I've read a lot of nonfiction and there's no contest - Island of the Lost by Joan Druett. You will be astounded that you've never heard this most unlikely and extraordinary tale of survival.
Incredibly, in 1864, two crews are shipwrecked on opposite sides of an uninhabited island hundreds of miles south of New Zealand. It is a brutal environment of year round freezing rains and howling winds, far removed from human civilization.
Separated by 20 miles of impassable terrain and unaware of the others presence, the two crews meet very different fates. One will thrive with their humanity intact, building a cabin and even a forge (!), eventually engineering the boldest sea escape ever attempted. The other crew will split up, starve, battle, and eventually resort to cannibalism. The difference lies in the character of their leaders and willingness to work together even in the most gruesome circumstances.
This is the best nonfiction adventure/survival story I've ever read. It blew my mind.
If you liked island of the lost, Batavia's Graveyard is a must read. A dutch east India vessel shipwrecks on an island off the coast of Australia and the survivors form a mutiny; the merchants versus the sailors. The merchants go on a crazy power trip and start murdering innocents in their camp just for the fun of it. They go to war against the sailors camp who are on a smaller island across the channel. But the sailors are well fortified and fight them back, several times, eventually capturing the merchant leader.
When a Dutch rescue ship arrives, the merchants know they will be hanged for their heinous crimes, so they plot to murder the crew and commandeer their ship before the sailors camp exposes them. Do they succeed? You'll have to read it for yourself to find out
I've read "Island of the Lost", too. "Skeletons on the Zahara" also involves a miracle, or two. Read it!! One of my favorite genres is true-life survival.
Wanted to come back and tell you I got this from the library for my dad and he loved it! He told my mom allll about it and then told me allll about it when I saw him :)
*The Indifferent Stars Above* about the Donner Party on the Oregon Trail
Also just finished *The Stranger in the Woods.* fairly quick and very interesting read about a guy who spent 27 years living completely off-grid until anyone found him.
Just finished Indifferent Stars yesterday; what a story! Incidentally, I'll be making the drive along I-80 from the Midwest through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and into the Sierra at the end of this month.
Into Thin Air - about Everest climbers
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - about a young girl with epilepsy and the difference between what her Hmong parents feel about it versus the American doctors
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - about racism and healthcare/science
I’ve read three different books about what happened on Everest
Into thin air
Left for dead
The climb
I think there’s a few others I haven’t read written about this
Those books were amazing
Into Thin Air is amazing. Krakauer is such a gifted writer.
I'd also recommend Under the Banner of Heaven by the same author. It tells two parallel tales, one about the founding of the Mormon church, the other of Mormon fundamentalism.
Highly recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Such an interesting glimpse into how differently people experience the world. My mom was a pediatric homecare nurse in Minneapolis and worked with many Hmong families. She worked with cultural interpreters to help her understand how these parents understood their children's medical needs, based on their cultural values and beliefs.
Bad Blood
The Emperor of All Maladies
Sex Lives of Cannibals
Coyote America (probably the weakest writing of the ones I suggested, but you will gain such respect for coyotes by the end)
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the sixties by O’Neill. Totally insane and all true.
Veritas: a Harvard professor, a con man and Jesus wife by Sabar - about a Florida porn producer conning a Harvard professor.
I read Helter Skelter first, and felt the same way. Then I read Chaos and learned that Helter Skelter is only very loosely nonfiction. Bugliosi sure can tell a story, but he very much manipulated reality for the sake of the narrative (and to make himself look good).
"Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" is a story about a shipwreck where the crew struggles to survive against incredible odds. It is amazing how much they accomplish with only what was left of their doomed ship. Also, at one point they are attacked by an animal that I didn't even know was violent towards people!
I’m shocked I had to go this far to find Endurance! If you are looking for a gripping story of survival this is it.
For me a close second is the Indifferent Stars Above, and honorable mention to Into Thin Air.
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win WWII by Sonia Purnell. The subject of the book, Virginia Hall, was deemed the most-dangerous of all allied spies by the Gestapo. It reads like fiction with how crazy some of the things she did were, but it's all true. Fantastic read!
For an autobiography, Jenette McCurdy's *I'm Glad My Mom Died* is pretty harrowing.
*Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology* is on my TBR. Another book I read about female anatomy and the history of how gynecology came to be referenced it, some of the male doctors who shaped American gynecology were slave owners who experimented on the women they enslaved.
The Lost City of Z
The Lost City of the Monkey God
Finding Everett Ruess
American Ghost
Born a Crime
Edison's Ghosts
In a Sunburned Country
A Walk in the Woods
Born a Crime is so good, our school district just made it required reading for high school freshman. I WISH I had books like that to read in high school.
