Must-read Nonfiction Books for the Fiction Fan
If you’re a book lover, trying to decide where to land after finishing a great book is a familiar feeling. You’ve plowed your way through your latest literary love affair, but as is the bookworm’s plight, the craving for more remains. While it can be tempting to return to the comfortable, solid ground of well-tread genres, there’s something to be said for stepping out of that comfort zone and exploring new terrain.
For the fiction-obsessed, the world of nonfiction can seem a daunting – and possibly uninteresting – one. After all, what could real life possibly offer over the goings-on in Westeros, a solitary astronaut’s struggle for survival on Mars, or the disturbing prescience of a handmaid’s life in Gilead? The answer, fortunately, is quite a lot. If you’re in search of a change of pace, nonfiction – narrative nonfiction in particular – offers a host of options no matter your taste in fiction. Here are a few recommendations to get you started.
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Add to BookshelfPolicing the Black Man
by Angela J. Davis, Bryan Stevenson, Marc Mauer, Bruce Western and Jeremy Travis
If You’ve Read: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Try: Policing the Blackman: Arrest. Prosecution, and Imprisonment Edited by Angela Davis
If Colson Whitehead’s powerful and surreal Pulitzer Prize winner piqued your curiosity, consider moving on to Policing the Black Man, edited by Angela Davis. This striking collection of essays is a comprehensive and immensely readable analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement. The anthology is an exploration and critique of the criminal justice system and the way the system’s shortcomings inordinately fall on the African American community.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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All Your Base Are Belong to Us
by Harold Goldberg
If You’ve Read: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Try: All Your Base Are Belong to Us by Harold Goldberg
Ernest Cline’s nerdstravaganza, Ready Player One, is heading to the big screen. For those who couldn’t put down this near-future dystopia with its video game and pop-culture-obsessed trappings, All Your Base Are Belong to Us is just the ticket. With All Your Base, journalist Harold Goldberg takes a deep dive into the last fifty years of video game history and the way these games and the innovations within and around them have shaped pop culture in their meteoric rise to the top.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson
If You’ve Read: Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag
Try: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? As good as the fictional ones often are, this is one particular instance where real life is far stranger and unbelievable than virtually anything you’ll find in a novel. Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City traces one of America’s most notorious serial killers, Dr. H. H. Holmes. Holmes crafted a multi-room torture chamber in his sprawling home set along the grounds of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which unsurprisingly came to be known as the murder castle. Holmes may have claimed as many as twenty-seven victims before being hanged in 1896.
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$21.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Negroland
by Margo Jefferson
If You’ve Read: Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Try: Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson
With Swing Time, Zadie Smith turns her ambitious and focused prose skills to the issues of identity, class, and race. With Negroland, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson gifts us with a true-to-life view into the themes that power Swing Time. Sitting firmly at the nexus of privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of a post-racial America, Negroland is equal parts provocative and celebratory in its portrait of race in America.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Avenue of Spies
by Alex Kershaw
If You’ve Read: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Try: Avenue of Spies by Alex Kershaw
All the Light We Cannot See is a poignant and devastating look into the very human toll of World War II and it earned Anthony Doerr a Pulitzer Prize. Avenue of Spies by Alex Kershaw is a perfect follow-up. Kershaw’s book tells the true life story of an American doctor in occupied France who soon found himself caught up in the liberation movement. This stunning tale of a doctor-turned-master of espionage would be a brilliant next step for readers.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Secret History of Wonder Woman
by Jill Lepore
If You’ve Read: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Try: The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
Over-the-top characters? Check. Polyamorous relations? Indeed. Feminist sex cults? You betcha. If you enjoyed the rollicking narrative and comic-book history lesson of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winner, then add The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore to your TBR pile. While the world of comic book publishing is full of real-life outsized characters and big personalities, Dr. William Moulton Marston is really in a league of his own. His creation of Wonder Woman is an oft-bizarre and hilarious and still somewhat unknown backstory of one of DC Comics’ most enduring heroes.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
If You’ve Read: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Try: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Angie Thomas’s powerfully and topical novel, The Hate U Give, is a riveting and vital commentary on the complexities of race relations and the searing impact a police-involved shooting can have on a community. If Thomas’s brand of devastatingly insightful commentary caught your attention, add Between the World and Me to your must-reads. Ta-Nehisi Coates pivots between the larger tapestry of race relations and the more tightly focused portrait of a father’s concerns for his son. Within this framework, Coates creates a devastatingly powerful critique of the role of race in American society.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren
If You’ve Read: Chemistry by Weike Wang
Try: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
If you can’t quite manage to get Weike Wang’s Chemistry off your mind, Lab Girl might just do the trick. Hope Jahren’s memoir is both timely and brilliantly woven. While acclaimed scientist Jahren ostensibly puts the focus of her book on the trees and plants she’s dedicated her life to studying, what emerges from Lab Girl is a complex and remarkable portrait of a strong woman excelling in a profession in the face of professional hardship, harassment, and discrimination that is still unfortunately prevalent in the field of science.
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
