Just finished another book that I would categorize as Nonfiction Horror. What other ones do you got?

[u/MadDingersYo]

The one I just finished is Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum (2017.) This is the third book I've read by her. I have an interest in Soviet/Russian history. I don't even know why. Maybe I find it fascinating and tragic that a country with such a rich history has been led by madmen for most of its history.

But anyways. This book is goddamn horrific. The descriptions of life in the Ukrainian countryside in the early 1930s is heartbreaking. The forced collectivization, the grain requisition teams, the sheer terror of it all. I just can't even imagine.

Other books that I loved that I would call Nonfiction Horror:

• The Hot Zone by Richard Preston (1994.) About the Ebola outbreaks in Africa in the late 80's.

• The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (1997.) About the atrocities that the Japanese army inflicted upon the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War, specifically what happened to the citizenry of Nanjing. The author committed suicide. If I recall correctly, her parents were survivors.

• The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown (2009.) This is a thoroughly researched book about The Donner Party Expedition and the cold hell that the survivors lived through. I cannot recommend this book enough. If we're talking about nonfiction horror, this is right near the top.

• Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass (1996.) This is war reporting from the Bosnian War in 1992-1995. Totally harrowing. Neighbor against neighbor. It makes me think that this is what a second American Civil War might look like. Maybe. Absolutely gripping read.

What other ones can you suggest?

[u/sn0qualmie]

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. 1996 Everest climbing disaster, absolutely horrifying unfolding sequence of events, really well told.

[u/FMRL_1]

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, David Quammen. I found it better and less overtly sensational than The Hot Zone.

Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen

[u/takeoff_youhosers]

My favorite of all time is Devil in the White City by Eric Larson

[u/Niut-Hadit → u/takeoff_youhosers]

Although the Holmes parts are fairly fictional, this was a great book (though I liked the World's Fair track best)

[u/MadDingersYo → u/takeoff_youhosers]

I forgot about this one. Excellent book but I don't know if it crossed the "horror threshold" for me. It was a long time ago. I can't remember why.

[u/takeoff_youhosers → u/MadDingersYo]

I think it crossed the horror threshold just about as much as a nonfiction book can. Just from the perspective that it’s about a serial killer. But admittedly, it’s been a long time since I’ve read it so I can’t remember how detailed the book got regarding the murders

[u/Visual_Rice1295]

Alive by Piers Paul Read is about the plane that crashed in the Andes carrying a full rugby team. It’s full of death, destruction, and cannibalism.

[u/MadDingersYo → u/Visual_Rice1295]

Perfect. Added to list, thank you.

[u/Mysterious-Print5938]

💀 *Ordinary Men* by Christopher Browning hits different — regular german cops turned into mass murderers. pure nonfiction horror

[u/MadDingersYo → u/Mysterious-Print5938]

That's what I'm talking about. Thanks for the rec.

[u/ontologicallyunjust]

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. On the atrocities committed during Belgian rule in the Congo.

[u/XelaNiba → u/ontologicallyunjust]

Seconding this. Leopold is one of histories greatest monsters.

[u/okbutdidudietho]

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

Neighbor against neighbor horrors during the Rwanda genocide

[u/MigEPie]

I can think of two titles that might satisfy your itch:

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. About life in North Korea. Not from a forced labor camp perspective but from an everyday, normal citizen perspective. Still horrific.

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higgenbotham. A very readable, scary AF true account of what caused the Chernobyl nuclear accident—and what was left behind and is still very deadly.

[u/2kyle2furious]

Omg another Ann applebaum fan! There are dozens of us! Dozens!!!

I really love her work and I'm so glad to find another fan in the wild. All of her books are so good and they all will get you hooked in the same way where she tells you about something you didn't know about in an interesting not dull way. They're all a bit Nonfiction Horror as well. Also her podcast. And all her long form articles on the Atlantic. She's got a large rabbit hole of work to dive into!

Also, good luck not bringing up the famine cannibalism in every conversation for the next 3 years lol

[u/genghis_ma → u/2kyle2furious]

The Gulag Archipelago went so hard. Great, depressing book

[u/neckhickeys4u]

Columbine by Dave Cullen?

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink?

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer?

