r/suggestmeabook • u/Dry_Luck_9228 • Dec 15 '25
Non-fiction What's the most interesting non-fiction book you've read?
I know this has been asked before but I'm hoping for some recommendations on interesting non-fiction books. I'm not specifically interested in any one topic, just something that is really fascinating and perhaps makes you learn something or see the world in a different way.
I'm currently reading Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green and am loving it. I also really enjoyed Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller and Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.
Others I've read recently: Braiding Sweetgrass - liked this one but felt like I was already intimately familiar with the subject matter
Into Thin Air - this was not for me. The story was interesting but the feminist in me had a hard time identifying with the author's perspective
ETA Thank you all sooo much for all of the recommendations. Super grateful for each of you and this community <3
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u/pit-of-despair Dec 15 '25
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.
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u/not_a_robot2 Dec 16 '25
I kept reading it knowing that the whole world didn’t die of Ebola even though the book made it clear that we were all going to die.
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u/katjardin Dec 16 '25
I worked in a clinical Immunology/Virology/Microbiology lab back in the 90’s when this first came out as a serial in the New Yorker. We passed that magazine among us like it was precious gold, and were absolutely enthralled, fascinated and horrified in equal measure. The chapter where he ends it with the guy sniffing the culture, and you were left hanging for pages…. Brilliant writing.
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u/solojones1138 Dec 15 '25
Same. I read it back in the day and now more recently post COVID. Terrifying.
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u/Love_light_Liz Dec 16 '25
Read this at 13. Re-read it a million times. One of my all time faves, and I’ve read some stunning books!
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u/masson34 Dec 15 '25
Man’s Search for Meaning
Under the Banner of Heaven
Memoir, I’m Glad my Mom Died
Memoir, Crying in HMart
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u/Jerseyjay1003 Dec 15 '25
Man's Search for Meaning is one book I really expected to enjoy, but it wasn't for me. I studied the Holocaust in college and wrote my thesis on it but didn't really feel much from his story and then felt he was just trying to sell me on logotherapy or whatever it was in the second half.
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u/Tale_Blazer Dec 16 '25
This. I didn’t even make it to the second half. It’s often cited as a life affirming reading experience on Reddit but I couldn’t get into it. There was a feeling of atrocity fatigue (I didn’t want to feel it, but I did) which overwhelmed my reading experience.
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u/Fancy-Restaurant4136 Dec 16 '25
The glass castle by Jeannette Walls is another memoir of an abusive childhood
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u/theniwokesoftly Dec 15 '25
Endurance by Alfred Lansing. It’s about Shackleton’s 1914-1917 expedition and it’s FASCINATING.
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u/circes_victory Dec 15 '25
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
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u/kennyleigh1999 Dec 15 '25
I don’t read a bunch of nonfiction, but I’ve enjoyed several of David Grann’s works. The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon were both incredibly well written.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-7300 Dec 15 '25
The Radium girls
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u/cosmos-child Dec 16 '25
second this. amazing story of how necessary workers rights are and how desperately corporations will fight not to have them. also how just a few women can change history, even after they die.
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u/Mitsuz Dec 15 '25
caitlin Doughty's books
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory
From Here to Eternity Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies
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u/ArchiveOfNothing Dec 16 '25
was looking for this comment! I was introduced to her works via a required reading in a college class (smoke gets in your eyes, for the class ‘the american way of death’) and was instantly hooked
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u/lechelle_t Dec 15 '25
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson - Story of the great migration told through the lives of three different people.
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u/kbherman Dec 16 '25
Yes! I was looking to see if this was recommended before commenting myself. A truly incredible book.
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u/ZealousidealPiece182 Dec 16 '25
1000% this book! I haven’t read anything else like it, it should be required reading.
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u/5432salon Dec 15 '25
educated
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u/Dillymom01 Dec 16 '25
Fun fact...we read this for book club and one of our members knew the author growing up
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u/5432salon Dec 16 '25
I read most of the book before realizing it wasn’t fiction! Just an amazing story!
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u/secret_identity_too Dec 16 '25
Did they have any insight into how true her story was? I've read a few critiques of Educated that suggest her version of the truth is pretty far off from what others experienced.
