13 Non-Fiction Books People Can’t Recommend Enough

"It is incredibly gripping and somehow manages to be both a page-turner and deeply thoughtful about history, memory, and violence."

–RedditRecs

About the book: This book is centred around abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972, and uses this incident to focus on The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

"It is amazing if you like books that sit at the intersection of culture, medicine, and ethics, it genuinely reshaped how I think about communication and care."

–RedditRecs

"It's about the cultural conflict between the parents of a Hmong child with epilepsy and her American doctors."

–Nani65

"It is another one that teaches you a lot while also being very human and unsettling in the right way."

–RedditRecs

About the book: This book tells the true story he story of a woman whose cancer cells were taken without her consent. While these cells became important to medical science, the book explores the ethics behind the event. 

"It follows real lives with a novel-like feel and a lot of empathy."

–RedditRecs

About the book: This book follows the lives of residents of a Mumbai slum, revealing how poverty, corruption, and inequality are engrained in their daily lives.

"For something more quietly mind-expanding, this book made me think differently about medicine, aging, and what we actually mean by quality of life."

–RedditRecs

About the book: This book examines how modern medicine approaches aging and death.

"It is fantastic. Chronicles the Sackler family and opioid crisis."

–Tasty-Possession-457

About the book: This book examines the Sackler family’s role in creating and profiting from the opioid crisis while exposing the consequences of corporate greed and addiction.

"I worked in a clinical Immunology/Virology/Microbiology lab back in the '90s when this first came out as a serial in the New Yorker. We passed that magazine among us like it was precious gold, and were absolutely enthralled, fascinated and horrified in equal measure. The chapter where he ends it with the guy sniffing the culture, and you were left hanging for pages…. Brilliant writing."

–katjardin

About the book: This book recounts real outbreaks of deadly viruses, particularly Ebola, and the scientists racing to contain them.

"It’s about Shackleton’s 1914-1917 expedition and it’s FASCINATING."

–theniwokesoftly

"Fantastic book. In my top five reads this year."

–Mission-Soup-6683

About the book: This is the true story of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition and the crew’s extraordinary survival against extreme odds.

"Amazing story of how necessary workers rights are and how desperately corporations will fight not to have them. Also how just a few women can change history, even after they die."

–cosmos-child

About the book: This book tells the story of young women poisoned by radium at work and their fight for justice against corporate negligence.

"Story of the great migration told through the lives of three different people."

–lechelle_t

About the book: This book chronicles the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West, exploring their struggles, resilience, and pursuit of a better life.

"An infodump on the myriad ways that society (medicine, design, city planning, health and safety and more) is built around men and often excludes the needs and vulnerabilities of women."

–ifthisisausername

"It goes into how the CIA, after WWII did everything in its power to stop the rise of communism/leftism, including assassinations, facilitating uprisings, and in particular, helping the military in Indonesia to kill one to two million communists. 

It goes into how they used 'The Jakarta Method' to stop this from happening all over the world. It's really great in that it talks about it more broadly, while also telling intimate stories from people who experienced these things. I usually struggle with non-fiction but I listened to this one non-stop and then immediately started it over again once I was done."

–Personal-Taste-5324

"It's a historical nonfiction account of the Donner Party's horrific experience getting trapped for the winter on their attempt of the Oregon/California Trail, pieced together by the diaries and letters of a woman in the party, among other sources. 

It was incredible. Especially the second half. I realised about halfway through, I was completely sucked in. It's so much more than the oft mentioned cannibalism. They really were duped, and over half of them paid with their lives. I want to read more exactly like it, and read this one again just to further digest it (no pun intended)."

–Wifabota