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21 Must-Read Non-fiction books for fiction lovers
Fiction lovers avoid non-fiction books thinking they are drab, dry, not compelling, and difficult to read or simple not entertaining enough.
But what if I told you that I’ve read multiple such book that have the best of both worlds.
True lies lived by real people, with characters so riveting that you’ll instantly love them. And plot twists that will make you believe that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
But that isn’t even the best part, imagine the knowledge you’ll gain out of learning about real places, real people, real events and moments that created real history.
This is a must-read list of unforgettable and thought-provoking nonfiction books.
The Best Non-Fiction for Fiction Readers
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.
History Books that read like novels
William Dalrymple is a historian and a novelist. The Anarchy tells the incredible story of how one of the world's most magnificent empires (Mughals) disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based across oceans and continents(in England) in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most aspiring and enticing book written until now, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, exploring an opportune tale of the first global corporate power.
In 2015, Preston had been part of an excursion that explored an unexplored city deep in the rain forests of Honduras, one that belonged to an as-of-yet undiscovered civilization. The book deals with the efforts to explore of the legendary “White City,” and more recent efforts from archeologists to trace its location.
As you follow the mesmerizing wilderness in the book with Preston, you’ll be horrified to find Preston and his team amidst a horrifying and incurable disease. Full of suspense and shocks this unique read promises to be one hell of an adventurous ride.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists all over know her as HeLa. Why did scientists know a poor tobacco farmer? Because they took her cells without her knowledge to grow the first “immortal” cells that are alive even today, even though HeLa died a few decades ago. They become essential when developing landmark medicine like the polio vaccine, invitro-fertilisation, clone or gene mapping.
As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is indistinguishably connected to the history of testing on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the lawful battles over whether we control the substance we are made of.
As you keep turning pages you will experience a warm friendly feeling, yo will marvel at the scope of the work and you will keep reading until the very end. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the magnificence and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
The Emperor of All Maladies is a fascinating, insightful humane “biography” of cancer. This book covers the most feared and puzzling disease from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and master it to a radical new understanding of its essence.
Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, who examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s perfection, a historian’s point of view, and a biographer’s appetite. The result is an astonishingly articulate and persuasive chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.
Daniel James Brown's book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic mission for an Olympic gold medal, a team that changed the sport and gripped the attention of millions of Americans. The surprising part of the story is the main characters, sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, these boys defeated champion rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936.
Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the dxepths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant.
A story of survival.
In May 1943, in the afternoon, an Armed Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and drowned, leaving behind only a spatter of debris and a muddle of oil, gasoline, and blood.
Some time later, on the ocean surface, a face was seen. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was sputtering and struggling to a life raft and trying to pull himself aboard. So began one of the most unusual odysseys during the Second World War.
Thought Provoking Non Fiction Memoirs
The powerful family story of a girl who never went to school and spent her entire childhood scraping junk and helping her mom deliver babies. But she finally went on to study at Cambridge with a full scholarship.
It’s difficult to understand what about this story really touches you, either the brutal honesty with which it is portrayed or the stark injustice meted out to a small girl because of the orthodox beliefs of her family, especially her father.
Whatever it is you find moving about this memoir as you read this unbelievable tale, one thing is certain – you will love it. Read More Here
This one is a memoir by the creator of Nike, the world’s largest and most profitable brands. Find out the inside story when the company was struggling to get a foot hold.
This one is as much a personal story as it is a professional one. Anyone can pick this book up, it’s truly inspirational. But those looking to foray into business or already running a business should add this memoir to their must-read list.
Bill Gates labeled this one his favorite read for the year it was published, 2016.
Paul Kalanithi was detected with stage 4 lung cancer. When Breath Becomes Air details his journey from being a successful neurosurgeon to a despondent patient. He was only thirty-six and was about to complete ten years of training as a neurosurgeon when catastrophe hit him.
The wave like journey of getting better and then relapsing for a cancer patient is something that has been written about documented and journaled before, but giving birth to new life while fighting for your own was an astonishing moment in Paul’s journey.
He kept fighting till the very end and even worked when he felt better. Although, what happened to Paul was tragic, he was not a tragedy. Read More Here
After her mother’s death, Cheryl Strayed’s family scattered and her marriage was destroyed. At twenty-two, she thought she lost everything.
But four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life.
She decided to hike, without training, without experience, a distance of more than a thousand miles. And she did it all on her own, alone.
This novel has everything-suspense, humor, warmth, style. It beautifully captures both the advantages and disadvantages a young woman has to face when she is alone on a treacherous path. Cheryl Strayed believes this solitary journey of a thousand miles made her madder, stronger and better.
Yes Please was Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated first book. She voluteers 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.
Jeanette’s story is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a affectionate, touching tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its intense flaws, gave the author the blazing determination to sculpt a successful life on her own terms.
What is so surprising about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the courage and persistance and acumen to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and kindness.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story.
The Best Non-Fiction Accounts that talk about race
The memoir that speaks of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of racial segregation and the troubled days of freedom that followed.
Born a Crime is the story of a naughty young boy who grows into a agitated young man as he scrambles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to live.
It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his bold, rebellious, and ardently religious mother—his teammate. A woman bent upon saving her son from the vicious circle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would in the end threaten her own life.
Ellie Wiesel was born into a Jewish family in Romania. When he was a teenager, him along with his family including his mother and young sister, were rounded up by the Nazis, pushed into trains, and moved first to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald.
Night is an immensely influential bird’s eye view of a holocaust survivor who describes this murder with so much clarity, personality and poignancy that as a reader you will be compelled to see the dangerously dark side of humankind.
The insights will also fill you with hope to survive beyond the darkest of hours and this offering of hope is probably the reason why it became so popular with readers since its publishing. Read More Here
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.
Tracy K. Smith had a fairly uncharacteristic upbringing in suburban California.
This is her deeply touching memoir that explores teenage years and explores the meaning of home against a complicated background of race, faith, and the unbreakable relation between a mother and her daughter. Tracy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.The Best Nonfiction True Crime Books that read like Fiction
She was familiar worldwide as Emily Doe when she shocked millions with a letter, which went viral.
Her sexual assaulter, Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was proved guilty of the act on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it stunned millions.
It triggered changes in California law and led to the recall of the judge in the case.
Many wrote to her to inform that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.
Know My Name will forever change the way we think about physical assault, provoke our beliefs about what is acceptable, and open our minds to the troubled reality of healing. As a reader you also find a new extraordinary writer, one whose words have already transformed our world.
Weaving pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a contemporary classic.
In the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, on November 15, 1959, a chilling event happened. Four members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered using a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. No motive for the crime was found, neither any clues.
Truman Capote recreates the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers. While doing so he creates intense suspense and heart-breaking empathy.
A story that truly proves the adage, truth is stranger than fiction.
This is the true story of two men, one an architect, the other a doctor cum serial killer. The charming doctor used the allure of the Chicago World Fair of 1983 to entice young women to their deaths.
He built a hotel that was in reality a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium.
These two dissimilar but obsessed men are brought to life in this hypnotic, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America.
Other True crime stories that read like fiction
This true crime novel is the WINNER OF THE GOOD READS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2018 and a New York Times bestseller.
The brilliant true crime version of the Golden State Killer - the serial rapist turned murderer who terrified California for over ten years - from the late Michelle McNamara.
A fiercely riveting true story that won THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME.
From the bestselling author, David Grann, comes a true-life murder story which became one of the FBI’s first major murder investigations.
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