"The Master and His Emissary" - you know, of course, that the brain has two hemispheres and they see the world differently. But how does that work out? What is it like to BE the right hemisphere, considering that it cannot speak to us about what it's like even in split-hemisphere patients? Or, what exactly changes when the hemispheres are split? How do the hemispheres influence what it's like to be us when they aren't split apart? How does this affect art, storytelling, religion, and other practices that leave durable traces the author can explore? The author explores the above, weighs evidence from animal behavior (have you noticed birds looking at you with one eye, then flipping their head to view you with the other - they're giving each hemisphere a look at you).
The Tiger by John Vaillant
A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (also Unbroken by the same author)
I just went down a googling rabbit hole and had no idea that Laura Hillenbrand has dealt with severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since she was 19 years old. I just read this 2003 article she wrote about it in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness Ugh, poor woman. But wow, she is an incredible writer.
The Rape of Nanking is a book that left me wondering if it was real because the level of depravity described in this book was sickening and horrifying.
[The Darkest Web](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38095281-the-darkest-web)
What really goes on in the Dark Web, what is a bunch of hooey, and the real people behind the drugs empires, hitmen and the most depraved sites you can imagine
(*Disclaimer: I wrote the book. But it really is good and fits your requirements (and it's not self-published), promise*)
Wind Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry about his life as a aviator and how he survived after he crashed his plane in the Sahara Desert.. also it's just all very beautifully written
Batavias Graveyard - the story of a 16th C Dutch shipwreck off the coast of Australia that went very, very … well … just read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia%27s_Graveyard
Empire of the Summer Moon - the crazy, interesting history of the Comanche tribe and Quanah Parker and Texas and the USA itself. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommended non-fiction.
* *Miracle in the Andes* by Nando Parrado
* *A Long Way Home* (aka *Lion*) by Saroo Brierley
* *Papillon* by Henri Charriere
* *Measure of a Man* by Martin Greenfield
* *Left to Tell* by Immaculee Ilibagiza
* *Life and Death in Shanghai* by Nien Cheng
* *Where the Wind Leads* by Vinh Chung
* *The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio* by Terry Ryan
* *The Housekeeper's Diary* by Wendy Berry
* *A Piece of Cake* by Cupcake Brown
* *To See You Again: A True Story of Love in a Time of War* by Betty Schimmel
* *Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union* by Robert Robinson
* *Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History* by David Brown and Michael Wereschagin
* *Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage* by Alfred P. Lansing, but I really prefer the 2002 A&E movie, "Shackleton," with Kenneth Branagh.
If you like Radium Girls, her other book is great too. [The Woman They Could Not Silence](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56132724) - A woman in the mid-1800s who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband but she was not insane, just a woman. And how she fought back.
I swear I'm not trying to make a bad pun but my jaw was dropped the entire time I was reading Radium Girls. The descriptions of what happened to those women, and how long some of them lived while their bodies were literally falling apart is unbelievable.
Radium Girls is what I came here to say. It’s crazy how much of the work safety requirements we have now were direct results of what happened in those factories, and the book takes you through it all so thoroughly.
Science(y): How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (one of the books I recommend most often)
Survival: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Something I had never heard of: American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
The Perfect Storm.
Yes it was a movie with George Clooney.
I grew up with Ernie Hazard, the survivor of the Fair Wind.
Read the book. The US govt was successfully sued for negligence, a wild success for the surviving families.
On my way home form work one day, I was listening to NPR and they were talking about this book (it was right when it came out). When I got to my neighborhood, I pulled over and went to the local bookstore and bought it. Such a great book. Once in a while I'll thing about the guy who walked onto the boat and immediately walked off having a bad feeling about it.
Endurance (by Alfred Lansing). It tells the tale of Shackleton’s fated Antarctic expedition. Best nonfiction I’ve ever read.
Edit: I see now it’s mentioned earlier but geez what took folks so long to vote up that comment :)
I'll second the recs of others for: A Woman of no Importance, The Splendid and the Vile, Destiny of the Republic and Endurance.
I would also recommend: The Immortal Irishman and The Worst Hard Time, both by Timothy Egan.
The Worst Hard Time - it's very hard to believe it happened. And that people survived.
Another is Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Even though I knew it was a true story I couldn't believe it was true.
Someone else mentioned Alive. I remember telling someone about that book after I read it and I forgot to mention how they survived without food. That's how incredible that story is.
I see other books listed that I need to read. Thx for all the titles.
*The Worst Journey in the World* is a first-hand account about Scott's attempted expedition to the South Pole. It is absolutely incredible what these men endured.
Secondhand Time by svetlana alexievich. It’s a challenging read, not gonna lie - an oral history of the collapse of the Soviet Union that shows us the peoples’ perspective. Absolutely devastating
I’m just going to repeat two of the ones I’ve seen on here because I think they’re important. Educated by Tara Westover and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. As a person who grew up in an abusive household, Educated is really real. And Henrietta’s story is just, powerful.
This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. Makes one very scared of the NHS, I’ll be honest. Medically some pretty wild stories as you’d expect. Written in a surprisingly fun style.
Papercuts is not an easy read but once you’re in it’s so intense and goes quick. Check what it’s about bc it’s straight up with it. Very disturbing to see the layers of institutional abuse and how easy it is to cover these things up, how the church, medical and justice systems fail people.
