Good non-fiction for a university writing course?

The Onion

There’s just so much great non-fiction out there these days, how on earth to choose? I’m partial to the personal essay or personal narrative. I really like people like David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell. They are both authors who have definitely found their own “writer’s voice” and might be interesting and useful to include in the course for that alone. And they’re laugh out loud funny which students, saddled with so much other heavy reading, always appreciate, I think.

I highly recommend A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom. And if anyone has a copy of A History of the Breast by the same author, I’d love to borrow it.

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point
Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Rachel Carson Silent Spring
Bruce Chatwin Patagonia
Maxine Hong Kingston Woman Warrior

Michael Pollan? Just a suggestion on the food and health aspects.

Some good science writing by Stephen Jay Gould or Carl Sagan would be a great addition.

endorsing @janbb, I think anything by Malcolm Gladwell would meet your criteria.

For education, you can have them read Howard Gardner’s theory on multiple intelligences, which is controversial and can spark debate.

Following up on @weeveeship‘s suggestion, I’d suggest “Intelligence, Multiple Perspectives” by Howard Gardner et all as a good one for them to start with. It introduces his theory plus perspectives from other cultures and contexts for comparison and is more readable than some of the bigger tomes.
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Multiple-Perspectives-Howard-Gardner/dp/0030726298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286835977&sr=8-1

How about “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson? He almost won the Nobel Peace Prize and his book is all about cross-cultural issues.

In addition to @janbb‘s (always) excellent suggestions:

How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer

While I’d endorse The Omnivore’s Dilemma wholeheartedly, I think “The Man who Mistook his Wife for his Hat” doesn’t belong in such distinguished company. It’s not a significant piece of literature nor or science; Sachs is prone to exaggeration and a lightweight in the field of neuroscience, and to read that in place of REAL science writing like Daniel Dennett (or Stephen Jay Gould for that matter) would be shameful.

Point understood, @GeorgeGee, but if the purpose is not to teach the science but rather to present readable (and popular) nonfiction that can be discussed from the point of view of the writing, why wouldn’t something that is debatable in exactly that way be appropriate? Sacks mostly tells stories, and his stories are interesting. This is a writing course and not a course in neuroscience.

I don’t think there’s anything shameful in reading a given book just because somebody else has written better and more authoritatively on the same or another topic. To speak of reading one book in place of another, as if the choice of one necessarily meant the rejection of the other, puts them on a false scale that has nothing to do with their use in the present case.

Personally, I find that there’s a tremendous amount to be learned from examining inferior writing (which is meant as a generalization and not a characterization of any of the authors named). If we don’t explore a range of material, how do we develop our powers of discrimination?

Greg Mortenson: Three Cups of Tea (worth a second recommendation)
Annie LaMott: Bird by Bird
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel
Don Finkel: Teaching with Your Mouth Shut (disclaimer…my brother)

Well if we want a list of inferior writing, I can suggest quite a few more candidates :D

You might also want to check out AJ Jacobs.

Thanks, everyone. These are great suggestions.

I should clarify that this group of students is still developing their abilities in English. They are definitely capable of reading something like Three Cups of Tea, but a book like Guns, Germs and Steel is a little ambitious for them.

Amy Bloom’s Normal is a collection of essays about people whose gender, sex, and sexuality are at odds with society. It’s a lovely and unique book in that it has so little agenda beyond telling people’s stories.

There’s an essay by David Foster Wallace called Consider the Lobster (which can be found in his collection by the same name) about the ethics of killing and cooking a lobster.

Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is an absolutely beautiful and tragic book about cultural misunderstandings between a Hmong family and their epileptic daughter’s American doctors.

@lapilofu The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a great book – I second that.

Also, just thought of Barbara Kingsolver’s environmental essays, particularly the book High Tide in Tuscon.

Also Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. It’s about the struggle to be a modern-day Native American. Quite cross-cultural and a voice that is seldom heard outside of the reservation communities.