I love non-fiction for the ideas, but most of it reads like a blog post stretched to 300 pages. Looking for non-fiction where the prose itself is beautiful.
Books I have read that hit this bar:
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari — agree or disagree with his conclusions, the man can WRITE. The opening chapter about the Cognitive Revolution reads like a thriller.
- The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel — short chapters, every sentence earns its place. Zero filler.
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — the first half (the memoir) is devastating. The second half (the psychology theory) is drier but the memoir alone is worth it.
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Robin Waterfield translation) — raw, unpolished, weirdly intimate. You are reading a man's private journal and it shows.
What I do NOT want: books where people say "just push through the bad writing for the great ideas." If I have to push through, the author failed at their one job.
What else has beautiful non-fiction prose?
by Helios-sol9
15 Comments
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti. Excellent prose and a bleak mindfck of a central concept.
An Immense World by Ed Yong
any Carl Sagan, Hannah Arendt, Gay Talese book
though technical/academic writing is not the same as bad writing, it’s just a different target audience
Bringing Down the Colonel by Patricia Miller
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott
The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown (don’t do the audiobook on this one, the narrator is truly terrible)
Did Ya Hear Mammy Died? by Seamas O’Reilly
Nasim Talebs Incerto series (Black Swan, Anti Fragile, etc). Taleb is a strong personality and it comes across in his writing. His books are both a fun and thought provoking read.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS by Sy Montgomery made me cry. IDK if a book about octopuses is quite what you’re looking for, but it’s very well written. Don’t read if you enjoy eating octopus.
Atul Gawande deserves his rep as a great writer (medical nonfiction).
I recently read NOTHING TO ENVY by Barbara Demick (North Korea) and found it very engrossing.
H IS FOR HAWK by Helen Macdonald although I found this one to be a difficult read because I found falconry hard to read about.
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion is stunning, but that’s no surprise.
John McPhee’s entire body of work (dozens of books). McPhee almost challenges you to stick with what should be incredibly dry topics—North American geology, for example—just because the writing is so compelling.
Gödel, Escher, Bach
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitches. Or any Hitchens really.
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
*Red star over the third world* by Vijay Prashad
*Kindred* by Rebecca Sykes
Empire of Pain – Patrick Radden Keefe
How to be perfec
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By Mike Schur was a lot of fun. He is the creator of the show ‘The Good Place’ and it is the study of moral philosophy that it was born out of. It’s a fun distillation of moral philosophy through a comedy writers pen. A lot of real world relatable scenarios, some that are ridiculous too. But a fun read…for a book about moral philosophy.
*Braiding Sweetgrass* by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The author is a botany professor and also a poet, and it shows – the intro chapter especially has just breathtaking prose. Thought-provoking too.
Also *Everything is Tuberculosis* by John Green. He’s an award-winning novelist who got super interested in TB and wrote a book about its history and current global impact.
Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. It’s an essential discussion on the ways that people in power benefit from the permanent existence of an impoverished underclass, but it’s also quite well-written. I’ve been recommending it to everyone.