Historical Non-Fiction Quotes

I either like reading fun war-based sci-fi, books about the lives of chefs, or dry historical non-fiction.

[I] am reading No Ordinary Joes. Should have had a medical checkup before I started it. Colton makes us fall in love with these guys, then puts our hearts in harm's way. It's lovely and ghastly and extremely powerful. His best yet.

I devour history books. I love anything by Thomas B. Costain or George MacDonald Fraser. He writes magnificent history, and he also wrote the Flashman stories, which are irresistible.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

Killing Lincoln is a must-read historical thriller. Bill O'Reilly recounts the dramatic events of the spring of 1865 with such exhilarating immediacy that you will feel like you are walking the streets of Washington DC on the night that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. This is a hugely entertaining, heart-stopping read.

The Hawk and the Dove is a wonderful idea for a book, wonderfully carried out. Nicholas Thompson has used illuminating new material to present each of his protagonists in a convincing, respectful, but unsparing way. Even more valuable, he has used the interactions and tensions between Paul Nitze and George Kennan to bring much of American 20th century foreign policy to life, with human richness ever present but with the big issues clear in all their complexity.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

One I'm deeply into is Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." I was the only person in the US who hadn't read it.

I get letters from two kinds of readers. History buffs, who love to read history and biography for fun, and then kids who want to be writers but who rarely come out and say so in their letters. You can tell by the questions they ask - How did you get your first book published? How long do you spend on a book? So I guess those are the readers that I'm writing for - kids who enjoy that kind of book, because they're interested in history, in other people's lives, in what has happened in the world. I believe that they're the ones who are going to be the movers and shakers.

Other than fiction and poetry I tend to read history.