Your favourite non-fiction authors?

[rousseau]

I'm getting to a point with reading / book collecting where the subject doesn't matter much to me, but I do find some authors a little more gripping than others, and I enjoy stumbling on books where the writing is top notch. For my purposes good non-fiction writing usually means that it's academic, humble, factual, cogent, and does it's best to lack bias. But for the purpose of this thread I'm interested in any authors of non-fiction that you consider a standout. I'm curious to see who else is out there.

A few of mine that fit the description above:

Crawford Young - I absolutely love this guy and own all of his books.

Anthony Giddens - He strikes me as a recent, clear headed Sociologist, and his books are challenging

I've read many other authors, but these two stand out as a cut above the others.

 

[Tharmas]

I read lots of non-fiction, but only a few authors stick in my mind.

I can’t recommend John McFee’s Basin and Range highly enough. I read it years ago, but have just ordered it on Kindle to re-read (this topic made me think of it). I now see that “Basin” is the first of a four-part series, collectively called Annals of the Former World, which I haven’t read, but am now looking forward to eagerly. "Lyrical prose."

Also, I can recommend any of Stephan Jay Gould’s books of collected essays. While some of his longer works like Wonderful Life have been overtaken by further research and discoveries, the basic points he makes are good. However, it’s the essays that I have really enjoyed - well-written, often humorous, and always inciteful.

Another one that makes the dry subject of statistics fascinating in The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter.

 

[bilby]

I too read a huge amount of non-fiction, and few authors have stuck in my mind as particularly engaging and readable as strongly as J E Gordon, the materials scientist and engineer who wrote Structures (or Why Things Don't Fall Down), and The New Science of Strong Materials (or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor), both of which I heartily recommend.

I would also give a shout out to three science writers who both also wrote entertaining fiction: Richard Feynman, Issac Asimov, and H G Wells (the former likely wouldn't have admitted to publishing much fiction, but his autobiographical work certainly flirts with the genre).

Feynman's QED, the Strange Theory of Light and Matter is a superb layman's introduction to quantum theory; And Asimov's Guide to Science, though now rather dated (and superceded by his own more recent Asimov's New Guide to Science) is an excellent history of scientific ideas up to the middle of the twentieth century. Wells's The Outline of History similarly sketches the history of the world up to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, and is fascinating for the British Imperial perspective that infuses it (a bias we see repeated today in US attitudes and writings - being boss of the world makes humility hard).

For European History more generally (and with rather less imperial bias) it's hard to go past A J P Taylor.