Recommended: Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. Fiction? Non-fiction? Had to be made up. A guy born in England to poor circumstances

Recommended: Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. Fiction? Non-fiction? Had to be made up. A guy born in England to poor circumstances ships out to New Orleans, jumps ship, fights in the Civil War on the confederate side, gets captured, fights in the Civil War on the union side, gets wounded, ends up fighting in the union navy. After the war, becomes a journalist in the American west. Then organizes an expedition to the Ottoman empire...OK he's 26 years old at this point. Sure there's some stuff later but...that's a pretty good resume for a 26 year old. Unbelievable. Lou Reed: The King of New York Same thing. Just completely real but also unbelievable. The songs he had written by 1965. Hitler: A Biography, by Ian Kershaw. Completely real, also unbelievable. The German people voting against democracy. Unbelievable. Escape From Rome, Walter Scheidel, "The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world". I think about the Roman Empire a lot, so basically it was a military slave state and it fell and that's bad? The Great Depression: A Diary, I thought I would hate this, let's read a diary, right? Reading a diary of the Great Depression happening in front of you, it's amazing. The dread, and the bargaining. He's like bargaining against reality that the depression will end.