Recently I reached out to my online friends asking for their recommendations for their favorite, must-read nonfiction books. The results of such a simple question were unexpectedly robust. I have already added a lot of those suggestions to my TBR (to be read) pile, but not every suggestion piqued my fancy. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth sharing! So here is the rest of the list.
It’s a lot.
- American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
- Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison
- The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin
- Ashes To Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer by Evie King
- Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
- Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America by Julia Lee
- Bossypants by Tina Fey
- Both/And by Huma Abedeen
- The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
- Brief Answers To Big Questions by Stephen Hawkings
- By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagel
- The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour by Andrei Cherny
- A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? By Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Raden Keefe
- The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
- Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles by Mark Rozzo
- Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
- Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss
- Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly
- Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism by John U. Bacon
- The House of My Mother by Shari Franke
- How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
- In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom
- In Pieces by Sally Field
- In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown
- Into Thin Air: A Personal Account Of The Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
- The Invention of Clouds by Richard Hamblyn
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
- Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
- It’s Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but Were Never Told) by Karen Tang
- The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs by Lesley and Roy Adkins
- Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals by Jay Kirk
- Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel with Neil Armstrong
- Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
- The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck
- Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett
- Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
- Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump by Angela Denker
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
- Should’ve Been Dead: Lessons from a Crack Addict Who Broke Free by Sweta Patel with Rory Londer
- They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones-Rogers
- The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop
- This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
- To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of a Machine by Judith Newman
- Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
- Twas the Nightshift before Christmas by Adam Kay
- A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
- The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy
- We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Eagan
Some of these might scootch to my TBR list as I get used to reading nonfiction, some never will.
If you made it this far, are there any nonfiction books that were missed? Let me know in the comments!
