The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Book List

Do you like to read about freaky, unimaginative things? Check out this book list...



1) "The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty" by G.J. Meyer

Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer provides a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty—and some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. In 1485, Henry Tudor, whose claim to the English throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, nevertheless sailed from France with a ragtag army to take the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four centuries. Fifty years later, his son, Henry VIII, aimed to seize even greater powers—ultimately leaving behind a brutal legacy that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country. Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before realizing his dream. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir, while Elizabeth I sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive.

The Tudors presents the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, of this enthralling era.

2) "Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen" by Joanna Denny

This powerful new biography presents a portrait of Anne Boleyn different from the unsavory and unflattering accounts of her that have come down through history. Instead, we learn about the real Anne-a woman who was highly literate, accomplished, an intellectual, and a devout defender of her Protestant faith. Anne’s tragedy began when her looks and vivacious charm attracted the notice of England’s violent and paranoid king whose love for her trapped her in the vicious politics of the Tudor court. This compelling account of Anne Boleyn plunges the reader into the intrigue, romance, and danger of King Henry VIII’s court and the turbulent times that would change England forever. It will forever change our perception of this much-maligned queen.

3) "Wicked Richmond" by Beth Brown

Home to many of the nation's original founders and statesmen, Richmond has a history that runs as deep as America itself. Yet within these depths lies something darker. For despite its illustrious reputation, Richmond has a sordid streak. Venture through the city's colorful history of vice, intrigue and subterfuge with author Beth Brown as she traces the scandalous stories that pepper Richmond's past. From colonial founding to the Prohibition era and beyond, Wicked Richmond presents a comprehensive look at the city's murky history. Whether it's tales of Civil War espionage, Spanish pirates captured off the Virginia coast and brought to justice in Richmond, rumrunners peddling liquor during Prohibition or the misadventures of upper-crust colonial families, Wicked Richmond captures the spirit of debauchery that runs through this historic city's past.

4) "Path to Freedom: My Story of Perseverance" by Conrad Taylor

Little about Conrad Taylor's upbringing in a remote mining town in Guyana, South America, prepared him for West Point - at the height of the Vietnam War. An extraordinary opportunity for most, the highly-regimented United States Military Academy was a life-changer for him. Enduring culture shock and surviving rude awakenings hardened the rigorous West Point Experience. And, Third World politics after West Point - because of West Point - tested it severely. The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction memoir has a simple proposition. Fly-or-die!

"PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance" describes what happened upon Taylor's return to a government turned repressive, anti-American, and paranoid - overnight. The Soviet-leaning, Cold-War-era dictatorship feared regime change. Its power-hungry leaders obsessed about him being a spy for the United States. His was the impossible task of proving that he was not - or else!

The historically-accurate book provides a unique prism through which to see the cultural trauma of emigration, the unique experience that is West Point, the personal side of Cold-War-era geopolitics, and the mayhem of Third World politics. The view will be nostalgic for some, shocking to many, and enlightening for others. The nonfiction reads like a novel. Its subtly-threaded love story will enchant - at the very least.

5) "Paradise Rediscovered: The Roots of Civilization" by Michael A. Cahill

This book attempts a methodical reconstruction of the Neolithic society which gave rise to the first civilisation, leading to the possibility that some ancient peoples commanded a now lost recipe for extended life-spans (the legendary elixir of life). The work spans mythology, linguistics, ancient texts, astronomy, earth sciences, human genetics, and the cell biology of ageing. Its scholarly but colloquial and non-academic provocative style is intended for an interested but non expert audience. 

6) "The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code" by Margalit Fox

In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative.

When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe’s earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery.

Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean—the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen—to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the deipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.

7) "Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists" by Colin A. Ross

In BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Dr. Ross provides proof, based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, that the Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction. He describes the experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects.

The funding of the experiments by the CIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force is proven from CIA documents and the doctors' own publications. BLUEBIRD proves that there was extensive political abuse of psychiatry in North America throughout the second half of the twentieth century, perpetrated not by a few renegade doctors, but by leading psychiatrists, psychologists, pharmacologists, neurosurgeons and medical schools.

8) "Elizabeth I" by Anne Somerset

Glitteringly detailed and engagingly written, the magisterial Elizabeth I brings to vivid life the golden age of sixteenth-century England and the uniquely fascinating monarch who presided over it. A woman of intellect and presence, Elizabeth was the object of extravagant adoration by her contemporaries. She firmly believed in the divine providence of her sovereignty and exercised supreme authority over the intrigue-laden Tudor court and Elizabethan England at large. Brilliant, mercurial, seductive, and maddening, an inspiration to artists and adventurers and the subject of vicious speculation over her choice not to marry, Elizabeth became the most powerful ruler of her time. Anne Somerset has immortalized her in this splendidly illuminating account.