I have a wonderful (awesome, super duper) student who loves my class and does all his work in about 30 seconds. On Monday I’ll assign a project to be due Friday, and he’ll come in with it done on Tuesday. It will be totally A+ work, too. He spent the rest of the week helping other kids finish their projects and using his as a model (“No, miss, I don’t want your help, I want to see his project again! Can he come over and explain?”)
I’ve decided to give him extra credit; a book to read, which he can later write a book report about, or tell the class about, something for him to do when he’s already done everything for class. Only he’s a hard kid to match with a history book; he doesn’t like comics (that eliminates Maus and Persepolis, my go-to books), he likes “everything,” and he says he’d rather read non-fiction. I think his reading is right about where it should be (9th grade) or maybe a little higher. Short of simply giving him Bauer’s Story of the World and telling him to learn everything… What should I give him? What would you give him?
In summary: Non-fiction, non-comic, any historical era, 9th grade, engaging enough for a student to read on his own. Suggestions needed!!
Teaching (smarter) 
A People’s History of the US by Howard Zinn? Lots of kids in my school read that book and love it.
I read something called “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan this summer. It’s about the Dustbowl. History/social history/personal history, all tied together, with good, solid background. Much of it reads like a story, not history, but the personal anecdotes inform the history, they don’t substitute for it.
Years ago I read a book called The Staffs of Life or somesuch, about, well, different grains. It had been serialized (cerealized, ha ha) in the New Yorker years before. I think, though, that the science might be a bit dated.
Salt, by Mark Kurlansky, was making the rounds a few years ago. I think he got lost in the details a bit too much.
Guns Germs and Steel is likely too hard a read for such a young kid, but maybe not.
Anyway, that’s my suggestion – something with history that’s not “just” history. There are regular people, culture, technology, raw materials – all that not so regular stuff.
I’d second People’s History.
I also have Lies My Teacher Told Me. which is about cultural biases in history texts.
And The Short and Bloody History of Knights, Spies and Pirates (I think that’s the order in the title). This one’s a bit lower-level than the other too, but lots of fun as well, and all the books are written for adults, so it’s not like it talks down to the kids.
Lies my teacher told me is actually what I was thinking about; I’m going to grab a copy and flip through to see how the reading level is. I feel like Zinn might be too hard, but I might be skewed because I didn’t read it until college. I think there’s a kids’ version of Zinn now, right?
Looks like I’ll be at the bookstore this weekend.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, followed by Ishmael, followed by letting him choose what to read next.
Or, let him choose an area and then help him research for real and read a variety of texts on it. My kids seem to LOVE the things about which they feel like experts; one of my most difficult students entertained our club for thirty minutes with completely accurate stories about Rosa Parks and dismissed my surprise with “I did a project on her.”