Hi everyone!! I love reading fiction novels, especially dystopian type books. I have noticed that I’ve always struggled with non-fiction books. I’ll read them if necessary for class, but I’ve never been too enthusiastic about them. The only non-fiction book I’ve ever really loved and found super interesting was for an East Asian Culture class I did for a global studies requirement in college.
It’s called:
Golden Arches: McDonald’s in East Asia
I loved it because I found the topic of globalization and emergence transnational culture -especially through the lens of something so easily recognizable like McDonald’s- so interesting.
I love social studies and learning about why cultures work the way they do!
I’d anyone has any recommendations for non-fiction books similar I would be so exited to read them!!
by Optimal_Soup8392
29 Comments
Braiding Sweetgrass
I haven’t read it myself, but I’ve heard good things about Muppets in Moscow. It sounds very similar to your McDonald’s book.
Check out
Guns, Germs, and Steel
By Jared Diamond
The only non fiction I’ve really liked (and enjoyed enough to listen to it a second time) was Boomtown by Sam Anderson. It shouldn’t have been something I was interested in, like at all, but it was fascinating. The interweaving of the present day city with how the city started and just kept expanding and all the micro culture thrown in was like catnip to me. Highly recommend. [ETA: Link](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/228335/boom-town-by-sam-anderson/)
Maybe a bit similar, and one of my favourite non-fiction books, is: Mr. China – by Tim Clissold. I highly highly recommend it. 🙂
The first ever non-fiction book I read was A Brief History of Time. I highly recommend it.
More on the line you mentioned above, I recommend:
1) Why We Buy? The science of shopping.
2) Trust me, I’m lying.
3) Chip War: The fight for the world’s most critical technology.
And lastly, more on the Asian culture topic: Hirohito and the making of Modern Japan.
Hope this helps.
A good reference book on different cultures is “When Cultures Collide”. I especially like the way he deals with how different cultures handle time differently. Can’t recommend it enough perhaps not to read outright, but to pick and choose the parts that are interesting to you.
Sex at Dawn was amazing
Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson is a travelogue following the cherry blossoms across Japan. It talks a bit about the contrast between traditional rural Japan and ultra-modern cities.
Stephen Puleo, *Dark Tide*. It’s about the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, and more importantly why it happened and what the response to it was (and mostly wasn’t, as we know from Bhopal, Minamata, Love Canal, Aberfan…)
You might be interested in the author Jared Diamond who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel; as well as Collapse, and The World Until Yesterday.
* *The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism* by Naomi Klein
* *Wasteland* by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
* *Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale* by Adam Minter
* *My Fourth Time, We Drowned* by Sally Hayden
* *Bottle of Lies* by Katherine Eban
* *Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic* by Sam Quinones
You might like Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.
Without You, There is No Us by Suki Kim, about her time teaching in North Korea.
If you liked the Harry Potter movies try Tom Felton’s book Beyond the Wand. He also narrates the audiobook and does a great job.
If you liked The Princess Bride, try As You Wish by Cary Elwes. The audiobook has people from the movie reading parts and is fantastic.
*The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization* –Peter Zeihan
‘Animal, Weapons, the Evolution of Battle’
Douglas Emlen
The Revenge of Geography by Robert K Kaplan
The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
I think you should read the things you enjoy. But have you tried historical fiction? Blend of fic and non-fic to ease you into it.
Erik Larson writes engaging nonfiction.
Killers of the flower moon is really good. Nonfiction but reads like a novel
You might like Consider the Fork by Bree Wilson. It’s about how the utensils we use everyday came to be, and how they changed us, culturally and even physically. A book about forks, knives etc shouldn’t be interesting but absolutely is!
*Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon* by Donald Sassoon
*The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age* by Simon Schama
*A Brief History of the Samuari: A New History of the Warrior Elite* by Jonathan Clements
*The Civilization of Angkor* by Charles Higham
*Arts in China* by Clunas
General Asian History:
*A History of Japan* by J. G. Caiger and Richard Mason
*A New History of Korea* by Ki-baik Lee
*A Short History of Malaysia: Linking East and West* by Virginia Matheson Hooker
*China: A History* by John Keay
*India: A History* by John Keay
HHhH
Killers of the Flower Moon
Under the Banner of Heaven
Into Thin Air
American Prometheus
The Minds of Billy Milligan
The Wager
The Last Duel
In the Garden of Beasts
Loved all of those ones. Out of all of them I think Killers of the Flower Moon is tied with Into Thin Air for me as the top two.
Try Bill Bryson. Almost anything
He has a very engaging, funny and addictive style and takes on quirky projects. His American abroad stuff is fun and easy to relate to.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
At Home
A Walk in the Woods (as an older backpacker I found it laugh out loud hilarious)
Down Under in a Sunburned Country
My sophomore year in college I read “There Are No Children Here” by Alex Kotlowitz for a class. He spent three years with a family who lived in the Henry Horner Homes housing in Chicago. It was horrifying, sad, basically a spectrum of emotions. It made me realize how lucky I was to have been brought up in an environment that didn’t involve hiding or avoiding gunfire while walking down my street.
over-dressed by elisabeth cline. talks about global impact of fast fashion
Crying in H-mart is beautifully written memoir about growing up Korean-American, and the authors relationship with her mother