26 recommendations in Must-Read Non-fiction A to Z
Non-fiction reading is essential reading as it solves multiple purposes. Some books act as mentors, teachers that give you lessons that may change your life when followed diligently.
Some books introduce us to our history and geography like no other. Some of them are true accounts of real lives lived despite hardships and extraordinary circumstances that will inspire us and guide us in our troubled times.
Whatever theme you decide to pick first to read I have a recommendation in this list. And it contains only the best in class books sorted alphabetically, with one recommendation for each letter.
So you have 26 of the bestselling non-fiction books to read.
Tip : Many of the below featured books are available on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited Subscription for free or at very reduced prices.
Some of these books are also available for free on Audible.
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Bestselling non-fiction books to read
On the final day of his sophomore year, James was hit in the face with a baseball bat between the eyes.
He suffered a broken nose, multiple skull fractures, and two broken eye sockets.
He went into a coma.
Six years after that incident, he was selected the top male athlete at Denison University and named to the ESPN Academic All-American Team.
His injury taught him a critical lesson – changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
The effects of small habits compound over time. If you can get 1% better each day for a year, you’ll end up 37 times better at the end of the year.
Unfortunately, the slow speed of transformation makes it easy for us to give up and slide into a bad habit.
This is Michelle’s story from as young as 18 months to the day after her husband, Barack Obama left the Office of President of the United States to reinstate Donald Trump into his place. She recalls how she became what she became and ponders on the journey ahead.
Michelle Obama carried out a role that was as yet undefined, the role of a First Lady, and created benchmarks for her successors.
A surgeon and a writer, in this book, Gawande finds the solution to handle the most complex of programs with the simplest of techniques – checklists. He endorses the techniques through stories in medicine as well in areas like disaster management, investment banking to even skyscraper construction.
This is a life-changing book, literally.
Deep Work is a very deeply thought-out book highlighting some mistakes the younger working professionals are committing. More work is not necessarily smart work or good work. With multitasking, we are letting the quality of our work slip says, Newport. We need deep work – more focused work without any distractions.
He discusses this using psychology and neuroscience to convince us. He also talks about the employer making changes to how they encourage employees to do their projects.
It’s a compelling book that will offer excellent doable steps to enrich our life through deep work.
The story of an extraordinary education. From no school to Cambridge, to Harvard, to the author of an internationally bestselling memoir. Youngest of seven kids, four of her siblings stayed in the mountain she was born in without even high school diplomas, while the remaining three of them including Tara went on to get doctorates and move away from their birthplace.
A must-read. Add this to your book to read in a lifetime list.
The book, 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything’ is an interesting book that combines the theories of economics with everyday issues and topics and presents a series of fascinating exercises that are engaging.
This book is written in the form of essays covering economic issues and analyzes how these issues are linked with our everyday life. The book consists of six such essays.
Why has human history unraveled so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis?
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the study that geography and biogeography, not a race, shaped the opposing destinies of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.
A ruthless fusion of history, biology, ecology, and linguistics, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a ground-breaking and compassionate work of science that can provide professional understanding into our modern world.
Why believe drugs and surgery to cure you of life-threatening disease when the proper decisions can prevent you from falling ill to start with?
Based on the newest research project, How to not Die examines each of the foremost common diseases to reveal what, how and why different foods affect us, and the way increasing our consumption of certain foods and avoiding others can dramatically reduce our risk of falling sick and even reverse the consequences of the disease. It also shares Dr. Greger's 'Daily Dozen' – the twelve foods we should always all eat a day to remain within the better of health.
With an emphasis on individual family health history and acknowledging that everybody needs something different, Dr. Michael Greger offers practical dietary advice to assist you to reside longer, healthier lives.
The Japanese believe that everyone has an Ikigai: a purpose or reason for living that makes it worthwhile. In Japanese, it is written as 生き甲斐. In Japanese 生き means, life and 甲斐 mean being worthwhile. Our intuition and curiosity are powerful internal compasses that help us to connect with our ikigai. The 10 rules of Ikigai and The 4 keys to living a long life (longevity) are the most vital elements worth absorbing.
Remember: The most important thing in life is to stay busy doing what you love amongst people who love you.
How do you fight against a system that treats the rich and guilty favorably than the poor and innocent? Well, Bryan Stevenson, a young lawyer, founded the EJI – Equal Justice Initiative to defend the poor and the wrongly condemned.
His first client was a black man, innocent, but convicted for the murder of a young white woman.
This book somehow reminded me of Atticus Finch, but Atticus Finch was Harper Lee’s imagination. Bryon’s story is real, revolutionary, and unforgettable. This true account must be in your books to read in your lifetime list.
In 2015 Chanel was visiting Stanford with her sister Tiffany for a party, where she got had a few drinks and blacked out, outside the party venue. In her unconscious and vulnerable position, she was digitally (using fingers) assaulted by Brock Turner. Before he could do more damage was caught by two cyclists and tried to run away. Chanel woke up in a hospital and had no memory of what happened. But for the next one and a half years, she was reminded of what happened every day.
I felt overwhelmed and unable to think anything other than the book and Chanel's words for a little while after I finished the book.
When Indira Gandhi was a small girl of ten, she spent the summer in Mussoorie, while her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was in Allahabad. These letters were written during that time.