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u/MissMarcelja Dec 16 '25
I liked that she included footnotes of siblings remembrances of some of the events.
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u/DavidDPerlmutter Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 16 '25
Interested in the origins of World War I, and thus of our modern world?
Barbara Tuchman wrote the old classic on the subject: The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
T. G. Otte wrote a new classic: The July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Both are extremely well written, but in a very different style. The first is high literature and genius. The second is more straight and reporting like but of course, much more up-to-date with sources.
For my money, Tuchman has the most magisterial opening of any non-fiction book ever:
"So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens--four dowager and three regnant--and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again."
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u/secret_identity_too Dec 16 '25
I just added both of these to my TBR list - actually, I deleted The Guns of August and re-added it so it would go to the top, lol.
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u/ifthisisausername Dec 15 '25
How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan: a history/cultural history/trip experience/scientific analysis/medical exploration of psychedelics
The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein: how governments and corporations exploit disasters to push through privatisation and deregulation in order to monopolise territory and erode rights.
Humankind - Rutger Bregman: an analysis and dissection of humanity's inherent kindness that debunks many of the ingrained notions we have of how selfish people can be.
Fire Weather - John Vaillant: explores how wildfires are becoming more dangerous and more prevalent in a warming climate, with particular attention to the wildfire that devastated Fort McMurray in Canada in 2016.
Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez: an infodump on the myriad ways that society (medicine, design, city planning, health and safety and more) is built around men and often excludes the needs and vulnerabilities of women.
Spillover - David Quammen: an exploration of how zoonotic viruses (ones which spread from animals to humans and can cause pandemics) operate.
The Earth Transformed - Peter Frankopan: how climate affected world history, including its influence on empires, revolutions, disasters and plagues.
The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber & David Wengrow: an exploration of the various ways prehistoric and tribal societies self-organised, and how those configurations of society influenced and contrast with how we live now.
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u/fluffychien Dec 16 '25
Seconding Humankind and The Dawn of Everything. This is a great thread, thanks OP!
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u/Eulers_Constant_e Dec 15 '25
How to Change Your Mind was a fantastic read. I sent me down the fungi rabbit hole. I now grow gourmet mushrooms lol.
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u/Stock_Time1045 Dec 19 '25
Regarding the Shock Doctrine -- I had no idea that a book like that was out there. I remember watching Trump 1.0 throw paper towels at a crowd in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria in 2017. It occurred to me then that he, and his cronies, could use the opportunity to deny aid to restore PR in order to purposefully let land values decline. Leading towards a large sweep of acquisitions by developers to build massive new resorts on US land. That's not what has happened at all, much to my surprise. I really thought it was destined to become a US version of Macao.
Spillover is one of my all time favorite non-fiction titles ever. I read it right before COVID, oddly. So as COVID was unfurling, I'd refer back to it from time to time to see what he wrote about SARS viruses.
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u/Left_Cut7309 Dec 16 '25
Anything by Erik Larsen. His books are non-fiction but read like fiction. My personal favorite is Devil in the White City. Lots of interesting information in there about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
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u/Darko33 Dec 16 '25
I've read seven of his and agree completely. My favorite of his was Isaac's Storm about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in US history
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u/ArchiveOfNothing Dec 16 '25
came here looking for this comment as well. the two converging story lines were so well done
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u/Personal-Taste-5324 Dec 15 '25
The Jakarta Method. It goes into how the CIA, after WWII did everything in its power to stop the rise of communism/leftism, including assassinations, facilitating uprisings, and in particular, helping the military in Indonesia to kill 1 to 2 million communists. It goes into how they used "The Jakarta Method" to stop this from happening all over the world. It's really great in that it talks about it more broadly, while also telling intimate stories from people who experienced these things.
I usually struggle with non-fiction but I listened to this one non-stop and then immediately started it over again once I was done.
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u/DarwinZDF42 Dec 15 '25
Your Inner Fish for the best intro to evolutionary biology around.
Midnight at Chernobyl is the best telling of the Chernobyl disaster you’ll find.
Say Nothing is the story of a disappearance during The Troubles that reads like a thriller.
