I’ve taken a break from nonfiction for a while (finished lotr and read a whole bunch of Stephen king). Now I want to go back to reading nonfiction, but I want something that will pull me in another world of facts I didn’t know about. Be it political, sociology… anything really. I don’t know if “facts” is the word I’m looking for here (English is my second language). Can I say “discoveries”? Things you’ve found through the book that shocked you? Hope that makes sense.
Thanks in advance
Edit: Thank you all for the great suggestions. I’ve saved this post and will go through the list. Much, much appreciated 🫶🏽
Oh, good topic! I always recommend Blackshirts and Reds. Another good one is Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism. I also intend on reading Settlers soon. Can’t neglect to mention Capital, the sections specifically on the conditions of labor in early Britain, with child labor, suffocation, crushing, etc. were genuinely revolting.
As a side-note, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, if you find yourself generally interested in the topics I listed above.
These are hard hitters. Damn. Added to the list. Thank you
No problem!
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett.
It’s about a guy who travels to the deep Amazon to live with the Pirahã as a Christian missionary. His experiences with these people and their unique culture and language leads to his deconversion, and eventually his study of their odd language and unique culture leads him to challenge Noam Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar (which shakes up the world of linguistics through controversy).
Sounds very interesting. Thank you so much.
I can’t remember the book, just the fact. The “Fibonacci Sequence” (1+2=3,2+3=5,3+5=8,5+8=13,…) exactly adheres to certain natural progressions in nature like nautilus shells, pine cones, and sunflower plants.
I just finished The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow, and it’s a remarkable look at state formation, prehistoric societies, the process by which cultures differentiate from each other and form their identities, the origins of farming and why it was (or wasn’t) adopted around the world, and so much more.
If you have even a passing interest in prehistory, it’s a must-read
I’m reading through that right now! Fascinating but dense as a brick.
My last nonfiction was Graeber’s Debt: the First 5000 years which is worldview changing exploration of the origin and concept of money which I recommend highly.
It’s a rare book that is so dense yet so enjoyable (to me at least).
I’ve got Debt on my list, too; I’m looking to read everything those guys put out. It’s such a a shame that Graeber passed away, he still had so much to give to the world.
Just finished that recently myself. One of the best books I’ve ever read that compels the reader to better understand what it means to be human on this planet.
My go to reference for historical non-fiction is Arms Germs and Steel. The book sets out to answer the question “why did Spain discover and conquer South America and not the opposite?” The answer is the title, and so much more!
Greatly written, very engaging, spans so many sections of history that left me fascinated - and I wasn’t a history nerd before this read.
You’d certainly enjoy The Dawn of Everything then. The authors do make some cheeky academic jokes about parts of Diamond’s work that they disagree with, but they also point out where they think he was right.
And here it goes, on my reading list! Thanks for the suggestion!
I’m actually quarter way through this book and stopped a while ago. The author goes into so much details and it gets really boring. So, I’ve put it aside for now.
But that’s just not true, the author doesn’t go into so much detail that it gets boring, it’s a deeply fascinating book.
It’s a matter of preference.
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. This one is kinda cheating because if genocide doesn’t shock you then something is wrong
Autobiography is very much my favorite genre, so this will be colored by that. IDK if this matches “facts” but it is fascinating windows into little sections of the world I had not known existed.
- “Trawler” by Redmond O’Hanlon - The insane people who catch all the fish you eat
- “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins - How neoliberalism works in terrifying detail
- “Failure is Not an Option” by Gene Kranz - How the space program actually functioned
These ones might be more what you had meant about it:
- “Never Home Alone” by Rob Dunn - Little creatures that share your home
- “God’s Bestseller” by Brian Moynahan - The medieval church kills a bunch of people to stop people reading the bible for themselves in English, and how it got translated despite their efforts
For psychology: Thinking Fast and Slow. A discussion of different types of thinking patterns, when they get triggered and why. It was very famous at some point and rightly so. The writing is made more engaging by the author relating the concepts to anecdotes of his life, in particular how he discovered some of the concepts described during his research career in psychology.
well the book has been (rightfully, imo) criticized for including many unreliable findings, esp. in the psychology section. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
Oh no… thanks for letting me know, I will have to update my knowledge. Then please disregard my suggestion.
Find indigenous histories.
Specifically written by the people the history is about.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen.
It’s truly horrifying how close we are to destruction.
