What is the best non-fiction book you've ever read?

Asked by Mario Gabriele 🦊

What is the best non-fiction book you've ever read? Especially interested in non-business books.

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Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope wit
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Jeffrey Lebowski 1 month ago

I reread this every year on my birthday.

Rob Picard 1 month ago

Might be Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Joshua Levy 1 month ago

“Best” is essentially impossible to choose. But when it comes to the most important question of meaning in life, I (and I’m sure many others) would probably pick Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

"Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years."<br /><br />Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas
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Jonathan Brun 1 month ago

Guns, Germs and Steel - by Jared Diamond - helps understand why the world is the way it is and why certain countries/people were inevitably going to be poor.

Cerys Burcher 1 month ago

Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond Fascinating on why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences

Recommended by Nobody and Lisa G
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human r
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Lisa G 1 month ago

Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind and its follow up, Homo Deus, both by Yuval Novah Harari. I was so affected by these books I had to ask several friends to read so I could discuss, and discuss ad nauseam. Seriously. Deeply thought provoking is an understatement.

What's the most effective path to success in any domain? It's not what you think. Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabb
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Ishita7077.eth 1 month ago

Range by David Epstein topped my 2022 list. @anishmohammed which was your favourite ?

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly
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Recommended by Megan and Joey Mezzatesta
For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?' At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a
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Megan 1 month ago

I recently recommended this one

Recommended by Krish and Pierce
The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shac
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Krish 1 month ago

+1 Endurance is a fantastic read.

Pierce 1 month ago

Off the top of my head I'd say: Endurance by Alfred Lansing (about the Endurance expedition to the south pole, wild story)

Recommended by Tyler and Joey Daoud
“What does it mean to manage well?” From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers wh
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Recommended by Alice Albrecht and Megan
*Description from Goodreads:* If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neu
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Megan 1 month ago

oh and this one got me interested in neuropsychology.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, t
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In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone i
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Alli Young 1 month ago

Read this one recently and it was so eye-opening.

Recommended by James
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to rem
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