A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World
Updated on Jan. 14, 2025
Just because it's true doesn't mean it's dull. Discover incredible stories and curious facts by reading the greatest nonfiction books ever written.
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If a buzzy beach read is mental candy, the greatest nonfiction books ever are brain food—the avocados of the literary world. Fiction is fun, but nonfiction books are full of what’s good for you: They do double duty by entertaining and educating, with knowledge gained as an added benefit. Time-tested and fact-based, the best nonfiction books can shake you out of complacency. If you feel uncomfortable while reading, that’s an author doing their job.
As a writer and Publishers Weekly book reviewer, I’ve read hundreds of nonfiction books. Yet I often hear, “I only read fiction. Nonfiction is boring.” Here’s my rebuttal: my list of the greatest nonfiction books ever, including titles from the distant past to today. Some are evergreen, some are snapshots in time and many read like novels. I considered story, diversity, length, usefulness of information and readability in particular—a book you can’t get into is a book that languishes.
I consulted bestselling books, award winners, reader recommendations and the input of writer friends, and I added some unique picks you won’t find on other “best of” lists. As a book reviewer, it’s my job to guide readers, and I won’t steer you wrong.
Read on for my curated list of the best books in nonfiction—I promise they’ll hold your attention. After all, the truth is often stranger (and more engaging) than fiction.
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For fans of: Night by Elie Wiesel
A staple of school curricula for generations, Anne Frank’s account of her Jewish family hiding in an Amsterdam attic during World War II is one of the best Holocaust books ever written. But I’d argue that most of us were too young to fully appreciate The Diary of a Young Girl when it was assigned to us in school; I certainly didn’t grasp Anne’s exceptional voice as a writer. She was just 13 at the book’s beginning (June 1942) and 15 by its end (August 1944), and she died less than a year later, in March 1945. Following its publication in 1947, the diary was eventually translated into over 70 languages and has sold 30 million copies.
Revisit your own writing from your early teen years, then go back and reread Anne’s words. You’ll have renewed respect for one of the best nonfiction books of all time. Decades later, her most famous quote, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart,” is still wrenching to read.
For fans of: The End of Nature by Bill McKibben
The ability to communicate passion for a cause—and to explain why others should care—is a rare talent but something that all good nonfiction books should convey. Silent Spring was so powerful it actually changed public perception of chemical pesticides. Author Rachel Carson combined science with vivid writing: fatal experimentation and unwitting victims, Greek mythology and fairy tales, groundwater contamination, farm animals sickened and the chilling story of a chemist who, upon swallowing the tiniest dose of parathion to understand its toxicity, was paralyzed so quickly he couldn’t reach the nearby antidote and died.
Published in 1962, the book launched the modern environmental movement and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has acknowledged that “Silent Spring played in the history of environmentalism roughly the same role that Uncle Tom’s Cabin played in the abolitionist movement.”
For fans of: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Nonfiction gets a bad rap from those who think true stories aren’t as gripping as fiction books. But when the author is a former New York Times journalist and the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, the result is a page-turner. In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson explores the 20th century’s Great Migration, the 55-year period when 6 million Black people moved from the South to the Midwest, Northeast and West. The book’s narrative brilliance comes from Wilkerson centering the book on three individuals: a sharecropper’s wife in 1937, a college student in 1945 and a surgeon in 1953.
Published in 2010, it won that year’s National Book Critics Circle Award. In my informal poll of writer friends and avid readers, this was recommended for this list more than any other book, receiving insistent “You’ve got to include it!” endorsements and rave reviews.
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For fans of: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
History will prove Steve Jobs the equal of innovators Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Even if you’re a never-Appler as I once was, clinging to my PC and Nokia phone out of stubbornness, you can’t deny Jobs changed how we live and interact with technology. The “core” of Apple (get it?) and the company’s co-founder, he transformed personal computing from clunky and frustrating to sleek and user-friendly. Like all the best biographies, Walter Isaacson’s authorized telling, Steve Jobs, brings him down to a human level. An unorthodox visionary, Jobs was a habitually barefoot fruitarian, complex, quirky, obsessive in his perfectionism and occasionally downright cruel.
