The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History By Elizabeth Kolbert

This is an excellent description of the current state of knowledge about the five mass extinctions in the history of the world.  The premise is that we are currently witnessing the "sixth extinction" as species are becoming extinct faster than any other time in history, except the other five extinctions.  In some ways the current extinction is causing species to die faster than some of the others.  Elizabeth Kolbert presents hundreds of very sad examples of the loss of species.  Her examples show how so interconnected each species is with so many other species of plant and animals.  She also did a lot of personal travel and research to provide good, first-hand descriptions in her examples.
There is also a good youtube video that summarizes very well the details presented in the book.  See this link: http://youtu.be/z9gHuAwxwAs

  

Drinking Water by James Salzman

It is hard to believe that a book about the history and current global problems with drinking water could be interesting, but it was!  Salzman did a LOT of homework and research in order to put this book together.  It is clear that the problems of adequate drinking water is one of the more important ones that the world will need to solve during the upcoming decades.  Salzman shows how drinking water was always a concern in most societies throughout history, and now with the increasing world population, the problems will only become worse.  Definitely worth reading! 

Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General by Bill O'Reilly, and Martin Dugan

Excellent book!  Amazing how the authors are able to create some suspense in a historical book!  Very good explanation of the interplay of the military and political leaders who were involved during World War II.  They include Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Truman, and many famous American, British, and German generals.  They were all unique, brilliant in many ways, but seemed to have character flaws.   O'Reilly and Dugan are able to make caricatures of these famous individuals by describing their daily habits, family and extramarital affairs -- but done in fairly short, to-the-point descriptions.  It wasn't a long book, and kept my interest throughout.  I really liked the "afterword" at the end that described what happened to most of the characters mentioned in the book.