Suggest me a nonfiction educational book that isn’t a textbook
I’ve enjoyed learning through reading, having gone through several of Malcolm Gladwell’s works, Misbehaving by Richard Thaler, and various biographies. Anything similar?
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara is the best nonfiction I’ve read this year. It’s a horrifying look at where the cobalt in our electronic devices comes from.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson is about the 2009 theft of 300 rare bird pelts from a major British museum. It starts kind of slow, but it gets wild and then it gets bonkers. It’s probably my all time favourite nonfiction.
I’ve also really enjoyed The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Stephen R. Brown and The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie this year.
rmg1102 on
The disappearing spoon
Mentalfloss1 on
*The Making of the Atomic Bomb*, by Rhodes. Reads like a novel, but isn’t.
*Team of Rivals*, by Goodwin.
Many by Craig Childs
camerongrim on
How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson
Wot106 on
I like science-y stuff. A History of Technology, VanDoren. A Brief History of Time, Hawking. The History of Murder, idr author.
Friendly-Ad-1192 on
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
Berg323 on
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and other books by this excellent author
Bad Blood
Mary Roach has written several educational books which are very funny
The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating (it’s a short, unusual memoir book that really goes in-depth about snails and also philosophical issues)
magic-gps on
an immense world by ed yong is about animal sensory perception. very approachable and very interesting
also, have you read braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer yet? it’s one part memoir, one part science writing, and one part indigenous history
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How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara is the best nonfiction I’ve read this year. It’s a horrifying look at where the cobalt in our electronic devices comes from.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson is about the 2009 theft of 300 rare bird pelts from a major British museum. It starts kind of slow, but it gets wild and then it gets bonkers. It’s probably my all time favourite nonfiction.
I’ve also really enjoyed The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Stephen R. Brown and The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie this year.
The disappearing spoon
*The Making of the Atomic Bomb*, by Rhodes. Reads like a novel, but isn’t.
*Team of Rivals*, by Goodwin.
Many by Craig Childs
How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson
I like science-y stuff. A History of Technology, VanDoren. A Brief History of Time, Hawking. The History of Murder, idr author.
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and other books by this excellent author
Bad Blood
Mary Roach has written several educational books which are very funny
The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating (it’s a short, unusual memoir book that really goes in-depth about snails and also philosophical issues)
an immense world by ed yong is about animal sensory perception. very approachable and very interesting
also, have you read braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer yet? it’s one part memoir, one part science writing, and one part indigenous history
Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey. The Open Library page is [here](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12284524W/Ending_Aging?edition=key%3A/books/OL17932740M).