Isaacson and Jobs met for over 40 interviews, even as Jobs battled pancreatic cancer. He died on Oct. 5, 2011, just before the book’s release on Oct. 23. It’s a fascinating read: well-paced, captivating and an origin story that pulls back the curtain on the incredible wizard of Apple.
For fans of: Hitler’s Last Secretary by Traudl Junge
What happens if you become complicit to cruel acts simply by going along with a changing society? When does thoughtlessness become inhumane, and when is inhumanity criminal? Sebastian Haffner was a highly respected writer living in Britain, but he had a dark past in Germany. As a child, Haffner found right-wing youth movements exciting after the 1918 defeat of Germany in World War I. Although he saw ruthlessness thrive and succeed, he grew disenchanted by the late 1920s as the brownshirts marched under Hitler, who was rising to power. Defying Hitler is his personal account: written in 1939, hidden for 60 years and published posthumously in 2000.
Haffner escaped Germany in 1938 with his wife, who was classified as Jewish, and eventually settled in England. The writer died in 1999, and his son, finding the memoir in a drawer, published it. This compelling eyewitness account of the German people’s transformation under Hitler quietly reveals how ordinary citizens can turn criminal.
For fans of: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
If you’re a reader deeply affected by carefully wrought prose, no amount of praise or recommendation will prepare you for this autobiographical book. And if you’re a reader who just likes a good story, the opening paragraph will seize you. The stakes are high—life or death—and you already know the ending going in. Yet When Breath Becomes Air isn’t about the end but the journey. A young man passionate about reading, writing and literature chooses a career in medicine, thinking he’ll have time to enjoy the former later in life. But in the last year of his neurosurgical residency, he learns he has terminal lung cancer.
Published in 2016 after Paul Kalanithi’s death, the book still keeps his voice alive. As Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, “Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.”
For fans of: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
You know that friend who bakes pies with in-season fruits and grows a beautiful wildflower garden that feeds pollinators? That’s the friend with this book on her shelf. The buzz about Braiding Sweetgrass, published in 2015, grew slowly, with avid hikers, fly-fishing friends and backpackers recommending it to me. Now, with over 2 million copies sold, the secret is out. The book weaves themes of stewardship of the earth, gratitude for the natural world and recognition that human well-being is intimately linked to the health of the planet. But its author—an environmental biologist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation—is why this lyrical book has caught on.
Science and Indigenous cultural knowledge come together in lilting language to convey the importance of reciprocity: Earth gives to us, and our responsibility is to give back. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ideas are so substantive, she was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship in 2022.
For fans of: The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Imagine that your mother is dead, but her living cells, continuously reproducing, are in research labs around the world, making modern medical advances possible. Imagine that while companies have racked up massive profits, you’ve never seen a dime, and you struggle to pay insurance for drugs developed using your mother’s cells. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, science journalist Rebecca Skloot describes how, as Henrietta went through cancer treatments in a “colored” ward during the final eight months of her life, her cells—used without her knowledge or permission—literally went viral in the medical community. Yet Deborah Lacks and her siblings didn’t learn of this until more than 20 years later, in 1973.
This vivid 2010 book about racism in medicine and bioethics presents the unforgettable stories of Henrietta and her family. The New York Times praised it, noting, “Science writing is often just about ‘the facts.’ ÂSkloot’s book … is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.”
For fans of: The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
Grief following death is the unavoidable hand-in-glove reality of life. We live, love and say goodbye if we’re lucky, and after the service, we’re left with condolences, flowers and memories. But with The Year of Magical Thinking on your bookshelf, you will be fortified by the raw truth of Joan Didion’s own grief and mourning. She provides support not in a syrupy sympathy-card way but in an evocative—and occasionally brutal—acknowledgment of the finality and emptiness of loss.