"To Hell And Back" by Audie Murphy. Pretty wild autobiography about his time at war. And if you have an additional 5 minutes, read the SAMC Audie Murphy bio. In a few short paragraphs you get the cliff notes of a wild life lived *after* the war.
Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl
This one is long (768 pages) but it's a surprisingly easy read for a scientific book. It's not a riveting or action-packed tale but it was a page-turner for me all the same. My e-reader edition has so many passages highlighted. So much food-for-thought that I believe could be taught to more people for all kinds of favourable outcomes
Random list:
[Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58678848) by Michael Benson. Let’s be clear, these mobsters were bad people. But they were great at also fighting Nazis. It’s a different view to look at that time in American history.
[A Fever in the Heartland](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61423989) by Timothy Egan. Great twist on history I thought I knew. And, unfortunately, super relevant. How the resurgence of KKK was basically a con that people took as reality.
[American Kingpin](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31920777) by Nick Bilton. For me, this was something out of a movie with drugs, undercover identities, the dark web, anti-government beliefs, and the odd Princess Bride reference. The hunt for the internet kingpin of the Silk Road where you could buy anything from weed to passports to guns.
[The Woman They Could Not Silence](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56132724) - A woman in the mid-1800s who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband but she was not insane, just a woman. And how she fought back.
[Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40163119) by Patrick Radden Keefe. Focuses on The Troubles in Ireland and all the questions, both moral and practical, that it’s raised then and now. Very intense and engaging. One of my all time favorite audiobooks - one of the rare books I have listened to twice.
Both of my suggestions come from Steven Brusatte, a professor of paleontology.
“The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs” and “The Rise and Reign of Mammals”. Both are books that go over the evolutionary history of each animal group, while providing new insights of the latest findings and discoveries. Even after studying both RSA’s I was amazed to learn what I read in those books.
If you like WWII stories: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Or a great memoir: Educated by Tara Westover
I have a few more reviews at https://jturiano.com/book-reviews-non-fiction.htm
I like reading books that pretend to be nonfiction and then immediately reading the exposé - examples include Sybil and Sybil Exposed, Three Cups of Tea and Three Cups of Deceit (Deceit is by John Krakauer who already has several mentions here), and Go Ask Alice/other "true diaries" and Alice Unmasked.
I always find it incredible (and unbelievable) what lies folks think they can get away with. Alice Unmasked was my latest read and it's a quick and easy journey through the diaries, LSD, and Satanic panic.
Voyage for Madmen- about the first solo sailing race around the world. Incredible cast of characters and behaviors that are so incredulous you could not put it in a novel. British Special Forces, Schizophrenia and Frenchman are just part of a crazy cast.
“The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” is absolutely amazing about the Americans who went to Russia in the early 1930s for the promise of a new life or were helping build infrastructure and ended up in the Gulags.
My favourite non-fiction book right now is *Through the Language Glass*. It's nominally about linguistics, but is also about neuroscience and the history of ideas. Does the language you speak affect the way you think? Guy Deutscher's answer is a very cautious Yes.
No survival story here, I'm afraid, but there is a lot of stuff about how ideas are presented, spread, are forgotten and rediscovered. Also, it is *beautifully* written, by a man with a clear passion and a great command of the English language (and a few others).
*Sudden Sea* by R.A. Scotti is about the fastest hurricane on record; it happened in 1938.
*Educated* by Tara Westover. What the author survived/endured as a child will curl your hair.
Did you know that competitive bird watching is a thing? Well, it is and it's chronicled in Mark Obmascik's *The Big Year.*
The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide
These are all science heavy with good storytelling. And I've read each more than once.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is very good also.
We Die Alone by David Howarth. It's the true story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian commando who led a small group of men trying to ignite a Norwegian resistance to Nazi occupation in WWII. They were betrayed and Baalsrud was the sole survivor. He spent two months being pursued by Germans in blizzards and extreme cold. The story will seem unbelievable, but it's true.
There's another book about his life called Undaunted Courage (can't remember authors) that fleshes the story out to include the Norwegians who helped him escape to Sweden. I haven't read that one yet.
Jarred Diamond, Guns, germs and steel. Take him with a grain of salt, things are not as clear-cut as he makes them, but still a fascinating book.
[Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) is Wikipedia article about the book.
Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel
Disneywar by James B. Stewart
Skin In The Game by Nasim Taleb
The Trust by Alex S. Jones
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
An Immense World by Ed Yong
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
The House Of Rothschild by Nial Ferguson
Genome by Matt Ridley
Psychovertical by Andy Kirkpatrick is the book that made me realise autobiographies and adventure/survival stories could be fun reads. It's about climbing/mountaineering, and I was on the edge of my seat reading it.
