Last week, we asked Open Culture readers to write in with your favorite non-fiction titles of all time, and you didn’t disappoint. We had a hard time culling from the more than 100 suggestions, but we did have a few criteria to guide us:
1. Priority went to repeat nominees (Bill Bryson, Hunter S. Thompson, and Richard Dawkins, to name a few).
2. We leaned toward books that are available for free online.
3. When all else failed, we relied on our own preferences — or prejudices.
Thanks again for all of your recommendations, and may we congratulate you on your excellent taste in non-fiction, equalled by only your excellent taste in websites.
The List
Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Friedrich Nietzsche - The Gay Science
Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
Wendell Berry - The Way of Ignorance
Joseph Mitchell - Up in the Old Hotel
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe
Norman Lewis - Voices of the Old Sea
Joan Didion - The White Album
Benjamin Franklin - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Tony Judt - Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods
George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia
Hannah Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem
Booker T. Washington - Up From Slavery
Jorge Luis Borges - Other Inquisitions (1937-1952)
Marcus Rediker - Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Lao Tzu, Stephen Mitchell, trans. Tao Te Ching
Victor Klemperer - I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (1933-1941)
Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
Philip Gourevitch - We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families
Winston Churchill - A History of the English Speaking Peoples
Lastly, and only in part because we’ve been warned that we would be roundly scolded for the omission: The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White
Thanks again, and happy reading!
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.
Since I fully agree with the 6-7 books here I have already read, I look forward to using this to populate my kindle!
My favorite non-fiction work is “Mother Nature” by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Tao Te Ching tops all other religious works? Stunning! Oh, sorry, I didn’t see Dawkins up there… Still, number 2 is a real surprise!
“Lastly, and only in part because we’ve been warned that we would be roundly scolded for the omission: The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White”
Then again, you might just be roundly scolded for its inclus by the people from the Language Log.
Sorry, make that “inclusion”
More than very surprising that this list only has 2 female authors. It’s a shame, really.
Two great ones missing by women are;
WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard
I’ve been looking for a list like this. Good job.