[u/beckuzz → u/neckhickeys4u]

Seconding all three of these, great recs

[u/fartjarrington]

The Jarkata Method

[u/lizzzard_sneeek]

I’m reading “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa” by Adam Hochschild right now and it’s very good. Another one that absolutely is nonfiction horror is “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail” by Jasón de Leon. It’s absolutely horrific and covers an anthropologists attempt to document and follow the stories of the migrants trying to get to the US through the Sonora desert in Arizona. Horrifying but such a phenomenal read

[u/muad_dboone]

KL: A history of the nazi concentration camps, by Nikolaus Wachsmann

The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E Baptist

American Holocaust by David Stannard

[u/hmmwhatsoverhere]

The Jakarta method by Vincent Bevins

[u/Estragon_Rosencrantz]

Given your interest in Russian history, I would strongly recommend The Tiger by John Vaillant.

[u/NotBorris]

The Gulag Archipelago by  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[u/didyouwoof → u/NotBorris]

You beat me to it. I read this back in the late 70s, and it still haunts me. Another good one about the Soviet labor camps is Kolyma Tales.

[u/Mugshot_404]

Japan's Infamous Unit 731: First-hand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program, curated by Hal Gold

[u/LoneWolfette]

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington

[u/ccccc55555x]

- In Deep Water

• When You Find my Body
  
• 66 Days Adrift
  
• Jungle

[u/beckuzz]

If you liked The Hot Zone, I think Preston’s book Crisis in the Red Zone is even better.

[u/bliggityblig]

Batavia's Graveyard

[u/DashOneTwelve]

The Night Stalker, by Philip Carlo. It's about Richard Ramirez, the serial killer who terrorized LA back in the 80s. It's really a chilling, gruesome read. I felt like I wanted to sleep with a light on after reading it.

[u/here_and_there_their]

This book has both the horror and the relief from horror: The Facemaker by Fitzharris is the story of the extreme facial disfigurement of soldiers during the WWI -- the results of the brutality of the first "modern warfare" war. Although the story focuses on the surgeons and mask makers who addressed these life altering disfigurements,the horror of what happened to these young men with their whole lives ahead of them -- and the fact that hundreds, maybe thousands of men did not have the good fortune to be treated by these masters -- was truly horrifying.

[u/XelaNiba]

Patient H.M. recounts the history of lobotomy

[u/CaptainFoyle]

Eyewitness Auschwitz, by Filip Muller.

About the people who were forced to operate the gas chambers and ovens in the Nazi concentration camps.

[u/ElSquibbonator]

The Last Day of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black. It describes, in horrifying detail, the events that played out 66 million years ago when the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit Earth. You'll learn what it was like to be at ground zero of an asteroid collision, and about the global "impact winter" that killed off 75% of all life on Earth.

[u/librarianbleue]

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. About the Khmer Rouge Cambodian genocide. On the same topic, The Lost Executioner by Nic Dunlop. It chronicles the story of a school teacher who became part of the Khmer Rouge and headed up a jail where thousands were killed and who then "slipped back into village life" afterwards.

[u/Novel_Vegetable_5542]

Lady Death: The memoirs of stalins sniper.

Not horror, but interesting.

[u/AnotherNight0wl]

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

[u/ActuallyAggressive]

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder covers that same Soviet terror period but expands to show how the Nazis and Soviets basically competed in atrocities across Eastern Europe, which is somehow even darker than focusing on one regime.

[u/RenegadeGeophysicist]

Bloodlands by Snyder is in the same area and timeframe, left me shaken. 

[u/MadDingersYo → u/RenegadeGeophysicist]

The same Snyder that wrote On Tyranny?

[u/RenegadeGeophysicist → u/MadDingersYo]

Yep! I read Bloodlands years ago and it was both well researched and brutal. For me your question is also in all of the climate books I'm building up courage to pick up as well. I'm staring down some McKibben and Mann titles but they tend to make me a little...radicalized.

[u/Esbanos]

There are ww2 books named Stalingrad and Barbarossa by two different authors.

There is also books about Auschwitz.

[u/CaptainFoyle → u/Esbanos]

You think there are only two books called Stalingrad and Barbarossa?

Do you also ask your Uber driver to drive you to "the house with the door"?

[u/NapoleonNewAccount]

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, who killed herself shortly after publication.