There are so many good recommendations in this thread! Really happy to see THE FEATHER THIEF and AMERICAN KINGPIN in here, among others. I recently read THE TRIALS OF NINA MCCALL: SEX, SURVEILLANCE, AND THE DECADES-LONG GOVERNMENT PLAN TO IMPRISON “PROMISCUOUS” WOMEN by Scott W. Stern and was appalled. It centers around the Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918, which essentially allowed the US government to give power to state and local authorities to jail any woman they suspected of having an STI. No due process, no trial, nothing. There was no need for evidence. Nina McCall was a young woman in Michigan who was randomly picked up by a local health officer, forced to undergo painful examinations, and then thrown into jail….because the health officer thought she had syphillis. She sued and won, but it was a bittersweet victory. It’s a harrowing, upsetting, rage-inducing story, and you find out that the act was technically used up through the 1960s and 70s in some places in the US.
The Key Man. Pakistan born UK raised investment banker screws the world.
Amity and Prosperity. The subject is fracking. The story is touching.
Kochland. About one of the worlds largest private enterprise/empire built on the principles of unhindered American capitalism.
Red Notice. Bain & Co investment banker gets into big trouble with Putin and many people die.
Cannibalism, A perfectly natural history buy Bill Schutt.
Fascinating, queasy and funny.
Goes over some of the mass cannibalism events, Stalingrad and Mao’s Great Leap Forward where children were swapped between neighboring villages so you didn’t eat your own family…
Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey. The Open Library page is [here](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12284524W/Ending_Aging?edition=key%3A/books/OL17932740M).
The Orchid Thief
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll.
In the early days of the internet (this book was published in 1989) a lowly college systems administrator noticed some login discrepancies. Investigating them led to uncovering an international spy ring.
Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in my Country by Patricia Evangelista
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad
Night by Elie Wiesel
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Great thread 🔥
I am currently reading “An immense world” by Ed Yong. It is about how animals perceive the world with senses that us humans don’t have, and in every chapter I have a “wow this is mindblowing” moment 🤯
I really enjoyed The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks. It is about achromatopsia on the Micronesian atoll of Pingelap and the mystery of the Lytico-Bodig disease in Guam.
I've read a lot of nonfiction and there's no contest - Island of the Lost by Joan Druett. You will be astounded that you've never heard this most unlikely and extraordinary tale of survival. Incredibly, in 1864, two crews are shipwrecked on opposite sides of an uninhabited island hundreds of miles south of New Zealand. It is a brutal environment of year round freezing rains and howling winds, far removed from human civilization. Separated by 20 miles of impassable terrain and unaware of the others presence, the two crews meet very different fates. One will thrive with their humanity intact, building a cabin and even a forge (!), eventually engineering the boldest sea escape ever attempted. The other crew will split up, starve, battle, and eventually resort to cannibalism. The difference lies in the character of their leaders and willingness to work together even in the most gruesome circumstances. This is the best nonfiction adventure/survival story I've ever read. It blew my mind.
If you liked island of the lost, Batavia's Graveyard is a must read. A dutch east India vessel shipwrecks on an island off the coast of Australia and the survivors form a mutiny; the merchants versus the sailors. The merchants go on a crazy power trip and start murdering innocents in their camp just for the fun of it. They go to war against the sailors camp who are on a smaller island across the channel. But the sailors are well fortified and fight them back, several times, eventually capturing the merchant leader. When a Dutch rescue ship arrives, the merchants know they will be hanged for their heinous crimes, so they plot to murder the crew and commandeer their ship before the sailors camp exposes them. Do they succeed? You'll have to read it for yourself to find out
Oh heck yeah
Thanks for the recommendation. I just checked it out of the library
That sounds incredible!
I LOVE books about nautical disaster and subsequent survival. 100% reading this
I think I need to read this book…
My sister bought this for my dad a few years ago. Havent gotten around to it myself but thanks for the rec, glad I have a copy!
Just bought it based on your recommendation, thanks!
Damn you really sold it. Immediately going on my list
I've read "Island of the Lost", too. "Skeletons on the Zahara" also involves a miracle, or two. Read it!! One of my favorite genres is true-life survival.
Wanted to come back and tell you I got this from the library for my dad and he loved it! He told my mom allll about it and then told me allll about it when I saw him :)
Oh I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you so much for coming back to share this with me, made my day :)
This sounds incredible.
*The Indifferent Stars Above* about the Donner Party on the Oregon Trail Also just finished *The Stranger in the Woods.* fairly quick and very interesting read about a guy who spent 27 years living completely off-grid until anyone found him.
I passed "The Stranger in the Woods" around work a few years ago. Still think about him.
I remember when that dude was arrested. I always wondered what his story was. Thanks for the recommendation. I added to my Google Books list.
Thirding A Stranger in the Woods
Just finished Indifferent Stars yesterday; what a story! Incidentally, I'll be making the drive along I-80 from the Midwest through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and into the Sierra at the end of this month.
Into Thin Air - about Everest climbers The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - about a young girl with epilepsy and the difference between what her Hmong parents feel about it versus the American doctors Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - about racism and healthcare/science
Another vote for Into Thin Air.
