Man-brary, a man's library, suggestions?

Handyman in your Pocket Kinda like The Pocket Ref, but focused on building and maintenance. Great little reference book.

For fiction I'd add The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Definately a classic "Man's" book.
 
Everyone has his own taste in books. Start here when you go shopping:

http://www.addall.com/

It searches 40+ dealer networks (including Amazon Marketplace) and 20,000 dealers. For out of print books, look here:

http://used.addall.com/

Two dozen used dealer networks, and you can de-select the ones you don't want.

A few suggestions on editions:

For literary classics, W.W. Norton & Company's paperback "Norton Critical Editions" are hard to beat for their footnotes and scholarly essays. Their in-print list:

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/subject-detail.aspx?tid=11202

Library of America has good editions of American classics, expertly printed and bound but not cheap: look for a 30–40% discount or buy them used.

http://www.loa.org/catalog.jsp

Dover Publications is a great re-publisher of out-of-print books and editions. You can buy U.S. Grant's Personal Memoirs from Library of America as a well made modern book, or you can buy Dover's reprint. Dover took a clean copy of the first edition Sam Clements organized for his dying friend, photo offset the pages, and reprinted both volumes as a paperback. It's harder to read than a modern edition, but it's a piece of history — at half the price of Library of America.

http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject.html

Mass market paperbacks: Oxford World's Classics for English literature, Penguin for world literature in English translation.
 
Last edited:
I see a few mentions of Stephen Ambrose books, basically anything he wrote should be in your collection along with Edmund Morris' books on Theodore Roosevelt or written by TR himself. An educated man should also have books on major world religions and have usable translations of the major sacred texts that correspond just for the sake of being literate in how other systems believe. There would be no end to what you could have on hand for practical knowledge but illustrated field guides to plants, animals and all things related to natural history should be at hand or borrowed regularly from your local library.
In our house we make a habit of regular library visits so our collection is not going to outgrow our shelves...we store books at our library in town and have them there whenever we want to haul them home for a three week term or extend that if we need more time and no one else is requesting them.
 
I see a few mentions of Stephen Ambrose books, basically anything he wrote should be in your collection along with all books by Edmund Morris' books on Theodore Roosevelt or written by TR himself. David McCullough is another author you should read for good history. An educated man should also have books on major world religions and have usable translations of the major sacred texts that correspond just for the sake of being literate in how other systems believe. There would be no end to what you could have on hand for practical knowledge but illustrated field guides to plants, animals and all things related to natural history should be at hand or borrowed regularly from your local library.
In our house we make a habit of regular library visits so our collection is not going to outgrow our shelves...we store books(co-owned with our neighbors) at our library in town and have them there whenever we want to haul them home for a three week term or extend that if we need more time and no one else is requesting them.
 
medicevans said:
...a guy could find information on all sorts of guy things.
What would your suggestions be? ....
Click to expand...
for a start
win-friends-influence-people.jpeg

51pHF9FIxbL.jpg

169fc060ada0c0c4f024d110.L.jpg

and top it off with a selection from....
logo.png
 
Last edited:
In the Gravest Extreme, Medicine for Mountaineering, Boy Scout Handbook, Official Rules of Card Games (possibly Book of Hoyle or equivalent)
 
Absolutely required for any repository of written knowledge:

John Adams, by David McCullough. Culled from the extensive, detailed diary of John Adams and the writings of his contemporaries, John Adams is a vivid, first hand account of the people and places inextricably woven into the fabric of the new America. For anyone who appreciates history's important lessons, or the Great Men from Adams to Jefferson to Washington who risked both their fortunes and their lives for Freedom's clarion call, this true life account is unsurpassed its accuracy, realism and page-turning drama.

Dang it, Powernoodle - you should have been a literary agent. You rock!
 
willseeyalater said:
leghog said:
Perhaps because he was as plagiarist.
Click to expand...
Getting ready to burn my Ambrose collection....I was not current on the Eisenhower interview fabrications. Off the pedestal he goes and now relegated to the group of "Storytellers Extraordinaire".
Click to expand...
It goes much deeper/farther than that.

As well as Ambrose's embellishment of his interviews and relationship with Eisenhower, his work, The Supreme Commander, has also come under fire for plagiarism. So has, The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, and Crazy Horse and Custer. No doubt there are others.

Then consider Ambrose's concept for Band of Brothers as compared to Donald Burgett's work which includes Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy (with Ambrose involvement in the book), The Road to Arnhem: A Screaming Eagle in Holland, Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne, and Beyond the Rhine: A Screaming Eagle in Germany. Burgett was actually a paratrooper in the A Co, 1-506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division.
 
Last edited:
Cormac McCarthy, all of them. Steinbeck, Burroughs, Hawthorne, Hemingway, London, Poe, Salinger, Tennessee Williams. Aw crap, this could take forever...
 
crom said:
Cormac McCarthy, all of them. Steinbeck, Burroughs, Hawthorne, Hemingway, London, Poe, Salinger, Tennessee Williams. Aw crap, this could take forever...
Click to expand...

I totally agree with Cormac McCarthy. Amazing author.
 
powernoodle said:
Absolutely required for any repository of written knowledge:

John Adams, by David McCullough. Culled from the extensive, detailed diary of John Adams and the writings of his contemporaries, John Adams is a vivid, first hand account of the people and places inextricably woven into the fabric of the new America. For anyone who appreciates history's important lessons, or the Great Men from Adams to Jefferson to Washington who risked both their fortunes and their lives for Freedom's clarion call, this true life account is unsurpassed its accuracy, realism and page-turning drama.

Dang it, Powernoodle - you should have been a literary agent. You rock!
Click to expand...

Not often it happens, but I agree, David McCullough is an excellent authour. Th book Path Between the Seas is another excellent one. It details the building of the Panama Canal which happened concurrent to WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Also, In the Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathanial Philbrick. This is the tru story behind Moby Dick, and was also adapted into a movie of the same title. It uses the journals of Thomas Nickerson, a cabin boy abour the ship who wrote of the tragedy later in life and the notes of Owen Chase, another survivor.


-Xander
 
Blood Meridian, The Road, and No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick, Melville
For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun also Rises, Hemingway
Hell's Angels, Hunter Thompson
Call of the Wild, London

(those are just some US authors)
 
There is actually a collection printed under the name "everyan's library". Easy to find on @m@Z0n
 
I would have the National Outdoor Leadership school's Wilderness Guide . Good information throughout .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top