This isn’t our everyday letters asking about health, promising surprises on the meeting, and conveying undying love for the kid. These letters are very unique and frankly quite interesting for young kids who are beginning to understand the natural world around them.
This compilation will spark their curiosity and provide them with information that will inspire them to explore more without overburdening them.
Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D., was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. The observations he expresses in this book about his harrowing journey are not only from the point of view of a prisoner, but also as a qualified psychotherapist. The formula he offers in this book for making life worth living applies not only in extreme situations like a concentration camp, but also to everyday life and situations.
His short autobiographical work proves that something positive can be raised from the most miserable and worst times.
A 16-year-olds harrowing story of surviving during the Holocaust. A first-person account of a survivor’s perspective on the torture and murder he experienced during humankind’s most shameful era in history. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Eliezer mentions that he wrote this book to keep the memory of this unforgettable experience alive. Because forgetting the event, he says, would make him an accomplice of the occurrence. He questions the world on their silence when the atrocities took place and he states, we must take sides because neutrality helps and instigates the oppressor.
An unnerving read, that presents the readers with horrors a whole generation of people faced due to being born in a race, religion.
Malcolm Gladwell starts with a clear goal for this book. He argues that to understand success, we should not just understand an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation, but also look beyond the individual to -
- The culture they were a part of
- Who their friends and families were
- What town do their families come from
Looking at these factors is essential because we need to learn that the values of the world we live in and the people we surround ourselves with profoundly affect who we are.
Persepolis is the story of a girl, who lived in Iran, who was bold, intelligent, and wise beyond her years. Her great-grandfather was the prince of Iran. Her family although living in an orthodox and oppressive regime were forward-thinking and wanted nothing more than the safety and best education for their only child. Through this novel, we get to see the history and growth of a nation, Iran, at the same time we are exposed to the workings of the country that were overbearing, unjust, and sometimes absolutely ridiculous.
The most fundamental dimension of personality, a minimum of 30% of folks are introverts, and yet shyness, sensitivity, and seriousness are often seen as negative. Some of the world's most talented people are introverts - without them, we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the thought of relativity, and Van Gogh's sunflowers. In Quiet, Susan Cain shows how society misunderstands and undervalues introverts while giving them the tools to understand themselves and take full advantage of their strengths.
Passionately argued, superbly researched, and crammed with real stories, whether an introvert or extrovert, this book will change how you see citizenry permanently.
I stumbled upon this book time and again whenever I was looking for effective books to read on personal finance. So I finally decided to give it a go and I wasn’t disappointed.
Although this book is written about an ancient kingdom that existed 4000 years ago, surprisingly, all the principles and money laws mentioned hold good and true even today.
If you’d like to know how our species was born, 70,000 years ago and how we evolved through the years and why things are the way they are, now and how did we survive all these years although no other species did, this book by Yuval Noah Harari will enlighten you. He believes we can create and connect ideas that physically do not exist (politics, religion, etc.)
The topic of the history of humankind in itself is quite fascinating. And I loved how Harari made it even more interesting with the story-like format he uses to explain concepts and the progress of the Sapiens.
Do you ever wonder about your thinking? As to why sometimes we make quick intuitive decisions and quick choices about some things while we take time and think rationally about others.
This book shows us how our minds are tricked by intentional errors and preconceptions (even when we think we are being reasonable), and gives us hands-on practices for slower, smarter thinking. It empowers us to make better decisions at work, at home, and in everything we do.
Ask yourself: What would your life be like if you could learn and remember information easily, quickly, and effectively?
Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley is a guideline on how you can achieve any goal you set for yourself by learning anything you want to learn to accomplish that.
I loved the book for the plenty of examples it gave. Because although the first few methods are simple to grasp and link. Things get complicated with more advanced strategies when you start dealing with numbers and long lists. And that will require tremendous practice on the reader’s part.
Horsley has given us the tools. We need to learn to use them.
This extraordinary book is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A journalist by profession, Svetlana Alexievich, now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book. Through this, she presents personal accounts of what happened to the citizens of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986 and what they still live with. Svetlana Alexievich won awards "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
The first thing that strikes us about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech/essay is the frankness. What she wants to say and tell us is crystal clear. Her very relatable real-life examples speak for themselves. They point out the obvious comparisons we have been making consciously or unconsciously through our lives. She speaks about her experiences in Nigeria, but her examples are believable even in India.
The easy and smooth language employed to narrate the author’s personal experiences makes it one of the fundamental reads for understanding feminism.
In his autobiography Malcolm X, a Muslim leader and anti-integrationist tells the fascinating story of his life and how the Black Muslim movement grew.
He lays bare the lies all Americans are fed like a dream. He talks about the ingrained racism in the country and highlights issues that need immediate attention.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the all-important account of a crusade and a man whose work is incomplete but whose message is ageless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the mammoth that is America.
Yes Please was Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated first book. She volunteers a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex, love, friendship, and parenthood, and real-life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be amusing and when to be serious.
Driven by Amy’s fascinating and hilarious, pinching yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book packed with words to live by.
Questions about entrepreneurship that Peter Thiel answers in his book will guide you to building your startup that sees vertical progress. It is an exercise in thinking he says. Luck or Chance is not a factor in success is the idea that Peter Thiel stresses over and over. He has faith in hard work and careful planning. The essential first step to creating new things is to think for yourself is what he believes.
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