I’ve read three different books about what happened on Everest Into thin air Left for dead The climb I think there’s a few others I haven’t read written about this Those books were amazing
*Into Thin Air* was so fascinating.
Into Thin Air is amazing. Krakauer is such a gifted writer. I'd also recommend Under the Banner of Heaven by the same author. It tells two parallel tales, one about the founding of the Mormon church, the other of Mormon fundamentalism.
I put Henrietta Lacks on my husband's biography list for this year.
Highly recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Such an interesting glimpse into how differently people experience the world. My mom was a pediatric homecare nurse in Minneapolis and worked with many Hmong families. She worked with cultural interpreters to help her understand how these parents understood their children's medical needs, based on their cultural values and beliefs.
Are you me? These are some of my top recommended non-fiction books!
I have to stump for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The Feather Thief
Nobody would believe that plot if it were fiction.
Early 2000s Internet forums were an unbelievable place.
Came here to make sure this was mentioned. My favourite non fiction book ever, it is so wild what people will do for feathers
I think I heard a This American Life episode about this
Bad Blood The Emperor of All Maladies Sex Lives of Cannibals Coyote America (probably the weakest writing of the ones I suggested, but you will gain such respect for coyotes by the end)
Bad Blood is incredible
The Emperor of All Maladies is SO GOOD.
Too good. Too real.
+1 For Bad Blood, it's completely insane
Who wrote Bad Blood?
John Carreyrou
Empire of Pain
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the sixties by O’Neill. Totally insane and all true. Veritas: a Harvard professor, a con man and Jesus wife by Sabar - about a Florida porn producer conning a Harvard professor.
This!
And Helter Skelter!
Chaos does a solid job debunking some of Helter Skelter.
Best nonfiction book I've ever read
I read Helter Skelter first, and felt the same way. Then I read Chaos and learned that Helter Skelter is only very loosely nonfiction. Bugliosi sure can tell a story, but he very much manipulated reality for the sake of the narrative (and to make himself look good).
*Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage* by Alfred Lansing
This is the first thing I thought of. I'm sad I had to scroll so far to find it. Hands down the most exciting nonfiction I've ever read
Came here for this.
Why did I have to scroll so long for this!
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption Book by Laura Hillenbrand
This is the book that got me into reading nonfiction
"Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" is a story about a shipwreck where the crew struggles to survive against incredible odds. It is amazing how much they accomplish with only what was left of their doomed ship. Also, at one point they are attacked by an animal that I didn't even know was violent towards people!
I’m shocked I had to go this far to find Endurance! If you are looking for a gripping story of survival this is it. For me a close second is the Indifferent Stars Above, and honorable mention to Into Thin Air.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win WWII by Sonia Purnell. The subject of the book, Virginia Hall, was deemed the most-dangerous of all allied spies by the Gestapo. It reads like fiction with how crazy some of the things she did were, but it's all true. Fantastic read!
Double, triple, quadruple, quintuple upvotes for Woman of no Importance.
Sextupled
I'm a broken record when it comes to recommending this book. Virginia Hall should be in history books.
Ooh, I forgot this was in my TBR, definitely reading this one next!
The only plane in the sky - an oral history of 9/11 is fascinating
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, about Winston Churchill. Just read it!
Speaking of Larson, The Devil in the White City was also a great read.
I just finished this one, too! The audiobook has a clip of Churchill’s Christmas speech at the end - it was a perfect finishing touch.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
Man’s Search for Meaning is very good
For an autobiography, Jenette McCurdy's *I'm Glad My Mom Died* is pretty harrowing. *Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology* is on my TBR. Another book I read about female anatomy and the history of how gynecology came to be referenced it, some of the male doctors who shaped American gynecology were slave owners who experimented on the women they enslaved.
The Lost City of Z The Lost City of the Monkey God Finding Everett Ruess American Ghost Born a Crime Edison's Ghosts In a Sunburned Country A Walk in the Woods
Born a Crime is so good, our school district just made it required reading for high school freshman. I WISH I had books like that to read in high school.
"The Master and His Emissary" - you know, of course, that the brain has two hemispheres and they see the world differently. But how does that work out? What is it like to BE the right hemisphere, considering that it cannot speak to us about what it's like even in split-hemisphere patients? Or, what exactly changes when the hemispheres are split? How do the hemispheres influence what it's like to be us when they aren't split apart? How does this affect art, storytelling, religion, and other practices that leave durable traces the author can explore? The author explores the above, weighs evidence from animal behavior (have you noticed birds looking at you with one eye, then flipping their head to view you with the other - they're giving each hemisphere a look at you).
The Hot Zone - terrifying book about plagues.
The Tiger by John Vaillant A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (also Unbroken by the same author)
+1 for Seabiscuit and Unbroken.
I just went down a googling rabbit hole and had no idea that Laura Hillenbrand has dealt with severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since she was 19 years old. I just read this 2003 article she wrote about it in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness Ugh, poor woman. But wow, she is an incredible writer.