Published in 2005, Didion reflects on the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and a marriage that was like no other, giving voice to what many books on grief struggle to say. His passing in the midst of their daughter’s illness and induced coma pushed Didion to the edge while also eliciting some of her finest writing. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award, the work was described by novelist Lev Grossman as “an act of consummate literary bravery.”
For fans of: The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
What does a short book that’s more than 2,000 years old have to do with modern life? Two words: office politics. I once had a good-paying job, but my co-workers were manipulative and backstabbing. When I told a friend I intended to keep my head low and not get involved, he said, “Avoidance is a choice.” Then he recommended The Art of War. Scholars date the writings to about 530 B.C.E., and even though the wisdom is literally ancient, it’s incredibly apt and a quick read. Human nature doesn’t change, and Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general and philosopher, offers timeless advice.
You’ll learn the importance of strategy, level-headedness, planning and preparation, and gain insights into leadership, including the idea that war should not be the goal: “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
For fans of: Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
No, that’s not a typo—it’s a riff on my previous pick, The Art of War. Equally slender, this 2002 book is a kick-in-the-pants, so straightforward and conversational that it will never be praised by highbrow critics. Yet it’s loved by tens of thousands ordinary folks—and Oprah too, who’s posted interviews with the author on YouTube. The War of Art is Steven Pressfield’s attack on what he calls “resistance”: the fear, self-doubt, perfectionism and all the other inner demons that hold you back. Ever wonder why, despite your best intentions, you fail at the things you most want to accomplish?
Pressfield treats resistance not as an abstract concept but as an entity to battle and vanquish. The short chapters are pep talks that will prime you to act, written in a tough-love, best-friend voice. Like the best self-help books, it’ll light a fire within you to stop with the excuses and jump right in it to win it.
For fans of: The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
It’s every bookworm’s dream to talk to an author about a favorite read. When I spoke with Tara Westover for a library lecture series, I asked, “While writing, when did you know you ‘had’ a book?” She told me exactly where it happened, describing it as “the rubber gripping the road.” (To avoid spoilers, I’m not telling.) I will say, as a book reviewer, that she burned rubber throughout 2018’s Educated, one of my top nonfiction books: The narrative is fast-paced and the story compelling, with heart-pounding tension and chilling stakes. A young girl grows up in a survivalist-herbalist family, isolated in the mountains of Idaho. Homeschooled, with violence and danger a part of daily life, she finds a way to learn, grow emotionally and intellectually, and make her way to graduate school at Cambridge.
If you need a book to take your mind off your own troubles, this is the one to grab. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, know there are over 1.6 million other reviews on Goodreads.
For fans of: The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
The U.S.-Mexico border is more than a line on a map: It’s where life, death and hope intersect. Based on events from May 2001 and published in 2004, this riveting tale by Hispanic author Luis Alberto Urrea follows 26 men who cross the Devil’s Highway in southern Arizona on foot, a region so dangerous, it literally bakes walkers to death. The book opens with five men with “cactus spines in their faces, their hands” stumbling out of a mountain pass, “so sunstruck they didn’t know their own names” and so parched “there wasn’t enough fluid in them left to bleed.” Urrea uncovers the stories that drove the walkers north, accompanies Border Patrol trackers who study every footprint and details the horrific situations and gruesome deaths that resulted in only 12 survivors.
A 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist in General Nonfiction, The Devil’s Highway is an essential read for understanding U.S.-Mexico border issues, providing a glimpse of what Booklist calls “immigration policy on the human level.”
For fans of: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
For those of us not taken early by an untimely event, the sequence at the end of life is aging, dying and death. It’s understandable to be squeamish, but if you’re willing to put the thought into how to live a good life until the end, this book offers a blueprint. Tackling everything from senior living models to end-of-life care, author Atul Gawande explores what does and doesn’t work and shares personal experiences. At the same time, 2014’s Being Mortal interrogates the medical profession, calling out practices that don’t improve life but frequently prolong it at the cost of comfort and dignity.
