What’s the best non fiction book you’ve read ?

[Dayrider]

In the last year and/or ever?
Looking for inspiration

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal.

I was just thinking that The Hare with Amber Eyes needed a mention on this thread, it’s a most wonderful book.

Written In Bone and All That Remains by Sue Black, totally fascinating.
Fibber In The Heat by Miles Jupp

Longitude by Dava Sobel

House of Glass, Hadley Freeman
Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez
All That Remains, Prof Sue Black

Each one fascinating and thought-provoking in equal measure

Bye Bye Baby by Caroline Sullivan. About an obsessed Bay City Rollers fan, it's hilarious

The immortal life of Henrietta lacks.
Being mortal, by Atul Gawande.

Chemical Warrior by Hamish de Gordon Bretton
War Doctor by David Nott
The Vory by Mark Galeotti
Killing in the Consulate by Jonathan Rugman

Just a few off the top of my head.

Handmaid's Tale and Station 11

Another vote for The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
Also Death in Ten Minutes by Fern Riddell, all about a suffragette called Kitty Marion who was an actor fed up being expected to trade sexual favours for acting roles. She joined the suffragette movement and was at the centre of the Deeds Not Words campaign of activism. She was 'asked to leave' Britain, moved to America and was heavily involved in promoting birth control in New York.

Prime obsession by John Derbyshire

Wilding. By Isabelle Tree.

@underneaththeash

Handmaid's Tale and Station 11

I know we live in strange times but I think they’re both fiction.

Invisible Women

Another one for Stasiland here.
Also 'The Boy who was raised as a dog' and 'The Outrun' by Amy Liptrott

I also enjoyed Becoming by Michelle Obama - very readable when I was expecting it to be hard going.

But my favourite is Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. It's a sort of travelogue where he goes round the world seeing animals which are in danger of becoming extinct. Rather a sad subject but also very funny.

I'll have to look out some of these - thank you all posters

My nomination is Fermat's Last Theorum by Simon Singh. It's all about the theorum, Andrew Wiles (who found the proof) and other mathematicians whose proofs in related areas of maths laid the foundations for it.

A few mentioned already (others I must read!) - but the one the I immediately recall is ‘Black Diamonds’ by Catherine Bailey - fascinating!

Two wildly different books...

"The Dignity of Difference" by Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi for England)

"The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod

Both fascinating, thought - provoking books. Can't recommend too highly.

The Queen of whale Cay, anything by Anne de Courcy, ditto Catherine Bailey

The Bible. A book to return to again and again. Always an inspiration and a learning source

Failures of State.

Gripping and depressing.

Another one for East West Street, reads like fiction but amazingly true.

Also The Berlin diary of Missie Wassiltchikov- real time account of Ww2 by an aristocratic Russian emigre who was Adam Von Trotts secretary, thus peripheral to the plot to kill Hitler and lived through the bombing of Berlin before finishing the war as a nurse in Vienna

And, on a more cheerful note, have just finished Esther Rutter’s This Golden Fleece. Deals with knitting,sheep, travel, women’s social history, family memories and a hand made yellow bikini on a beach in Northumberland. What’s not to like!

Freakonomics is an amazing book which explains how economics fits into and explains so many different things.

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari. Absolutely fascinating book about the history of the war on drugs.

Nothing to Envy