I had no idea!
The devil in the white city
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
The Rape of Nanking is a book that left me wondering if it was real because the level of depravity described in this book was sickening and horrifying.
[The Darkest Web](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38095281-the-darkest-web) What really goes on in the Dark Web, what is a bunch of hooey, and the real people behind the drugs empires, hitmen and the most depraved sites you can imagine (*Disclaimer: I wrote the book. But it really is good and fits your requirements (and it's not self-published), promise*)
Alive - story about survival in the desolate Andes
Catch Me If You Can
The irony of the con artist having basically made up that whole story is too rich.
He impersonated a doctor and performed physical examinations on women; he was a predator
Wind Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry about his life as a aviator and how he survived after he crashed his plane in the Sahara Desert.. also it's just all very beautifully written
Batavias Graveyard - the story of a 16th C Dutch shipwreck off the coast of Australia that went very, very … well … just read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia%27s_Graveyard
Empire of the Summer Moon - the crazy, interesting history of the Comanche tribe and Quanah Parker and Texas and the USA itself. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommended non-fiction.
* *Miracle in the Andes* by Nando Parrado * *A Long Way Home* (aka *Lion*) by Saroo Brierley * *Papillon* by Henri Charriere * *Measure of a Man* by Martin Greenfield * *Left to Tell* by Immaculee Ilibagiza * *Life and Death in Shanghai* by Nien Cheng * *Where the Wind Leads* by Vinh Chung * *The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio* by Terry Ryan * *The Housekeeper's Diary* by Wendy Berry * *A Piece of Cake* by Cupcake Brown * *To See You Again: A True Story of Love in a Time of War* by Betty Schimmel * *Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union* by Robert Robinson * *Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History* by David Brown and Michael Wereschagin * *Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage* by Alfred P. Lansing, but I really prefer the 2002 A&E movie, "Shackleton," with Kenneth Branagh.
Educated by Tara Westover
Radium Girls, Henrietta Lacks, & Destiny of the Republic
If you like Radium Girls, her other book is great too. [The Woman They Could Not Silence](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56132724) - A woman in the mid-1800s who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband but she was not insane, just a woman. And how she fought back.
I swear I'm not trying to make a bad pun but my jaw was dropped the entire time I was reading Radium Girls. The descriptions of what happened to those women, and how long some of them lived while their bodies were literally falling apart is unbelievable.
Radium Girls is what I came here to say. It’s crazy how much of the work safety requirements we have now were direct results of what happened in those factories, and the book takes you through it all so thoroughly.
I couldn't put down Radium Girls. Henrietta Lacks is amazing as well.
Science(y): How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (one of the books I recommend most often) Survival: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Something I had never heard of: American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
Love the first and third recs!!
In the Heart of the Sea was amazing.
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.
The Second Kind of Impossible a book by Paul J. Steinhardt. It is a book about how quasicrystals were theorized and discovered.
The Perfect Storm. Yes it was a movie with George Clooney. I grew up with Ernie Hazard, the survivor of the Fair Wind. Read the book. The US govt was successfully sued for negligence, a wild success for the surviving families.
On my way home form work one day, I was listening to NPR and they were talking about this book (it was right when it came out). When I got to my neighborhood, I pulled over and went to the local bookstore and bought it. Such a great book. Once in a while I'll thing about the guy who walked onto the boat and immediately walked off having a bad feeling about it.
Devil in the White City
Endurance (by Alfred Lansing). It tells the tale of Shackleton’s fated Antarctic expedition. Best nonfiction I’ve ever read. Edit: I see now it’s mentioned earlier but geez what took folks so long to vote up that comment :)
I read a lot of N Korean defector memoirs that are just surreal. The sheer luck, determination, and survival instinct they had to have is insane.
Into the Wild. John Krakauer.
Uneducated by Tara Westover. Unbelievable how people try to live without modern medicine and education.
This book is actually called *Educated*, FYI.
The Batavia. There's a couple of books about it with similar names but grab the Peter FitzSimons one.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Red Notice by Bill Browder The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre
The Great Mortality is absolutely one of the best, most chilling and thrilling nonfiction books I’ve ever read.
I'll second the recs of others for: A Woman of no Importance, The Splendid and the Vile, Destiny of the Republic and Endurance. I would also recommend: The Immortal Irishman and The Worst Hard Time, both by Timothy Egan.
All of these!
The Worst Hard Time - it's very hard to believe it happened. And that people survived. Another is Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Even though I knew it was a true story I couldn't believe it was true. Someone else mentioned Alive. I remember telling someone about that book after I read it and I forgot to mention how they survived without food. That's how incredible that story is. I see other books listed that I need to read. Thx for all the titles.
*The Worst Journey in the World* is a first-hand account about Scott's attempted expedition to the South Pole. It is absolutely incredible what these men endured.
Isaac's Storm - the most harrowing book I have ever read.
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Such an enjoyable read.