Gawande is that rare author whose expertise (Boston surgeon, Harvard professor at the Medical School and School of Public Health) and literary credentials (New Yorker staff writer) result in books that earn critical and commercial acclaim. Out of the four he’s authored, this is regarded as his best.
For fans of: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
One of the best Stephen King books is, suprisingly, not in the horror, thriller or mystery genres. It’s nonfiction. Before I was a book reviewer, I was a writing instructor, and On Writing is so exemplary, I developed a writing workshop around it. First published in 2000, it’s three books in one, covering his autobiography, the origin of his stories and writing advice. King’s childhood and early writing life demonstrate imagination and perseverance, and the backstory of writing Carrie—including the inspiration for his character—is heartbreaking.
The writing life portion of his memoir also reveals King’s extraordinary work ethic. He wrote from an early age, submitting his work for publication and experiencing years of rejection: “By the time I was 14, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”
What distinguishes this book is its story structure, especially its wrenching reversals: As soon as King hits it big with Carrie, his mother is diagnosed with cancer. It’s a classic hero’s journey and a master class on storytelling.
For fans of: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Content warning: This is a graphic, gutting story, but if you can get through the first chapter, you’ll have the stomach and the courage to read to the explosive end. Raised by a single Black mother pursuing her PhD, Kiese Laymon is both inspired by and afraid of her—and addresses her directly as “you” throughout the book. Their relationship is one of the trickiest you’ll ever encounter, with much left unsaid. As a child, Laymon is hungry for knowledge, acceptance, love and food; and as an adult, he’s vulnerable and aware of how being Black both enriches and costs him. Combining personal narrative and social criticism, Laymon’s autobiography makes it clear there’s no winning and no happy ending.
Published in 2018, Heavy was named among the year’s best books by the New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Library Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and Entertainment Weekly.
For fans of: Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A prolific nonfiction writer who just had to make this list, Jon Krakauer is best known for the Everest epic Into Thin Air, but I chose 1997’s Into the Wild instead, based on my goal of picking books, in part, for “usefulness of information”: In everyday life, more of us encounter confused young adults than we do mountain climbers. In renaming himself Alexander Supertramp as he attempts to break free of his past life—and striking out on foot with few possessions and no maps—Christopher Johnson McCandless exhibits outsize optimism and youthful hopefulness that are equal parts uplifting and despairing as you sense where this will end.
Whether you find his life and death heartbreaking or frustrating, you’re with him every step of the way, thanks to Krakauer’s impeccable research. Don’t cheat by watching the film; like many books made into movies, this one really is better.
For fans of: Command and Control by Eric Schlosser
Every author aims to drop a Chapter One bombshell to hook readers. Jacobsen does it in the prologue, describing how a 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonates with “a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend.” That’s because it’s 180,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit, four to five times hotter than the core of the sun. Experts theorize that U.S. enemies would target the Pentagon, its 6.5 million square feet and 27,000 employees.
After that initial flash, Jacobson notes, “Not a single thing in the fireball remains. Nothing. Ground zero is zeroed.” Yes, that’s humor, and that’s why Nuclear War, just published in March 2024, works. Pulitzer Prize finalist Jacobsen writes with specificity and clarity, and understands exactly how much we can take.
She’s interviewed cabinet members, scientists and former Nuclear Command and Control personnel, read declassified information, talked to Hiroshima survivors and put it all together in a book readers call “riveting” and Forbes praised as “a stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller.”
For fans of: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
In the greatest nonfiction books ever, ideas written decades ago can be startlingly fresh when the author’s words capture your lived experience. I’m Asian American, not Black, yet the sense of “two-ness” in this passage by W.E.B. Du Bois hits home: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others … One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.” Double consciousness is just one of many concepts Du Bois examines in The Souls of Black Folk, a classic among books by Black authors, first published in 1903.
