What Genre?

My favorite books to read are non-fiction ones. I like feminist works of course (Egalia’s Daughters and The Beauty Myth), as well as animal facts or stories (James Harriot, Fluke), nutrition kinds of stuff (mostly Marion Nestle), and books about addiction or psychological issues (Ellen Hopkins, and Drinking:  A Love Story).

 

But my very, very favorite type of book is history. But that’s not quite specific enough. I don’t like just any history. War stories bore me to death, any dry, description of dates and events will not work. Instead, I like the stuff controversies and conspiracies are made of. But not hokey, weird fiction stuff that’s unsubstantiated. My favorite reads have just as many reference pages quoting original sources as they have pages of information presented in story form. That’s the problem, I’m unsure what catagory this type of writing falls under.  Oh, I don’t know if I’m making any sense. Maybe if I tell you some titles, you’ll get a better idea (bear with any misspellings or incomplete author names):

The Big Rich:  The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

Dark Alliance-Gary Webb

Triangle:  The Fire That Changed America

Eight Men Out:  The Black Sox & the 1919 World Series

The Smartest Guys in the Room:  The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of ENRON

The Worst Hard Time-Timothy Egan

Game of Shadows-my sidenote:  (about the BALCO steroid scandal that rocked sports)

The Jungle-Upton Sinclair

A Stolen Life-Jaycee (Lee) Dugard

Doctors From Hell:  The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans-Spitz

The Devil in Massachusetts-Starkey

Legacy of Ashes:  History of the CIA-Tim Weiner

In Nixon’s Web-Patrick Gray III

 

Anyone have the genre or category that these might fit in?  If you could comment, it would really help me mention my favorite books in a halfway intelligent manner.  Is there some website where you can pick some book titles and have it generate a genre or another book that is similar?  File under:  Things I need to know!