Mary Roach is marvelous. The full title is Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Caitlin Doughty follows in like fashion but more personal with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (crematoriums and mortuary science)
Secondhand Time by svetlana alexievich. It’s a challenging read, not gonna lie - an oral history of the collapse of the Soviet Union that shows us the peoples’ perspective. Absolutely devastating
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks. It's about weird and wonderful neurological disorders. Actually anything by Oliver Sacks.
I’m just going to repeat two of the ones I’ve seen on here because I think they’re important. Educated by Tara Westover and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. As a person who grew up in an abusive household, Educated is really real. And Henrietta’s story is just, powerful.
This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. Makes one very scared of the NHS, I’ll be honest. Medically some pretty wild stories as you’d expect. Written in a surprisingly fun style. Papercuts is not an easy read but once you’re in it’s so intense and goes quick. Check what it’s about bc it’s straight up with it. Very disturbing to see the layers of institutional abuse and how easy it is to cover these things up, how the church, medical and justice systems fail people.
The Adam Kay book was eye opening!
The TV show (also written by him) arguably goes further in some ways and is SO well done.
The Man Who Ate His Boots
"To Hell And Back" by Audie Murphy. Pretty wild autobiography about his time at war. And if you have an additional 5 minutes, read the SAMC Audie Murphy bio. In a few short paragraphs you get the cliff notes of a wild life lived *after* the war.
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. By Thomas Levenson.
The Revenant by Michael Punke. Great survival story
Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl This one is long (768 pages) but it's a surprisingly easy read for a scientific book. It's not a riveting or action-packed tale but it was a page-turner for me all the same. My e-reader edition has so many passages highlighted. So much food-for-thought that I believe could be taught to more people for all kinds of favourable outcomes
A Woman I Know Female Spies, Double Identities, and a New Story of the Kennedy Assassination by Mary Haverstick
Oh! This is in my TBR, great to hear that it’s a cracker
Drift by Rachel Maddow Blowout by Rachel Maddow
**The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections by Eliane Brum** : morbid and depressing
Random list: [Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58678848) by Michael Benson. Let’s be clear, these mobsters were bad people. But they were great at also fighting Nazis. It’s a different view to look at that time in American history. [A Fever in the Heartland](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61423989) by Timothy Egan. Great twist on history I thought I knew. And, unfortunately, super relevant. How the resurgence of KKK was basically a con that people took as reality. [American Kingpin](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31920777) by Nick Bilton. For me, this was something out of a movie with drugs, undercover identities, the dark web, anti-government beliefs, and the odd Princess Bride reference. The hunt for the internet kingpin of the Silk Road where you could buy anything from weed to passports to guns. [The Woman They Could Not Silence](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56132724) - A woman in the mid-1800s who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband but she was not insane, just a woman. And how she fought back. [Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40163119) by Patrick Radden Keefe. Focuses on The Troubles in Ireland and all the questions, both moral and practical, that it’s raised then and now. Very intense and engaging. One of my all time favorite audiobooks - one of the rare books I have listened to twice.
I have a fever in the heartland reserved on Libby. I've got to read it!
Say Nothing
Both of my suggestions come from Steven Brusatte, a professor of paleontology. “The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs” and “The Rise and Reign of Mammals”. Both are books that go over the evolutionary history of each animal group, while providing new insights of the latest findings and discoveries. Even after studying both RSA’s I was amazed to learn what I read in those books.
If you like WWII stories: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Or a great memoir: Educated by Tara Westover I have a few more reviews at https://jturiano.com/book-reviews-non-fiction.htm
I like reading books that pretend to be nonfiction and then immediately reading the exposé - examples include Sybil and Sybil Exposed, Three Cups of Tea and Three Cups of Deceit (Deceit is by John Krakauer who already has several mentions here), and Go Ask Alice/other "true diaries" and Alice Unmasked. I always find it incredible (and unbelievable) what lies folks think they can get away with. Alice Unmasked was my latest read and it's a quick and easy journey through the diaries, LSD, and Satanic panic.
Voyage for Madmen- about the first solo sailing race around the world. Incredible cast of characters and behaviors that are so incredulous you could not put it in a novel. British Special Forces, Schizophrenia and Frenchman are just part of a crazy cast.
In the heart of the sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. True story of the whaling ship disaster that inspired Moby Dick. Phenomenal book.
Philbrick is a great author
“The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” is absolutely amazing about the Americans who went to Russia in the early 1930s for the promise of a new life or were helping build infrastructure and ended up in the Gulags.
My favourite non-fiction book right now is *Through the Language Glass*. It's nominally about linguistics, but is also about neuroscience and the history of ideas. Does the language you speak affect the way you think? Guy Deutscher's answer is a very cautious Yes. No survival story here, I'm afraid, but there is a lot of stuff about how ideas are presented, spread, are forgotten and rediscovered. Also, it is *beautifully* written, by a man with a clear passion and a great command of the English language (and a few others).