In this edition’s introduction, Jesse McCarthy, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard, calls this a “small, paradigm-shifting book,” and I agree. Every reader of color who’s had to navigate the split will find lyrical wisdom and enduring affirmation here.
For fans of: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Dunkin’—got any of those apps on your phone? The ubiquitousness of fast food has only increased since Fast Food Nation came out in 2001, making Eric Schlosser’s exposé still relevant. In examining “fast food, the values it embodies and the world it has made,” he’s determined it’s “a revolutionary force in American life” and views it as “both as a commodity and as a metaphor.” Schlosser was an Atlantic correspondent when articles he wrote for Rolling Stone evolved into this book, so expect a journalist’s deep dive. You’ll learn the industry’s origins, where ingredients come from (particularly meat and poultry) and their processing.
The most damning revelation is fast food’s deliberate creation of a business model “based on large numbers of unskilled and untrained workers with a high turnover rate … a work force that received little pay and no benefits.” Often compared to Upton Sinclair’s classic novel The Jungle, this book leaves a bad taste in a good way.
For fans of: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
Sometimes you get upset over small things, letting a casual comment or inconvenience ruin your day. If it happens now and then, no worries, but if it routinely derails you, this book can put it all in perspective. Psychologist Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust holding fast to one simple premise: You cannot control what happens in your life, but you can choose how you will feel and respond to those events.
Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of the world’s most inspirational books and personal narratives. Despite losing his entire family to the Holocaust, Frankl endured Auschwitz by not giving in to despair; instead, he retained his freedom to choose his response to suffering. In this 1946 memoir, he wanted to convey to readers “a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any circumstances, even … a situation as extreme as … a concentration camp.” In a Library of Congress survey, Man’s Search for Meaning was named one of the 10 most influential books of all time.
For fans of: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
A stunningly accomplished debut, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first and most celebrated of Maya Angelou‘s autobiographical books. The story opens as 3-year-old Marguerite (Angelou’s original first name) is sent across the country with her brother, Bailey, to live with her grandmother after her parents’ divorce. Early on, Angelou’s gift of language shines as an anxious Marguerite is laughed at during church: “The giggles hung in the air like melting clouds that were waiting to rain on me.” But later, what she endures goes beyond the unspeakable, so much so that she stops talking to anyone other than Bailey.
The book’s message of overcoming racism and embracing self-discovery led the way for Black women writers. First published in 1969, it was nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and has never gone out of print.
For fans of: The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
Indigenous history has long been written by non-Native authors who focus on loss and victimization. In 2018, David Treuer published The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, which he writes “is adamantly, unashamedly about Indian life rather than Indian death. That we even have lives … is news to most people.” Pushing back against stories of “diminution and death” and reservations as “basins of perpetual suffering,” Treuer, an anthropologist and Ojibwe Indian from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, engages readers right from the prologue. His mother was an Indian attorney, and his father was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, teacher and refugee who felt like an outsider until he came to the reservation.
A New York Times bestseller, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee was a finalist for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. It’s also an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best History Book.
For fans of: Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
You know that smart friend who seems to know a little bit of everything and makes connections between ideas you’ve never considered before? That’s Malcolm Gladwell, which explains why he’s enjoyed by readers who wouldn’t normally seek out books on the topics he covers. In The Tipping Point, published in 2000, he outlines a phenomenon that every influencer now strives for: the viral moment. He sees such transformations as epidemics, noting that “ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” A former Washington Post reporter and staff writer at the New Yorker, he knows how to hook readers.
While the New York Times acknowledges that “Gladwell speaks to a wide audience … He is the literary equivalent of those politicians who get nonvoters to the polls,” he isn’t praised by the so-called experts—and maybe that’s the point. He’s an entertainingly smart friend, and for many of us, that’s enough.