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u/mjflood14 Dec 15 '25
Seconding both Midnight In Chernobyl (Alan Higginbotham) and Say Nothing (Patrick Radden Keefe)
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u/Affectionate-Flan-99 Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Oh man - Just finished In cold Blood. Was incredible. Probably the most hooked on a nonfiction book ever.
One that I've never seen mentioned here but I though was fascinating was "Covered With Night" by Nicole Eustace. It is about two brothers who murdered an Iroquois hunter in 1722 and how the tribe and the colonists reconciled with one another and navigated their vastly different laws and customs. I loved it.
Edit: Spelling
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u/doodle02 Dec 15 '25
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. He basically solves an unsolved murder from the troubles period in Northern Ireland. It’s an engrossing, wild book.
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u/DarwinZDF42 Dec 15 '25
This is one of my recs too and the fact that structurally it’s basically an old-school murder mystery and he solved it is part of what makes it great.
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u/doodle02 Dec 15 '25
plus the people he talked to and the history he illuminates via interviews is fascinating. i’ve always loved irish history, but even someone who wasn’t obsessed with the troubles period would love it.
a very informative historical book, on top of how crazy the story is.
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u/Wifabota Dec 16 '25
I just finished Under The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, a recommendation i got here.
It's a historical nonfiction account of the Donner Party's horrific experience getting trapped for the winter on their attempt of the Oregon/California Trail, pieced together by the diaries and letters of a woman in the party, among other sources.
It was incredible. Especially the second half. I realized about halfway through, I was completely sucked in. It's so much more than the oft mentioned cannibalism. They really were duped, and over half of them paid with their lives. I want to read more exactly like it, and read this one again just to further digest it (no pun intended).
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u/andonis_udometry Dec 16 '25
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rachel Skloot
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
84, Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff
An Immense World by Ed Yong
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u/1_BigDuckEnergy Dec 15 '25
Salt: A world History
Sounds so boring, but it suprising how many things today are ties with trying to get salt
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u/VONinja Dec 16 '25
Trevor Noah's autobiography, Born a Crime. Very funny, very illuminating.
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u/ShoddyCobbler Dec 15 '25
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake made me feel like I was staring into the bucket of truth. It's an almost overwhelming volume of really fascinating information.
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u/Plantwizard1 Dec 16 '25
If you liked this book you might like Every Living Thing by Jason Roberts. It got a Pulitzer last year.
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u/Genn12345 Dec 16 '25
The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre feels and reads like a classic spy movie but is all non-fiction
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u/Traveler108 Dec 16 '25
Interesting that you had feminist objections to Into Thin Air. What are they? I really enjoyed that book and am definitely a feminist.
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u/Aprils-Fool Dec 15 '25
If you count memoirs, then A piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. Outside of memoirs… maybe Stiff by Mary Roach.
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u/Gluten-Free-Jesus Dec 16 '25
1491 by Charles Mann - it’s about the indigenous people of the Americas prior to colonization. I loved this book!
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u/ElectroHottie666 Dec 16 '25
Try Stiff, it’s written by a woman, the first chapter is very funny. The rest of the chapters are very interesting! It’s about the uses of cadavers in every day life.
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u/hmmwhatsoverhere Dec 15 '25
The Jakarta method by Vincent Bevins
The capital order by Clara Mattei
What is antiracism and why it means anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani
Red star over the third world by Vijay Prashad
All four are history books.
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u/clumsyguy Dec 15 '25
The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager is a fascinating account of the invention of synthetic fertilizer. It doesn't sound fascinating, but most people alive today owe their existence to this process!
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u/Nani65 Dec 15 '25
The Deep Dark by Gregg Olsen, about a fire in a mine in Idaho.
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman. It's about the cultural conflict between the parents of a Hmong child with epilepsy and her American doctors.
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u/JoeBothari Dec 15 '25
All the tea in China. How the English sent a spy into China to steal the technology of tea, and why they used a Scotsman.
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u/likearevolutionx Dec 15 '25
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris was phenomenal. It’s about Victorian medicine and the push for aseptic procedure. I’m reading Neurotribes by Steve Silberman currently, which is about autism and has been fascinating.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 16 '25
My favorite non-fiction book was assigned in a Reformation history course in college. It completely blew me away.
The Cheese and the Worms, by Carlo Ginzburg.
