Non-fiction recommendations please

[Wildblood]

Going on holiday and would like some recommendations for non-fiction books please, I've read and enjoyed these recently:

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men After the First World War by Virginia Nicholson

Smoke Gets in your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty

Say Everything: A Memoir by Ione Skye

Into the Uncanny: A Real-life Investigation into the Paranormal by Danny Robins

Scream Queen: A memoir by Yvette Fielding

also loved the Can any mother help me by Jenna Bailey that I saw recommended on here. I used to read a lot of travel books but haven't read one for a while also enjoy autobiographies but not sports ones. Thank you :)

The Wager - The Wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder: Amazon.co.uk: Grann, David: 9781471183706: Books

No More Tears - No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson: Amazon.co.uk: Harris, Gardiner: 9780593229866: Books

The Poison Line: Life and Death in the Infected Blood Scandal
The Poison Line: Life and Death in the Infected Blood Scandal: Amazon.co.uk: McGoogan, Cara: 9780241998397: Books

Stiff. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54145/stiff-by-mary-roach/9780141007458
All about what happens to dead bodies. Sounds grim but is fascinating.

A Voyage around the Queen.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/28/a-voyage-around-the-queen-by-craig-brown-review-the-head-that-wears-the-crown
Unusual look into the life of the Queen. A brilliant read even if you aren’t a royalist. Not a usual biography.

Two books by Hampton Sides.
The Wide Wide Sea about the last voyage of Captain Cook and
In The Kingdom or Ice. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Kingdom_of_Ice

Super Infinite - a biography of poet John Donne is a fantastic book, you don't have to know anything about him to enjoy it

Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the most interesting books I've ever read, it's kind of about the whole development of societies and technology and why it's been so different around the world.

The Discovery of France is another fascinating one, so much stuff you never knew about France and how it has really not been one country for all that long. You'll find yourself constatly relaying interesting stuff you've found out from it

Yes, the John Donne book is excellent. Have you ever heard the author interviewed? She has the most gorgeous voice.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox - great detective-story-esque plot, fascinating linguistically & historically with interesting characters.

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams - you're rooting for her to get the hell out of there from the moment she gets the job, but it's incredibly interesting on the culture & leadership at Facebook/Meta.

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser - utterly gripping/terrifying & I came away deeply amazed & grateful that we're here.

Don't sleep, there are snakes - Daniel Everett

Linguist goes to live with a tribe in the Amazon

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Orchid Thief and The Library Book, both by Susan Orlean

The Feather Thief, Kirk Wallace Johnson

All extremely interesting and have re read the first two many times

I enjoyed Wedlock: How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore

Tim Marshall’s books about borders and geography.

Atomic habits. It's about how to make small incremental life changes.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything. Basically a short history of science, but filled with wonderful stories and fascinating facts. Bryson is not a scientist, he's a literary man, but that adds to the enjoyment.

Patrick Fermor: A Time of Gifts. My go-to book when I feel sad. Fermor is one of those writers (like P. G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams) who never fails to cheer me up. This is a travel book, but the real pleasure comes from spending time in Fermor's company. He's interested in everyone and everything, and each page glows with joy and curiosity.

Carl Sagan: Cosmos. Basically a love letter to the universe. In fact, it's prose poetry.

Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That. His autobiography. It's often described as a book about the first world war. It is. But it's also about his time at an Edwardian boarding school, his friendships with Siegfried Sassoon and T. E. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, his marriage, his attempts to write, his struggles with mental illness, and so on. Graves is just incapable of being boring. This book is a masterclass in how to write – firm, sharp, crystal clear prose, and an interesting little observation or anecdote in every paragraph.

I'm not a fan of biographies, but I would recommend Claire Tomalin's biographies of Dickens and Thomas Hardy, and also Richard Ellman's biography of Oscar Wilde.

On a lighter note, how about Brian Blessed's autobiography? I'd recommend listening to him read it – had me laughing out loud. The chapter on Peter O' Toole is a real eye opener. The man was insane (and pretty nasty too).

Invisible Women

Sociopath by Patric Gagne

Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

All excellent.

Killing Thatcher by Rory Caroll- it's about the IRA attempt to kill Mrs Thatcher at the Grand Hotel in Brighton and it is a real page turner.

Another good one is Four Shots in the Dark, which is about IRA informer StakeKnife by Henry Hemming

Thank you all so much, I'm having a great time looking at all the suggestions. So many great books that have passed me by.

Just going to add this one that I've just finished:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/gut/giulia-enders/david-shaw/9781911344773

Really enjoyed it easy to read and I learnt some fascinating facts

The Kenneth Williams Diaries. One of the best books I have ever read. Hilarious in parts, sad in others. Very affecting.

Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser. Biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder but in context of American history. Epic, multi-faceted.

The Searchers: The Quest For The Lost Of The First World War by Robert Sackville-West. Finding and commemorating the dead.

The Last Secret Of The Secret Annex by Joop van Wijk Voskuijl and Jeroen de Bruyn. Story of those who aided in Frank family whilst they were in hiding, specifically Bep van Wijk Voskuijl.