For non-fiction, a favorite author is
Daniel J Boorstin. His trilogy...
The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself (1983)
The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (1992)
The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World (1998)
is incredibly thorough and well written in the sense that he ties as much of the content together as possible.
For something outside of the western patriarchy... a friend gave me a copy of
A Personal Anthology by
Jorge Luis Borges and this book is interesting because each short story or poem is translated by a different person. Here is one of the first poems that stood out to me...
Composed in the early 1960s, here is the last stanza of that poem:
His great-grandson is writing these lines
and a silent voice comes to him out of the past,
out of the blood:
“What does my battle at Junín matter if it is only
a glorious memory, or a date learned by rote
for an examination, or a place in the atlas?
The battle is everlasting and can do without
the pomp of actual armies and of trumpets.
Junín is two civilians cursing a tyrant
on a street corner,
or an unknown man somewhere, dying in prison.
Su bisnieto escribe estos versos y una tácita voz
desde lo antiguo de la sangre le llega:
– Qué importa mi batalla de Junín si es una gloriosa memoria,
una fecha que se aprende para un examen o un lugar en el atlas,
La batalla es eterna y puede prescindir de la pompa
de visibles ejércitos con clarines:
Junín son dos civiles que en una esquina maldicen a un tirano,
o un hombre oscuro que se muere en la carcel.