Morbid Non-Fiction Recommendations

[Heidizzle]

If anyone is interested, I recently finished two very good non-fiction books (I'm usually a fiction-only kind of girl):

Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, by Deborah Hayden

and

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

Pox is a great one for fiction lovers, since it covers everyone from Christopher Columbus to Oscar Wilde to Adolf Hitler, but mostly focuses on authors and poets of the 19th Century.

 

[ions]

If you're looking for morbid I would look into accounts of the Nazi prison camps. There's no shortage of morbid non-fiction about that topic.

 

[Ronny]

You might like Death's Acre by Bill Bass, if you want to read more about cadavers. I liked it, I have a lonely thread here somewhere about it.http://www.thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7827&highlight=death%27s+acre

 

[ValkyrieRaven88]

If you like morbid, I read Patrica Cornwell's Jack the Ripper book, and it was really awesome. She totally convinced me she knew who the killer was. Warning: gruesome crime scene photos of the victims. Black and white, though, and blurry, so it's not as terrible as it would be today. It still made me a little green, though.

 

[Ronny]

If you like morbid, I read Patrica Cornwell's Jack the Ripper book, and it was really awesome. She totally convinced me she knew who the killer was. Warning: gruesome crime scene photos of the victims. Black and white, though, and blurry, so it's not as terrible as it would be today. It still made me a little green, though.

That one was good too.

 

[Heidizzle]

Warning: gruesome crime scene photos of the victims. Black and white, though, and blurry, so it's not as terrible as it would be today.

I don't mind gory photos--I've got a coffee table style book on serial killers that has some rather vivid police photos. I know which Jack the Ripper photos you mean, though (there are only so many floating out there) and he really did quite a number on that victim. Phew!

I'm not usually a Cornwell fan, but I'll check it out.

Have you tried any Harold Schechter? He's got a great series on famous killers and criminals...

 

[literati_one]

True crime is usually pretty morbid.

 

[SFG75]

Marilyn Manson's book took the cake for me. What a freak.

 

[raffaellabella]

The Great Mortality - AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF THE BLACK DEATH by John Kelly.

 

[SFG75]

The Great Mortality - AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF THE BLACK DEATH by John Kelly.

Now THAT one sounds interesting.

 

[Heidizzle]

The Great Mortality - AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF THE BLACK DEATH by John Kelly.

Ooooh! Yes, you know, I was recently thinking about finding a good book about the Plague. Or pirates. Both are intriguing to me. Although I have a feeling that pirate books are mostly going to be boring economic-minded texts. So that's a no on the pirates then.

 

[raffaellabella]

I have a fascination with the Black Death. I've read a few books on it and on a scientific level I find it interesting, and also terrifying on a social level.