The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years | Hacker News Reader

The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years

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46 pointssmacktoward27 comments

To be honest, it's a really crappy list, because most of them focus on some kind of historical/documentary-like drama and/or injustice. Also, most of them cover topics and history from the US.

These books might be fine (I just skimmed the descriptions and I haven't read them) but this definitely doesn't look like the best NONFICTION books.

>most of them focus on some kind of historical/documentary-like drama and/or injustice. Also, most of them cover topics and history from the US.

Why on earth does this make the list crappy?

Non-fiction has a lot more to offer than drama.

Oh, sorry - I agree. But it sounds more like you're criticising the title of the list.

Many of these are memoirs, the books by Eggers, Finnegan and Carr, for instance. I don't really think of a memoir as non-fiction because it's from a first-person perspective. It would be better to separate out the memoirs from the rest of non-fiction, and also separate out the biographies, which are also basically memoirs.

you seem to have a bone to pick with this list despite admitting to having never read any of them. perhaps they are the best nonfiction but you wouldn't know.

what, then, do you think are the best nonfiction books of the last 25 years?

I'm pleased to see that one of my favorite books, Richard Holmes' "The Age of Wonder" was there. This is a book that describes how in the 1700s and early 1800s the cultures of science and literature were much more merged than they are today -- you had poets like Wordsworth writing poems about Newton and actually reading the Principia themselves, and you had scientists like Humphrey Davy writing poems.

Agreed. It's a great book.

I would have expected more biographies (one or more from Walter Isaacson?) or historical books. One I would put on the list fors sure is Mike Duncan's "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" which is as much a history book as it is a reflection of human nature. To study the history of the Roman Republic and Empire is to realize that even if an enlightened genius sets up a perfect system today that it will unravel within three generations due to greed, laziness, excessive luxury, etc. I wonder how many parallels between the construction of an empire and the construction of an enterprise software system are valid an unavoidable and what the antidotes to counter them would be.

A couple additions I would suggest (keeping with the theme of non-fiction interesting to the general reader, not industry-specific works):

* Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling - Ross King

* The Invention of Air - Steven Johnson

* The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - Peter Frankopan

Other suggestions?

"Secondhand Time: Last of the Soviets" is an oral history of the USSR. Lots of interesting stories and perspectives. I really enjoyed it.

"Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life"

Is an interesting book which covers the creation and maintenance of a concept of "race" in the United States.

> Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.”

The best non-fiction I have read in the past 25 years is

* Longitude, by Dava Sobel.

I guess it doesn't matter, after all that time, that poor Maskelyne's name gets destroyed for the sake of a good story.

I preferred this to the Sobel book. More academic, but a lot more technical detail.

The Quest for Longitude: The Proceedings of the Longitude Symposium Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts November 4-6, 1993 Hardcover – November, 1996 by William J. H. Andrewes http://www.amazon.com/The-Quest-Longitude-Proceedings-Massac...

I have never understood the appeal of Into the Wild. Dying in the wilderness due to hubris and a lack of skill is so unnoteworthy to me.

Is it a +upper middle-class metropolis dweller thing?

>+upper middle-class metropolis dweller

This looks like an unnecessary dig (disclaimer: I am not defending any identity).

How? Non of those word are slurs.

It was a genuine question. I was surprised to see a book I have a low opinion of on a best-of list. I'm trying to understand who the book appeals to.

I would say the appeal is for anyone who is longing for a sense of freedom. The themes are about rejecting norms like expectations of others and of society not wanting to live a "normal" life. There are many things that can strip us of our sense of freedom, and the groups that seems to embody this today is van life and digital nomads.

May I add my two cents? I really enjoyed reading "Exact thinking in demented times" by Karl Sigmund. One of my favorite non-fiction books.

Hmm.. discovered couple of books, but not sure whether everyone would agree to this list.

Just as an example, 'Guns Germs and Steel' (1997) is absent.

As a counter, I'd suggest that given the sheer volume of quality books produced in the last quarter-century, choosing only 50 of them is going to be an exercise in subjectivity.

I like "Guns, Germs and Steel" but the book has received quite a bit of criticism over the years which may account for not including it in the list.

Don't know for sure! Just my theory on why it might be excluded.

Yes, it has received a lot of criticism, but I haven't seen any that really refutes it. In fact, much of it is based on misrepresenting the book's thesis.

What's the selection criteria?

Aside from non-fiction and, perhaps, available in English - I don't think there is a well defined criteria. Personally, I wouldn't want one for this kind of list. The pure subjectivity of one or a few individuals can be a valuable resource.

I would really like that this would be pointed out. Something like "judged by the opinion of Mary Kate, John Smith and X Y".

Then I could look up those people and take a look if there is a chance of having an overlapping taste.

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