John McPhee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John McPhee is a FABULOUS author whose writing style makes so many topics gripping. The Geology book 'basin and range' is fantastic. The John McPhee Reader, a collection of excerpts, is a GREAT place to begin if you want to get a sense for the author.

Another one I love is a book called Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World- it's cod-centrism! It's funny! It's tragic! It explains the colonization of North America, among other subjects, entirely through its relation to the salt-cod industry. And there's another one, Salt, that is its later companion.