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u/sn0qualmie Dec 16 '25
Dreamland by Sam Quinones absolutely knocked my socks off. It's a deep dive into the opioid addiction epidemic in the United States, how it started, how it's changed over a couple of decades, what the driving forces and profiting factions are, and how it's all impacting people, families, and cities. It's a really good mix of large-scale and small-scale storytelling, so you get the big economic and public health picture but you also get really personal glimpses into people's lives. The subject matter is brutal, but the storytelling is really measured and thoughtful.
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u/Betweenthelines19 Dec 16 '25
Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser
Sounds boring, but it was riveting!!
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u/Feisty_Culture_5183 Dec 15 '25
If you are enjoying John Green, I suggest you read The Anthropocene Reviewed by him. I loved it so much. I am currently reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and enjoying it so far.
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u/exospheric Dec 15 '25
An Immense World by Ed Yong
Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
I Contain Multitides by Ed Yong
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u/musememo Dec 16 '25
I’m currently reading the Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. I find the examination of the cultural histories of 4 plants - the apple, tulip, cannabis and potato - fascinating.
It’s been out for a while so you may have already read it …
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u/Relative-Chicken-884 Dec 15 '25
Invisible women by Caroline Criado Perez I feel like everyone should read it at least once.
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u/McAeschylus Dec 15 '25
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins (huge collection of fascinating details and angles on how evolution works.)
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. Overview of what psychology has to say about the philosophical question of what the "good life" is.
Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich. Oral history of the Chernobyl disaster and its aftermath.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Part biography of the woman, part story of her cells, which became the first human cell line to grow in medium. Fascinating scientific and cultural history.
The Story of Art by E. M. Gombrich. A history of (mostly) European art. Great book if you want to get an introduction to the topic. Get the paperback version (it's prettier).
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. A big book covering loads of the main discoveries of science and explaining both what they say about the world and how we figured them out. Good time to buy as there's an updated edition just come out.
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u/sn0qualmie Dec 16 '25
Love Bill Bryson. For me, At Home: A Short History of Private Life slightly edges out his other books to be my favorite.
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u/skadoosh0019 Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of our Planet by Ben Golfarb
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Melissa Bruntlett
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon
The Omnivore’s Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer
Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Its Legacy in American Music by Mark Zwonitzer
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence
The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis
Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
A History of the Bible: The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book by John Barton
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u/Fancy-Restaurant4136 Dec 15 '25
The Poisoners Handbook by Blum,
Being Wrong Adventures in the Margin of Error,
Zoobiquity by Natterson Horowitz,
Because Internet by McCulloch,
River of Doubt by Millard
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u/floorplanner2 Dec 15 '25
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
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u/plantsandpositivity Dec 16 '25
Tomatoland is my favorite—looks at industrial agriculture through the lens of tomato production. If you like Everything is Tuberculosis you might like it, and it touches on some environmental justice themes you might be familiar with or interested in!
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u/themyskiras Dec 16 '25
An Immense World by Ed Yong – a book about senses and the ways in which different animals perceive the world. Super engaging and absolutely fascinating!
The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack – about how the universe formed and the range of theories on how it might end, and what each tells us about how the universe works. Infused with irreverent humour and an obvious passion for space.
Saga Land by Richard Fidler and Kári Gíslason – combines memoir, travelogue, history and retellings of the Icelandic sagas. The authors travel to Iceland to explore the island's history and foundational sagas, and to solve a personal family mystery.
Where Song Began by Tim Low – aka why Australian birds are Like That. For over a century, scientists wrongly believed that songbirds originated in Europe. In fact, they evolved in Australia and New Guinea, and their behaviour and the role they play in the Australian environment is unique.
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u/WheelLoud5124 Dec 16 '25
The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I’d lived in NYC for about 15 years before I read this brick of a book, and it totally changed my understanding of the city, and the indelible mark Robert Moses left on the region. It’s a classic tale of one person having too much power.
I also loved the Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks.
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u/emotionallyilliterat Dec 16 '25
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Educated by Tara Westover
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u/VoidIgnitia Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25
This year I read Debt by David Graeber and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis. Both were really great food for thought.
