Shakespeare: The World As a Stage - Bill Bryson

I really liked this book.  I've always liked the way Bryson can distill down a mass of historical fact, and here he does almost the opposite - trying to extrapolate something about a man about who we know very nearly nothing.  Bryson effectively debunks the theory that Shakespeare didn't write his plays, and also educated me on how many errors and mistakes are actually in the plays themselves, as well as going into some detail on the many mysteries that the sonnets represent.  It's a short book but, as Bryson makes clear, there's just not much to work with if you're not willing to make up your own version of Shakespeare from what the plays say to you - which Bryson makes clear is what most people have been doing for the past almost 400 years.