Biographies: Carlos Baker's,
Papa...'bout Ernest Hemingway (I'd read 2 or 3 others about Hemingway...but I think this is the definitive bio...)
I've read several about Faulkner and enjoyed each one though that was long ago...I like how this once he asked these Hollywood guys if it would be okay to go home and write for them...I dunno, scripts and stuff...and they said yea, verily, boy howdy...so he went home to Mississippi. Then he wrote
As I Lay Dying (maybe the most accessible Faulkner story) in six weeks during a time when he worked in the post office.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive...about Jim Morrison
P.O.W. John G Hubbell's account of the P.O.W.'s of the Vietnam War...included in that group is an enlisted man who was blown overboard when he went out on the weather-deck to watch the naval gun...maybe only a five-inch?--and he eventually escaped. Perhaps the only one to do so.
Dispatches, Michael Herr...more about Vietnam...he was also the narrator, I believe, in the opening scene of
Apocalypse Now...Martin Sheen, lying on the bed, etc...though I could have sworn the voice was Sheen's as it did sound like the man.
Something About a Soldier~ Charles Willeford, this is more autobiography...
I Was Looking for a Street...more memoir-type stuff from Willeford...if you have never read any Willeford, you're missing a treat. Give his
Miami Blues a go and tell me I'm wrong.
If you want something that tickles the funny-bone, give Patrick McManus a-go..."outdoor" stories...we share a birthday...and he has whacky titles like
They Shoot Canoes Don't They? and
Never Sniff a Gift Fish. The stories are based on "real-life" experience, hunting, fishing, they are short and sweet. @
blunthead He has characters w/crazy names like Rancid Crabtree, Retch Sweeney...
I've read biographies of Alexander Hamilton, John Adams...one title of the million or so out there about Reagan.