For fans of: Hitler: A Biography by Ian Kershaw
Because those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, I needed to understand Adolf Hitler, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and World War II. So I picked up an audiobook version of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the definitive book in this genre. It clocks in at 57 hours, and while I was reluctant to start listening, the absorbing storytelling pulled me in. It’s compelling and remarkably readable, though some of the horrific details, while necessary, may require a break from the text.
Author William L. Shirer was a historian, foreign correspondent and radio journalist for CBS, broadcasting from Berlin as the Nazis came to power. For this 1960 book, Shirer spent years combing through documentation accumulated at every level of Hitler’s empire. A 1961 National Book Award winner, it’s described by historian Theodore White as “a monumental work. A grisly and thrilling story.”
For fans of: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Want the tea on the guys in the White House? Prolific presidential biographer and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin has written several acclaimed books, but this 2005 title, which simultaneously influenced the worlds of politics and entertainment, is her most powerful read. Team of Rivals was named by President Barack Obama as the one book he would want on a desert island, and after he was elected president in 2008, he said his own Cabinet would be a team of rivals—and appointed Hillary Clinton, his opponent for the Democratic nomination, as proof.
Director Steven Spielberg based his 2012 film Lincoln, nominated for 12 Academy Awards, on the book. While Goodwin’s tale centers Lincoln, she also focuses on his political opponents for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “illuminating and well-written.”
For fans of: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
You’ve been thinking about change all wrong. When it comes to forming new habits, it’s not the massive go-cold-turkey act that works, but small, manageable shifts that will stick—and create a domino effect. The secret is to build a system of support so you can improve 1% every day. This 2018 book will guide you in making tiny, easy changes, and (this is my favorite part) teach you how to design your environment for success. For example, if you routinely forget to take your morning vitamins, put them and a glass of water by your toothbrush.
I pick up my well-thumbed copy of Atomic Habits when my bad habits overrule my life; it re-energizes me to follow James Clear’s well-outlined system. Instead of setting lofty goals that set me up for failure, I can see myself as the person I want to be by embracing the identity of someone who’s capable of change. A worldwide bestseller, Atomic Habits has sold over 20 million copies.
For fans of: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
A world’s fair! A serial killer! The rise of the world’s first skyscraper! Devil in the White City, published in 2003, blends tourism, true crime and architectural history within the city limits of Chicago circa 1893. True-crime fans will come for the story of serial killer Henry Howard Holmes, a doctor who opened a world’s fair hotel with a secret gas chamber and crematory expressly to kill and dispose of victims—a real story to rival the best horror books.
But I was entranced by architect Daniel H. Burnham, whose vision for the 1893 world’s fair turned swampland into the ethereal, otherworldly White City, attracting 28 million visitors. His early skyscrapers changed the face of Chicago! Erik Larson spins a gorgeous, page-turning tale that made me, a lifelong New Yorker, Chicago-curious. After visiting numerous times, it’s my favorite city of all.
For fans of: Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir by Paul Monette
If you lived through the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, you know; and if you didn’t, you should. And the Band Played On, called a landmark book when it was published in 1987 and now one of the greatest nonfiction books ever, is a comprehensive, thorough and wrenching look at the rise of the disease, from its earliest cases to the debate over transmission, causes and treatment. Its most important function is as a snapshot of the moment, but as you read, be aware that subsequent information has revealed inaccuracies; the story of patient zero as a superspreader, which began with a Centers for Disease Control study, has since been disproven.
Yet the book still matters because, as its author, a San Francisco Chronicle journalist, noted, mainstream media treated AIDS as happening to “other people” since many prominent people remained closeted. Randy Shilts himself was gay, and ironically, on the day he turned in the manuscript, he was diagnosed as HIV positive. He died of AIDS in 1994 at age 42.
