Good points. There's a lot of nonfiction out there that tells stories. I've been addicted to the history of the Tudor dynasty in England since my teens. As a general rule, when people fictionalize those parts of history they become less interesting. Truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.

I'm also a big fan of Simon Winchester, whose nonfiction books take a set of historical events (the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in the 1800s, for example) and always put them in an interesting and thought provoking context.