Not-So-Boring Nonfiction (Read a nonfiction book)
December 13, 2021
Nonfiction can be informative, fascinating, and full of fun facts to wow your friends with! These titles offer suggestions for a wide range of nonfiction subjects including memoirs, social and cultural history of times past, and people around the world.
Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
Step into Ashley’s world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family separated by the incarceration of her father. Ashley tells about her personal journey searching for who she is and what she was born into, the complications of family love and the things that can turn a child’s world upside down.
You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn
A series of funny, consequential, awkward, and ridiculous stories from Kal Penn’s idiosyncratic life. The grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters, and the son of immigrant parents, Kall’s story about struggle, triumph, and learning how to keep your head up, and that everyone can have more than one life story.
The Unfit Heiress by Audrey Clare Farley
This is a look at the court case and story of Maryon Cooper Hewitt, who had her daughter, Ann Cooper Hewitt, sterilized without her consent or knowledge for an inheritance. It also takes a look at the history of eugenics, how the laws were created that allowed it, and how this is not really a long-ago history.
Last Call by Elon Green
This is the disturbing and largely-forgotten story of a serial killer who preyed upon gay men in 80s and 90s New York. The Last Call Killer evaded capture for decades, and Elon Green’s book puts the case into context: high city crime rates, the sexuality of victims, and the overwhelming AIDS epidemic.
Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
A powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. This nonfiction thriller tells the real story of the accident, from hundreds of hours of interviews, letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently declassified archives, which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. Midnight in Chernobyl is the story of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia
Shanghai is China’s richest, most modern city. When the long civil war was over, the thriving middle-class citizens of Shanghai fled in fear of the Communists. Chinese American journalist Helen Zia tells the story of four young Shanghai residents who abandoned everything to become refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S.
Driving While Black by Gretchen Sorin
Beginning in 1936, this is story of Victor and Alma Green, who encouraged a method of resisting through their creation of travel guides for Black only hotels, as well as informal communications networks that kept Black drivers safe. This is about the forgotten history of Black motorists and why travel was a central underpinning of the Civil Rights movement.
My Vanishing Country by Bakari Sellers
CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history, Bakari Sellers illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women and takes the reader on an eye-opening journey through the South’s past, present, and future. Sellers humanizes the struggles that shape the lives of his family members, neighbors, and friends. The struggle to gain access to healthcare, to make ends meet as the factories shut down and move overseas, to hold on and keep moving forward without succumbing to despair.
Heaven and Hell by Bart D. Ehrman
What happens when we die? Where did the ideas of heaven and hell originate? Focusing on the the teachings of Jesus and his early followers, this tells the accounts of the oldest near-death experiences on record, and how the notions of eternal bliss or damnation became accepted today. This is a reflection on where our ideas of the afterlife come from, assuring us that even if there may be something to hope for when we die, there is certainly nothing to fear.
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
This is the saga of three generations of the Sackler family, beginning with three doctor brothers who rose from poverty during the Great Depression and created an empire through drug research and marketing pharmaceuticals like Valium and OxyContin. The story chronicles the investigation into the greed and indifference of this elite, wealthy family which caused the suffering, addiction, and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.