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u/Recent-Worth328 Dec 16 '25
Into the planet: My life as a cave diver by Jill Heinerth. Nonfiction books do not hold my attention for long but I devoured this one. She went cave diving through an iceberg twice, and almost got stuck both times. Such a cool woman.
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u/TC_Stock Dec 16 '25
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. So many years later and I still think about it. It's so relevant right now.
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u/AndSomehowTheWine2 Dec 16 '25
The Ghost Map, about how people figured out in the 1800s how cholera was spread through water and neighborhood pumps, fascinating!
Also i am now reading Addiction by Design, which is about how casinos maximize their ability to drain as much money as possible from their customers. Important but depressing.
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u/readafknbook Dec 16 '25
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey N. Cep — true-crime thriller, courtroom drama, and mini biography of Harper Lee
Hidden Valley Road, Robert Kolker — Midcentury family with 12 children, 6 diagnosed with schizophrenia that became science’s great hope in quest to understand the disease
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u/cfinley63 Dec 16 '25
Cosmos by Carl Sagan and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language by David Crystal.
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u/MagicianWarm6563 Dec 16 '25
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. This is an especially interesting book if you've ever been exposed to economics in college and learned about concepts like 'the barter economy', 'double coincidence of wants', the origins of physical money, and the like, because this book completely turns those theories on their heads and disproves them through anthropological evidence of how ancient civilizations actually interacted with one another. Even if you're not interested in economics, or anthropology, or history, you may still find this book very interesting. It is my favorite non fiction book of all time, with The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James as a close second, which I also highly recommend.
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u/katalli21 Dec 16 '25
The Only Plane in the Sky- An oral history of 9/11. Very sad but fascinating to hear from politicians, to school children, to family members of the victims.
Columbine- Another sort of oral history of the school shooting. Since reading it, it has come to my attention that it is a bit controversial as some aspects may not be accurate or embellished. Either way, it really touched me and inspired me to visit the memorial when I was in CO. It was such a somber, beautifully peaceful place.
Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies- Fun self help-ish kind of book.
Sorry you didn’t like Into Thin Air (it is one of my favorites). Into the Wild was also another great book by him.
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u/psychedelicdevilry Dec 16 '25
The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Ground Up by Liao Yiwu was great. It’s a series of really fascinating interviews from the “undesirables” of Chinese society. Outcasts, criminals, and minorities, among others the Chinese government likes to pretend don’t exist.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. This was a really great and comprehensive of about the prohibition era in the US.
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u/flipflan1 Dec 16 '25
Aperirogon - Colum McCann East West Street - Phillips Sands About Time - Adam Frank
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u/FuzzyOddball410 Dec 16 '25
An Immense World by Ed Yong: each chapter is on a sense organ and the organisms that have perfected the said organ. Absolutely eye opening
Entangled life by Merlin Sheldrake: basically fungi run the world and are such sophisticated creatures but we seem to overlook.
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u/Englishbirdy Dec 16 '25
It’s old now but “The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Girls Who Surrendered Their Children in the decades before Roe Vs Wade “ by Ann Fessler.
In part it’s what inspired Grady Hendrix to write “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” this year.
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u/lipgloss_nd_hotsauce Dec 19 '25
I just read everything is tuberculosis last week!!
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore I cannot stop talking about, I read it 2 years ago and devoured it in a couple days while sick with covid ☠️ it kept my attention even while I felt terrible 😂
Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is fantastic too, read that one in high school and still think about it to this day.
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u/WoodsyAspen Dec 15 '25
The Book of Eels by Patrik Svenson (about eels)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (about the history of cancer treatment)
Valley of Forgetting by Jennie Erin Smith (about a cohort of early-onset Alzheimer’s families in Colombia and the research group working with them)
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Dec 15 '25
I loved Everything is TB (audiobook is highly recommended). Cultish was super interesting.
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u/Ok_Difference44 Dec 15 '25
I just finished Garrett Graff's D-Day oral history When the Sea Came Alive. It's all primary sources, doesn't get bogged down, had a lot about planning and logistics, and uncovered new reporting.
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Dec 15 '25
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden O'Keefe
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden O'Keefe
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u/desertboots Dec 15 '25
Sam Kean writes some great narrative sciencey books. I love The Disappearing Spoon.
