Health / Wellness

15 Best General-Interest Nonfiction Books Read During The Worst Year Of Everyone’s Life

With everyone’s mental health shot, we could all use something a bit more positive right now.

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One year ago, I sat at a local pub and had a plate of fish and chips for lunch. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and it was the last day before all the restaurants closed in my little corner of the world.

Hospitals filled up; lots of people died. We stopped doing almost everything, and struggled to find ways to do our remaining everyday tasks in a fashion that wouldn’t kill our (or anyone else’s) parents. Somewhere in there a mob of lunatics stormed the Capitol. So, yeah, not a great year.

With everyone’s mental health shot, I think we could all use something a bit more positive right now than another week of my melodramatic political musings. One of the few upsides of the pandemic was a lot more time to read, and I ploughed through books over the past 12 months. Thus, in no particular order, here are 15 of the best nonfiction books I read during the worst year of everyone’s life, and why I would recommend each one of them to you.

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

Not only a gripping story, but an exquisite case study in good leadership. Anyone who works within an organization of any type, nautical or otherwise, should read this book.

Wreck of the Medusa: Mutiny, Murder, and Survival on the High Seas, by Alexander McKee

Also a gripping story, but one that should be read by anyone within any organization as a counterexample. Worst leadership ever. Be forewarned, this one involves a little cannibalism (sadly this excellent book is out of print, but you can find a used copy easily enough).

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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick

The true story of the disastrous whaling voyage that inspired Moby-Dick: enough said. Well, maybe I should also say this too has some cannibalism (I was really on a maritime kick for a while there, what can I say? It happens at sea sometimes).

Nature Obscura: A City’s Hidden Natural World, by Kelly Brenner

A little gem of a book. There’s a whole lot of stuff hiding all around you that you won’t have thought to consider interesting until reading this book. Plus Kelly Brenner gives a nice Zoom presentation.

The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries: Amazing Fossils and the People Who Found Them, by Donald R. Prothero

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People, the T-Rex was covered with feathers. If this is the first time you’re reading that, better get caught up on your dinosaur research. It’s far from a bone-dry paleontology text, though (see what I did with the pun there?). You’ll know what I mean when you get to the Bone Wars.

Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, by Hampton Sides

A nuanced portrait of the American westward expansion and one of the key figures within it. Sides does not pull punches in describing Kit Carson’s complex legacy: a man of stunning courage, loyalty, and, at times, compassion, who could still chillingly take life when provided with the thinnest of justifications from superiors. It’s almost as if there’s good and bad in everyone, and we’re all imperfect human beings just doing our best.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

Except for Jho Low, a person whose redeeming qualities you really have to struggle to unearth. A sweeping tale of financial fraud that will make you think both, “Huh, how’d he get away with that?” and “If that’s all he had to do, I could probably get away with that.”

Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, by Pope Brock

Come to think of it, there’s not a lot good to say about John R. Brinkley, either. I guess at least he spread around to the little guy some of the obscene wealth he gained from scamming people literally to death (but, like, he also used some of it to tile his pool with swastikas). It you’ve ever pondered how so many Americans can fall so easily for seemingly obvious scams, this story is for you.

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives, by Matt Richtel

Other than the dual subtitle, there’s not much to criticize about this presciently timed reminder that real medical science is amazing and eventually always trumps flimflam. Actually understanding the extraordinarily imposing defenses your body has at its disposal sure bolsters the spirits of a reader facing down a pandemic.

Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover

This is the only book on this list that is pure-form memoir. In addition, it’s easily the most popular, and therefore requires no further explanation from me. If you haven’t already read it, read it.

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, by Steven Rinella

As a hunter myself, I loathe the trophy pop culture portrayals of hunting as a toxically masculine death romp through the woods. Rinella nails it here though, with hunting as it should be: a live-action ode to self-reliance, and a subtle form of nature worship. A great overview of the cultural significance of the bison within the American psyche.

Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again, by Dan Pfeiffer

The only overtly political book on this list is an instruction manual on what the Democrats need to do if they want any hope of enacting some of their broadly popular policy proposals. This one holds a special place in my heart, as I acquired my copy at the last truly public event I attended before the pandemic really took a bite out of American social life. That being said, Dan, maybe skip the footnote thing with your next book.

The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy, by Paige Williams

You can’t put it down and feel bad at the end of it, which I mean as a compliment. Sometimes pursuing our passions too vehemently is actually a bad thing (at least when those passions are being relied upon to pay off ballooning household debts).

A (Brief) History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization, by Robert Evans

A splendid combination of historical tidbits, quasi-responsible experimentation, and unexpected insights make this book worthwhile for boozehounds and teetotalers alike (to the latter, this stuff is part of your heritage too, like it or not, although I don’t know if you’ll enjoy Evans’ signature brand of humor as much as I do). When you finish the book, check out Behind the Bastards, the podcast hosted by Evans that has almost nothing to do with the book, but that does somehow make it fun to learn about history’s most awful people.

The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics, by Tim Harford

Could have also been titled something like How Not To (Accidentally or Otherwise) Lie with Statistics. Learn how to effectively process all that information flying at you every day. I’ll be thinking of several of Harford’s rules when citing statistics in future columns — it’s a quick, useful read.

There you go, get reading. In an often-joyless time, you can still delight in the fact that there is a bottomless pool of good books in this world — seriously, this is only an excerpt of one year of my reading, it became a top 15 list when I couldn’t whittle it down to 10, and, even at 15, I was shaving off several worthy contenders. You don’t have to take my word on any of these titles, by the way, you might have your own mental list of preferred books (and yours almost certainly comes from a more diverse pool of authors, I will have to work on that myself in the coming year). But if any of these books spark an interest, pick up a copy. Find something that intrigues you, learn a little more about a worthy topic, and get absorbed in a good story. You’ll never regret spending time or money on a good book.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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