For fans of: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Van life is nothing new, but this nonfiction book’s take on it is worthy of your time. Blue Highways, published in 1983, follows a 38-year-old narrator rediscovering himself on the road. William Least Heat-Moon had lost his job and his wife when he “got the idea … Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance,” and set out on a long, circular trip on America’s back roads. Living out of his 1975 Econoline van named Ghost Dancing, he stopped in small towns, talked to local folks and acquired bits of wisdom such as, “A job’s what you force yourself to pay attention to for money. With work, you don’t have to force yourself.”
Short snapshot chapters and wonderfully immersive details, from blackbirds wheeling in a dawn sky to cherry tomatoes on a salad plate, render both vast and humble moments in this engrossing travel book. In a 2019 New York Times article, Rich Cohen observed, “though the events take place more than 40 years ago, the book reads like a search for what currently ails us, because what ailed us then ails us now.”
For fans of: Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado
First month, last month, security deposit: That’s the mantra you hear when you try to rent a place to live. In the 2001 exposé Nickel and Dimed, a journalist goes undercover as a divorced homemaker with little work history seeking a job. An apartment is an unachievable dream for the paycheck-to-paycheck employees Barbara Ehrenreich meets. They work steadily, but low wages mean savings are impossible, so while cheap motels are often more expensive than rent or a mortgage, they’re affordable day to day. Without the ability to cook, fast and convenience foods—both unhealthy and expensive—become the norm. And without health care, illness and accidents are devastating.
Waitressing, housecleaning, working at Walmart, Ehrenreich experiences firsthand the hardships of hourly workers; she provides facts, statistics and data about the working poor and how government cuts in services make their lives even harder. Her co-workers become friends, and through them, the ugliness of the system becomes apparent. This eye-opening book will crack open your heart.
For fans of: Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger
Once upon a time, back in the late 1970s, computers were the size of refrigerators, and each one cost half a million dollars. It feels like ancient history now, but when The Soul of a New Machine appeared in 1981, this novelistic account of the men doing cutting-edge work in computer science was so groundbreaking that it won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. To understand the technology sector today, read about where it began.
The story follows now-defunct Data General as it builds a new 32-bit microcomputer under tight deadlines. Code-named Eagle and considered a renegade project within DG, the computer required late-night debugging sessions and employees willing to give up their lives outside work. While some technical aspects can be dry, for computer nerds, this is a treasure trove; for the rest of us, it’s a cautionary tale about leadership and work-life balance.
For fans of: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
Here’s my book reviewer wild-card choice: a title that shows up on no other list but one that has proven to be a necessary book ever since it came out in 1999. What Joy of Cooking did for home food preparation, Home Comforts does for cleaning and caring for your home and possessions. This isn’t an aspirational trad-wife tome that promotes competitive housekeeping on steroids; it’s a very useful, thorough, detailed guide that tackles what to do, what not to do and, for me, how not to ruin things of value so you don’t go on social media crying and posting #whywecanthavenicethings.
This is not Martha Stewart perfectionism; the author is a philosophy professor and lawyer, so recommendations are intelligent and practical. If folk remedies and TikTok have failed you, this is a much-needed reference book, an important weapon in your responsible-adulting arsenal.
For fans of: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Save the best for last, right? There are dysfunctional-family memoirs, and then there’s The Glass Castle. Whenever someone tells me they want to write a memoir, I recommend this 2005 book and advise them to follow Jeannette Walls’s example: “Just say what happened. Don’t overdramatize. Don’t lay blame.” Not once does she say her alcoholic father is an irresponsible dreamer and liar whose decisions place his family in jeopardy or that her self-absorbed mother is a neglectful narcissist who, when the book opens, is painting while 3-year-old Jeannette, attempting to cook herself a hot dog for lunch, sets herself on fire. If this were fiction, the author would be told, “It’s too unbelievable. No child could survive that. Those parents are horrific”—yet it’s all true. With over 1.2 million reviews on Goodreads, over eight years on the New York Times bestseller list and a 2017 movie based on the book, no other memoir comes close.
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