* Daniel Quinn - Beyond Civilization (an easy read about what's wrong with today's society, why, and how to fix it. Not political, rather what you can do yourse

* Daniel Quinn - Beyond Civilization (an easy read about what's wrong with today's society, why, and how to fix it. Not political, rather what you can do yourself. It was a real eye-opener to me) * Jared Diamond - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Jared Diamond is a geographer who writes about societies and civilizations, and how they tackle changing conditions) * Herfried Münkler - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Münkler writes about different historical and contemporary empires and hegemonies, why they did what they did, and why they failed early or managed to stay for centuries. Very non-political and matter-of-factly) * Ursula K. LeGuin - The Word for World is Forest, The Earthsea Saga (Science Fiction/Fantasy, LeGuin is pretty different from most sci-fi-writers. Earthsea is pretty standard magicians/dragons-fantasy, though) * Ryszard Kapuściński - Travels with Herodotus (Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who traveled a lot. Here, he tries to walk in Herodotus' foot-steps. Basically, a modern day Herodotus) * Jules Verne - All of his books are worth reading. Visionary and engaging.