more straight and reporting like.

For my money, Tuchman has the most magisterial opening of any non-fiction book ever:

“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun.  After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens–four dowager and three regnant–and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”