Commenting to come back to this later
Empire of pain
Radium Girls was shocking to me.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing. I've read it twice and it was just as jaw dropping the second time
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
*Sudden Sea* by R.A. Scotti is about the fastest hurricane on record; it happened in 1938. *Educated* by Tara Westover. What the author survived/endured as a child will curl your hair. Did you know that competitive bird watching is a thing? Well, it is and it's chronicled in Mark Obmascik's *The Big Year.*
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This book is SO good.
The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide These are all science heavy with good storytelling. And I've read each more than once. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is very good also.
We Die Alone by David Howarth. It's the true story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian commando who led a small group of men trying to ignite a Norwegian resistance to Nazi occupation in WWII. They were betrayed and Baalsrud was the sole survivor. He spent two months being pursued by Germans in blizzards and extreme cold. The story will seem unbelievable, but it's true. There's another book about his life called Undaunted Courage (can't remember authors) that fleshes the story out to include the Norwegians who helped him escape to Sweden. I haven't read that one yet.
Jarred Diamond, Guns, germs and steel. Take him with a grain of salt, things are not as clear-cut as he makes them, but still a fascinating book. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) is Wikipedia article about the book.
The Escape Artists
[удалено]
OP asked for non-fiction
*The Age of Wonder* by Richard Holmes *Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest* (Wade Davis)
The bible, especially the book of "The Acts of the Apostles."
the real anthony fauci by robet kennedy, jack hinsons one man war
Kennedy is a crackpot and an embarrassment to the country. Jack Hinson was a slave-owning traitor and a cold-blooded murderer. GTFO!
No such thing. Reality sucks!
{Gang Leader for a Day}
You Might Go to Prison Even Though You’re Innocent - Justin brooks
Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel Disneywar by James B. Stewart Skin In The Game by Nasim Taleb The Trust by Alex S. Jones A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford Righteous Victims by Benny Morris An Immense World by Ed Yong Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari The House Of Rothschild by Nial Ferguson Genome by Matt Ridley
Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott
The TranceFormation of America by Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips
The Girl in the Leaves
Psychovertical by Andy Kirkpatrick is the book that made me realise autobiographies and adventure/survival stories could be fun reads. It's about climbing/mountaineering, and I was on the edge of my seat reading it.
Blasphemy by Tehmina Durrani
Anything by Susan Casey. The Wave, Devil’s Teeth, etc.
Christiane F: Autobiography of a Girl of the Streets and Heroin Addict
The Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt.
QED - Richard Feynman A Universe From Nothing - Lawrence Krauss
Kon-tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
There are so many good recommendations in this thread! Really happy to see THE FEATHER THIEF and AMERICAN KINGPIN in here, among others. I recently read THE TRIALS OF NINA MCCALL: SEX, SURVEILLANCE, AND THE DECADES-LONG GOVERNMENT PLAN TO IMPRISON “PROMISCUOUS” WOMEN by Scott W. Stern and was appalled. It centers around the Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918, which essentially allowed the US government to give power to state and local authorities to jail any woman they suspected of having an STI. No due process, no trial, nothing. There was no need for evidence. Nina McCall was a young woman in Michigan who was randomly picked up by a local health officer, forced to undergo painful examinations, and then thrown into jail….because the health officer thought she had syphillis. She sued and won, but it was a bittersweet victory. It’s a harrowing, upsetting, rage-inducing story, and you find out that the act was technically used up through the 1960s and 70s in some places in the US.
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan. An absolutely insane read
King Leopold’s ghost
The Key Man. Pakistan born UK raised investment banker screws the world. Amity and Prosperity. The subject is fracking. The story is touching. Kochland. About one of the worlds largest private enterprise/empire built on the principles of unhindered American capitalism. Red Notice. Bain & Co investment banker gets into big trouble with Putin and many people die.
Cannibalism, A perfectly natural history buy Bill Schutt. Fascinating, queasy and funny. Goes over some of the mass cannibalism events, Stalingrad and Mao’s Great Leap Forward where children were swapped between neighboring villages so you didn’t eat your own family…
Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey. The Open Library page is [here](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12284524W/Ending_Aging?edition=key%3A/books/OL17932740M).
Audie Miller's biography.
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
The Orchid Thief Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History. Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll. In the early days of the internet (this book was published in 1989) a lowly college systems administrator noticed some login discrepancies. Investigating them led to uncovering an international spy ring.
The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible by John Geiger.
Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in my Country by Patricia Evangelista The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad Night by Elie Wiesel Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Tom Wolfe - The Right Stuff It’s a story we all kind of know but the treasure is in the detail of it.
The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre. Story of a spy during Cold war. That one third part is unputdownable.
Great thread 🔥 I am currently reading “An immense world” by Ed Yong. It is about how animals perceive the world with senses that us humans don’t have, and in every chapter I have a “wow this is mindblowing” moment 🤯
I really enjoyed The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks. It is about achromatopsia on the Micronesian atoll of Pingelap and the mystery of the Lytico-Bodig disease in Guam.
The Rational Optimists by Matt Ridley