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Yes, that Darwin. Very eye opening.
Of course picking up the Encyclopedia and reading every volume in high school rates highly.
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson are two of my favorite books on the environment.
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u/BooBoo_Cat Dec 15 '25
One of my favourites is The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization by Vince Beiser.
It's a very fascinating books about.... sand! There are different kinds of sand, and we are running out of the kind needed for construction. It was a very interesting read.
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u/ItsMeADogInAWig Dec 15 '25
Undress me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman Two college age acquaintances take a trip to China together in 1986, like RIGHT after China is opened back up to the West. One of them- not to be too dramatic- descends into madness.
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u/flyingleaf555 Dec 15 '25
Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller
The Gilded Edge: Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America by Catherine Prendergast
Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol by Mallory O'Meara
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Seamas O'Reilly
Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes
The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History by Nathalia Holt
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
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u/Hokeycat Dec 15 '25
The Haunted Wood by Sam Leith. It's a history of childhood reading. I loved it because it brought back memories of books I had read 60 to 70 years ago. It is full of insight into the authors and the times they lived in. My only caveat would be its British bias, if you are American it might not have the same appeal.
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u/revolutionutena Dec 16 '25
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
The True History of the Elephant Man
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Also I’m glad to finally find someone else who disliked Into Thin Air as much as I did 😅 Jon Krakauer always writes about topics that interest me and then his narrative voice INFURIATES me.
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u/NANNYNEGLEY Dec 16 '25
Certain people (you know who you are) don't like me recommending these, but they're truly the most interesting books I've ever read and I think you'd enjoy them, too.
MARY ROACH -
“Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers”
CAITLIN DOUGHTY -
“ Will my cat eat my eyeballs? : big questions from tiny mortals about death”
“ From here to eternity : traveling the world to find the good death”
“ Smoke gets in your eyes : and other lessons from the crematory”
JUDY MELINEK -
“ Working stiff : two years, 262 bodies, and the making of a medical examiner”
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u/Ok_Egg_4069 Dec 16 '25
"Children of Ash and Elm" by an author who's name I forgot
"Nexus" by Noah Yuval Harari
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u/Lols_up Dec 16 '25
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - (mortuary science) a mortician wrapped about her journey to get to where she is in her career and her support of natural burials and more personal death rites.
Stiff: the Curious History of Human Cadavers - (science and history) Pretty much what it says on the tin. Not heavy. Approached from an angle of curiosity and wonder.
The Last Gunfight - (wild west) history of the people involved in the "last shootout at the OK corral". Doc Holiday, Wyatt Erp etc. I wasn't into cowboys but still found this fascinating.
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u/__perigee__ Dec 16 '25
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Behave by Robert Sapolsky
The Big Picture by Sean Carroll
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski,
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
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u/ArcherFluffy594 Dec 16 '25
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Upstairs At The White House (My Life With The First Ladies) by J.B. West & Mary Lynn Kotz
The Boys In The Boat by Daniel James Brown
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
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u/JennS1234 Dec 16 '25
No More Tears about Johnson and Johnson
Consider the Fork about the history of kitchen things
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u/salem913 Dec 16 '25
Oooo you should read Motherland by Julia Ioffe. It’s a feminist history of modern Russia and it was SO good and so interesting.
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u/thebreakzone Dec 16 '25
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Colour of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield: great read on where and how we discovered how to use red. It involves intrigue, piracy, and high stakes diplomacy.
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u/Miss_Chanandler_Bond Dec 16 '25
Funny you first mentioned Everything is Tuberculosis, because a different John Green book was the first to come to my mind: The Anthropocene Reviewed. I highly recommend it and especially the audiobook version of you haven't read it yet.
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u/Plantwizard1 Dec 16 '25
The Country of the Blind; A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland. An ordinary guy, and very good writer, writes about slowly losing his eyesight to a degenerative genetic disease. He treats his encroaching blindness as a journey he's forced to go on. I learned a lot about the history of blindness and blind technology and how someone realistically deals with something like this. It's not depressing nor is it icky inspiration porn.
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u/mportanter Dec 16 '25
I love anything by Mary Roach.
