2005 Christmas reads: Non fiction

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
By Robert Fisk
(Fourth Estate $40)

At nearly 1400 pages this will test your stocking strength, but providing you don't drop it on your foot, this blistering account of Western meddling in the affairs of the Middle East over the past century makes a compelling case for learning from history. As Fisk has covered the region for the past 30 years, he knows it better than any westerner, but be a little wary of the polemics. It opens with Fisk meeting Osama bin Laden in 1997.

The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade
By Piers Morgan
(Ebury Press $27.95)

"Dumped Daily Mirror editor writes compulsive book shock!" Although Morgan's diary-form account of a decade in the tabloids is about British celebs and politicians, the book is flying out of the bookshops here as well. Tony Blair, Princess Di, George Michael, Jeremy Clarkson (who punched Morgan on the nose at an awards night, find out why), the Beckhams, Paula Yates ... no one comes off lightly. Fabulous.

The Call of the Weird
By Louis Theroux
(MacMillan $34.95)

A follow-up from Theroux's strange TV series Weird Weekend, where he travelled through America trying to fathom eccentrics like neo-Nazis, porn-party-goers and UFO contactees. Theroux tracks down some of those characters to see what's happened since he last saw them, in some cases 10 years back, and asks what he has learnt from them. Thoughtful and entertaining.

Champagne
By Don and Petie Kladstrup
(HarperCollins $34)

This is subtitled "How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War and Hard Times." The Champagne region of France is the site of some of the bloodiest battles in history, and this irony is not lost on the writers as they look back to the 1660s and sink some myths about Dom Perignon, the monk thought to have invented the sparkling wine. Then it's on through European history in the region since then, which means vineyards and champagne houses struggling with war, trenches, gas, bombs ... and some good times in-between.

War Reporting for Cowards: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
By Chris Ayres
(John Murray $45)

Self-confessed coward, Brit Chris Ayres, thought he was on to an easy winner when he was made a foreign correspondent in Los Angeles. All those movie stars to "interview". But then his boss asked if he would be "embedded" with US Marines in the Iraq War. Too chicken to say no, Ayres finds himself "over there", surrounded by military machismo, bullets and bombs. He wants out. Scary stuff, related with great humour.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life
By Lynne Truss
(Profile Books $35)

The author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves delivers a diatribe about modern manners or lack thereof, and concludes that good manners make a community work better because it's all about consideration for others. She may be fighting a losing battle but it's so amusingly written that when you read Truss having a go at cellphone users, unhelpful shop assistants and people who gob in the street, you want to shout "Yeah!" and thump them for her.

Rebus' Scotland
By Ian Rankin
Photography By Tricia Malley and Ross Gillespie
(Orion $59.99)

Rankin goes back to his childhood and the world that shaped him, along with the fictitious parallel background of DI John Rebus. He explains the genesis of his first Rebus novel, conceived in his freezing student bedsit, and how the two have matured — or not — since then. Rankin decides early on he's glad he'll never meet his creation; "I have the feeling we wouldn't get on."

James Bond: The Man and His World
By Henry Chancellor
(John Murray $39.99)

A must for all Bond aficionados. It opens with the day Fleming started to write Casino Royale: February 17, 1952, and how easily the words came before he finished on March 18 with the words, "The bitch is dead now."
There's an absorbing study of Fleming's racy life, punctuated by spreads on each book, a map of Bond's London, chapters on Bond's (and Fleming's) meticulous taste in food and booze, the Bond villains, women, cars, gadgets, exotic locations — and not a single photo of Connery, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan ... cool.

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Illustrated
By Bill Bryson
(Doubleday $79.95)

Bryson's original Short Version did a fantastic job of explaining the world of science, but this is even better because it has pictures: drawings, diagrams, photos, computer-generated images. So the fascinating text explaining how things work in our world and beyond it becomes even easier to understand and great fun to pore over. He concludes: "It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously."   "