My favorite non-fiction recently was Trash! A Garbageman’s Story. I was sold at a memoir from a garbageman, but he’s also a great writer and it was a super entertaining book.
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I've been using LibraryThing for a long while. Thanks to this thread, I went and finally checked who owns that thing and sure enough, Amazon has their dirty hands in it. I guess its time to move to StoryGraph lol
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/oled_soundsystem
This is a non-exhaustive list of books I’ve read (and a massive to-read pile). Lots of fiction but some non as well.
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I think we've got some overlap in our interests. My profile. I've been trying to read more fiction recently so you might want to filter to non-fiction to hide all the Terry Pratchett!
Some recent specifics that might be interesting:
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock
They aren't all by authors named Caroline by the way.
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Bookwyrm is a federated version of this, probably worth considering if you've come to Lemmy.
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So, I no longer have Storygraph (I wanted something with an API, and after switching to Hardcover, I didn't want to keep up with two platforms), so I can't link that unfortunately. However, since we share some of the same interests and I've been keeping a list of nonfiction reads that I've enjoyed or find intriguing, I'll type them here.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, trans. by Shaun Whiteside
Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages by the Women Who Were Written Out Of It by Janina Ramirez
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers by Marta McDowell
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin
Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace by Michelle Slatalla and Matthew Quittner
Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? by Claire Dederer
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by Jason Heller
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grizzly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching
The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation by Bill Morgan
EDIT — A few more suggestions, if you want them:
A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by Amitav Ghosh
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You'll have to dig through all my fiction picks but I've got some non fiction in there as well. Probably nothing you haven't already considered though.
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Already so many great recommendations in this thread, my most recent (and essential in my eyes) impactful non-fiction read is Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott ; it was written in the late 90s, however, a lot of what it has to say is quite salient with corporations being as large as nation states.
Here's my profile: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/cassian_eh
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