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Top 50 Most Popular Non-Fiction Books

This is a list of the most popular non-fiction books in 2018 and 2019 according to readers.

The list was created by parsing comments on the r/books subreddit, and takes into account both number of mentions and the comment scores.

Some of the best nonfiction books written are on this list. Hopefully it can help you find your next read.

    1. Sapiens
    Yuval Noah Harari
    New York Times BestsellerFrom a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and

    2. Educated
    Tara Westover
    Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sle

    3. I'll Be Gone in the Dark
    Michelle McNamara
    A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died t

    4. Becoming
    Michelle Obama
    An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the

    5. Fear
    Bob Woodward
    With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House an

    6. Born a Crime
    Trevor Noah
    Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time w

    7. Bad Blood
    John Carreyrou
    The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face o

    8. In Cold Blood
    Truman Capote
    On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent

    9. Killers of the Flower Moon
    David Grann
    In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, bu

    10. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    Hunter S. Thompson
    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page.  It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip th

    11. Kitchen Confidential
    Anthony Bourdain
    With handwritten footnotes and afterthoughts.

    12. Quiet
    Susan Cain
    For far too long, those who are naturally quiet, serious or sensitive have been overlooked. The loudest have taken over - even if they have nothing to say.It's time for everyone to listen.

    13. The Tattooist of Auschwitz
    Heather Morris
    I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart.In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for sur

    14. Columbine
    Dave Cullen
    "The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a fa

    15. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
    Steve Brusatte
    Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the

    16. Grant
    Ron Chernow
    Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.Ulysses S. Grant’s life has typicall

    17. Homo Deus
    Yuval Noah Harari
    Humans today enjoy unprecedented levels of power and an increasingly god-like status. The great epidemics of the past – famine, plague and war – no longer control our lives. We are the only species in

    18. When Breath Becomes Air
    Paul Kalanithi
    At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying,

    19. A Higher Loyalty
    James Comey
    Former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, e

    20. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    Daniel Kahneman
    In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive,

    21. Between the World and Me
    Ta-Nehisi Coates
    In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for

    22. The Devil In The White City
    Erik Larson
    The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and its amazing 'White City' was one of the wonders of the world. This is the incredible story of its realization, and of the two men whose fates it linked: one was an

    23. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
    Jared Diamond
    In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the mod

    24. Factfulness
    Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling
    Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage

    25. The Radium Girls
    Kate Moore
    Ordinary women in 1920s America.All they wanted was the chance to shine.Be careful what you wish for.‘The first thing we asked was, “Does this stuff hurt you?” And

    26. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
    Neil deGrasse Tyson
    What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysici

    27. Into Thin Air
    Jon Krakauer
    When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10,1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As

    28. Me Talk Pretty One Day
    David Sedaris
    David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day spent with

    29. Why We Sleep
    Matthew Walker
    A New York Times bestsellerThe first sleep book by a leading scientific expert—Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab—reveals his grou

    30. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
    Reni Eddo-Lodge
    A powerful and provocative argument on the role that race and racism play in modern Britain, by award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-LodgeIn February 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about

    31. Outliers
    Malcolm Gladwell
    Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an

    32. The Radium Girls Extended Excerpt
    Kate Moore
    Read the EXCLUSIVE extended excerpt of The Radium Girls... For fans of Hidden Figures, Rise of the Rocket Girls, and The Girls of Atomic Ci

    33. A Brief History of Time
    Stephen Hawking
    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the unive

    34. Into the Wild
    Jon Krakauer
    Librarian's Note: An alternate cover edition can be found hereIn April 1992 a young man f

    35. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
    Mark Manson
    In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.<b

    36. SPQR
    Mary Beard
    Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerAncient Rome matters. Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myt

    37. A Short History of Nearly Everything
    Bill Bryson
    In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory

    38. Man's Search for Meaning
    Viktor Emil Frankl, Harold S. Kushner, William J. Winslade
    Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in

    39. The Emperor of All Maladies
    Siddhartha Mukherjee
    Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appear

    40. Hillbilly Elegy
    J. D. Vance
    From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town.<e

    41. The Right Stuff
    Tom Wolfe
    A wildly vivid and entertaining chronicle of America's manned space program, from the author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY US ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELL

    42. A Walk in the Woods
    Bill Bryson
    The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America–majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it

    43. A River in Darkness
    Masaji Ishikawa
    An Amazon Charts Most Read and Most Sold book.The harrowing true story of one man’s life in—and subsequent escape from—North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian re

    44. Calypso
    David Sedaris
    David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you k

    45. Mindset
    Carol S. Dweck
    Mindset is one of those rare books that can help you make positive changes in your life and at the same time see the world in a new way. A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology

    46. The Library Book
    Susan Orlean
    On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not th

    47. The Sixth Extinction
    Elizabeth Kolbert
    Alternate cover edition for this ISBN here. A major book about the future of the world, bl

    48. Persepolis
    Marjane Satrapi
    Wise, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthr

    49. Say Nothing
    Patrick Radden Keefe
    From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercuss

    50. The New Jim Crow
    Michelle Alexander
    Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. "The New Jim Crow" is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani