Nonfiction Book Haul

Usually I see good reviews about a book and then end up buying it. I don’t usually proactively search for a book on a topic and then read it. But this time I did that. I proactively searched for a good book on the topics that I was interested in learning more about and ended up buying a book on those topics.

These books were not all bought at once. They were collected by me last year just because I wanted to read on these topics. I hope you will find these gems that I found on my own (except for one which was picked after seeing a review) by searching on the Internet interesting.

• The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie –

  My interest in Incas and Machu Picchu began when I read the book – Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara and then I became even more interested in that topic after I read this book – Turn right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams.
  I wanted to read a book which would give me more history on the Incas and their fight with the invaders. The other two books that I had read were mostly travel books with a bit of history. But I wanted to read a proper history book on Incas and I kept searching for one. I found this book which talks about the last days of Incas as the title suggests. I also want to read more about Mayans and Aztecs soon.



• The Interstellar age by Jim Bell –

  I am obsessed with space missions as can be seen in a post that I made on some planetary missions here – Planetary Missions. The fact that voyager was able to travel across solar system and even leave Solar System to enter interstellar blew my mind. I wanted to learn more about this amazing 40 year mission which is probably the one mission which has revealed us more about space than any other mission. I found this book and could not resist getting a copy.
  

• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King –

  This is the only book on this list that I saw reviews for and because of those great reviews, I immediately got this book. But this was a topic that I was already interested in and was planning to read more about. This book is about American Indians by a native American author. Most of the popular books on native Americans are written by white men and even though they may try to make it authentic, I am pretty sure they will not be true accounts. Hearing the actual story from a person who himself is a native American makes it more real I guess.

• The particle at the end of the Universe by Sean Carroll –

  I watched the documentary “Particle Fever” which was okay but did not go into much science aspects of the Higgs Boson particle. The documentary focused more on the scientists and the effort that was involved than on what was done to discover it. I have been interested in this topic forever so got myself this book so that I can learn more about how they discovered it and learn more about the particle itself.
  

• The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen by Howard Carter and A.C. Mace –

  When I was a kid, I read more comics than novels and in one of those comics, Tutankhamen comes alive and the story was based in Egyptian pyramids. Ever since I read that comic, I have been obsessed with pyramids and Tutankhamen. I wanted to read and learn more about this great young emperor who died when he was a teenager. Howard Carter was the person who discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb and this book basically talks about how they (he and his team) discovered and what they discovered in that tomb. I am more than excited for this book.
  

• Into the Bermuda Triangle by Gian J. Quasar –

  This is another topic that has fascinated me since my childhood. I remember watching TV shows (mostly cartoon) about Bermuda Triangle and I always wanted to know more about the mystery surrounding that island. It seems some books which were written before this book said that there was no mystery after all. But this book I heard talks about all the 1000 or more disappearances from several years and tries to put forward all the theories that people have made regarding these disappearances. There are plenty of theories on what is happening in that island but according to this author, it is still an unsolved mystery. I am interested in reading more about these various theories.