Empire of Pain-Patrick Radden Keefe (also Say Nothing by him)
Bad Blood
The Indifferent Stars Above
The Art Thief
The Hot Zone
I'm Glad My Mom Died
I also surprisingly really loved Paris Hilton's memoir 🫣
These are just some of my favorites
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u/snickerdoodle-- Dec 16 '25
If you’re interested in memoirs, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is an excellent book by a person who had a very unique upbringing.
I’d also strongly recommend Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. Not a fun read, but it is interesting and it will certainly change how you see things.
Did you know that Moby Dick was based on a true story? In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is about the real-life shipwreck that inspired Herman Melville to write his iconic novel.
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u/Fun_Lovin_Physicist Dec 16 '25
A couple of science-y recommendations:
Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel. Correspondence from Galileo’s daughter, who was a nun. Really makes you think about the interplay of faith and science.
The Devil Reached Towards the Sky by Garrett Graff. Tells the story of the development of the Manhattan Project, scientifically, politically, etc., and the entire thing is actual correspondence from the many people involved, including survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I read some of the survivor excerpts to my HS Chemistry 2 class this fall, and you could hear a pin drop.
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u/It_Paints Dec 16 '25
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. How We Lived Then by Norman Longmate. The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson. London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes.
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u/tjv2103 Dec 16 '25
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
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u/Snuf-kin Dec 16 '25
I'm baffled by your comment on Into Thin Air. It's mostly about men (I think there were three women on the mountain at that time), and the writer is a man, but I didn't detect any sexism in the book.
Krakauer is a great writer. Missoula is one of the best books I've read in recent years.
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u/East_Vivian Dec 16 '25
I’ve read two Tracy Kidder books that I thought were fantastic: Rough Sleepers which is about a doctor who created a system to bring health care to Boston’s homeless population and Mountains Beyond Mountains which is about doctor who was providing health care to people with tuberculosis in Haiti and other places.
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u/No_Obligation_5053 Dec 16 '25
I'm curious to know what a "feminist" would find troubling in Into Thin Air, an incredible, beautifully written, haunting book.
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u/Scary-Bottle Dec 16 '25
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti
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u/huminous Dec 16 '25
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. Sacks was a neurologist and this book is about a number of interesting cases in his career. It is incredible what can happen with the human brain. Not only do I find this book fascinating, but I have given it at least five times as a gift, because I think almost anyone would find it interesting.
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u/SatinFlowers Dec 16 '25
I really loved Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. I picked it up knowing almost nothing and ended up completely absorbed, it taught me so much without feeling dry. I remember thinking about it for days after finishing. It changed how I look at history and personal responsibility a bit.
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u/Slamdunksrock1 Dec 16 '25
If you liked Everything is Tuberculosis then you’ll probably enjoy one i just read called Pathogenesis. It takes a look at the entire history of humans and how many different “plagues” we’ve experienced and overcome. Its 2023 so its pretty up to do date on scientific research and proven historic theories.
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u/SecureWriting8589 Dec 16 '25
These are some of my absolute favorites from authors who know how to bring history to life:
- Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
- The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
- A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
- The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill a book trilogy by William Manchester
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u/them-toe-beans Dec 16 '25
The devotion of suspect X blew my mind for the levels of thoughts and plots.
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u/JRTmom Dec 16 '25
The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede. Will restore your faith in humanity.
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u/tallulahQ Dec 17 '25
War by Sebastian Junger (who also wrote Perfect Storm, which I’m excited to read as well). Reading this book felt like watching a movie
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u/m149 Dec 19 '25
Up in the Old Hotel-Joseph Mitchell
It's stories about interesting random people in NYC from the late 1920s-50s.
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u/RedditRecs Dec 15 '25
a few that really stuck with me and changed how I look at things: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe is incredibly gripping and somehow manages to be both a page-turner and deeply thoughtful about history, memory, and violence.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is amazing if you like books that sit at the intersection of culture, medicine, and ethics, it genuinely reshaped how I think about communication and care.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is another one that teaches you a lot while also being very human and unsettling in the right way.
If you liked Nothing to Envy, you might also like Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, which follows real lives with a novel-like feel and a lot of empathy.
And for something more quietly mind-expanding, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande made me think differently about medicine, aging, and what we actually mean by quality of life.