Any non-fiction suggestions out there?

[salopek]

I've just finished reading If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel which I rather enjoyed.

Can anyone recommend some good non-fiction reads? Politics, science, philosophy, human nature, auto/biographies..?

Anything by Atul Gawande, but especially Being Mortal and Complications
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life by Haider Warraich
(bit of a theme going on there!)

If you have any interest in parenting and education then:
^Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality" by Jane Asher
All Joy and No Fun by Jenifer Senior
Taming the Tiger Parent by Tanith Carey
Cleverlands by Lucy Crehan

Other ones which come to mind
Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman
Cure by Jo Marchant
Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being Alice Roberts
Ben Goldacre is good too.

Black Flags - the rise of ISIS is a very good account of the rise of ISIS - focusing on how Zarqawi went from rebel tattooed teenager to fundamentalist leader of ISIS.

I agree that the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a wonderful book. Though it also made me Very angry (at the injustice, not the writing)

Dreamland: the true tale of America’s opiate epidemic is also a terrifying - I didn’t realise what a huge problem prescription painkillers in the US was (and still is).

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Adrian Nicole LeBlanc) - An account of a poverty stricken family living in the Bronx over the span of about 10 years.

Infidel (Ayaan Hirst Ali) - The autobiography of a a Somali-Dutch activist and politician, who fled to Holland as a political asylee

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets (Sudhir Venkatesh) - A sociology student infilitrates a Chicago gang and recounts their day-to-day life.

Join Me (Danny Wallace) - Danny Wallace takes out a newspaper ad asking people to 'Join him' by sending a passport photo of themselves. Things snowball from there.

Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution' (Laurence Rees)

Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia (Jean Sasson) - The biography of a princess in the royal house of Saudi Arabia.

To the Edge of the Sky (Anhua Gao) - The story of a woman who lived in communist China under Chairman Mao who eventually escapes and makes a new life in Britain.

Random Family is excellent. Gang Leader for a Day sounds like one for me to look up, thank you.

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books.
About the son of Christopher Columbus, who accompanied his father on his last voyage and then travelled Europe with the aim of collecting all the books and prints he could to create a great library. Fascinating.

I've just read The Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory. Wrote by the person who swam the English Channel aged 11yrs. Fascinating.

I randomly bought a copy of The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk in a second-hand shop recently, and it's possibly the best work of popular history I've ever read. It's about the rivalry between Britain and Russia for influence in Central Asia in the 19th Century and it's utterly gripping.

I'm reading the collected writing of Lesley Blanch - Far To Go And Many To Love. Enjoying it much which is just as well as I'm interviewing the editor/author at a literary festival in 2 weeks!!