The Top 100 Nonfiction Books
by David Archibald
18 January 2023
Wisdom is gained through life experience. One way to speed up the gaining of wisdom is to read the life experiences of others. That is the purpose of this list.
And this list avoids self-improvement through suffering. Finishing one book should lead you to reach for the next with joyful expectation. The list is in order of year of publication.
If you want to know the name of the best nonfiction book that has been written, it is Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory.
| Year | Author | Title | ||||||||
| 1 | -431 | Thucydides | The History of the Peloponnesian War | |||||||
| 2 | -371 | Xenophon | Anabasis: The March Up Country | |||||||
| 3 | -50 | Julius Caesar | The Conquest of Gaul | |||||||
| 4 | 109 | Cornelius Tacitus | The Annals | |||||||
| 5 | 121 | Suetonius | The Twelve Caesars | |||||||
| 6 | 167 | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations | |||||||
| 7 | 1532 | Machievelli | The Prince | |||||||
| 8 | 1580 | Michel de Montaigne | Essays | |||||||
| 9 | 1611 | King James VI | King James Bible | |||||||
| 10 | 1716 | Yamamoto Tsunetomo | Hagakure: The Book Of The Samurai | |||||||
| 11 | 1835 | Alexis de Tocqueville | Democracy in America | |||||||
| 12 | 1835 | H. Gifford | The General Receipt Book | |||||||
| 13 | 1841 | Charles Mackay | Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds | |||||||
| 14 | 1883 | Mark Twain | Life on the Mississippi | |||||||
| 15 | 1890 | A.T. Mahan | The Influence of Seapower on History | |||||||
| 16 | 1918 | Henry Adams | The Education of Henry Adams | |||||||
| 17 | 1926 | T.E. Lawrence | The Seven Pillars of Wisdom | |||||||
| 18 | 1933 | Vera Brittain | Testament of Youth | |||||||
| 19 | 1938 | George Orwell | Homeage to Catalonia | |||||||
| 20 | 1941 | Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon | |||||||
| 21 | 1951 | Vladimir Nabokov | Speak, Memory | |||||||
| 22 | 1952 | C.S. Lewis | Mere Christianity | |||||||
| 23 | 1952 | Heinz Guderian | Panzer Leader | |||||||
| 23 | 1959 | Laurie Lee | Cider with Rosie | |||||||
| 24 | 1959 | Peter Ryan | Fear Guide My Feet | |||||||
| 25 | 1962 | Samual Morison | History of United States Naval Operations in World War II | |||||||
| 26 | 1964 | Ernst Hemingway | Moveable Feast | |||||||
| 27 | 1965 | Truman Capote | In Cold Blood | |||||||
| 28 | 1966 | Carroll Quigley | Tragedy and Hope | |||||||
| 29 | 1967 | Donald Horne | The Education of Young Donald | |||||||
| 30 | 1968 | William Manchester | The Arms of Krupp | |||||||
| 31 | 1968 | Tom Wolfe | The Electric Koolaid Acid Test | |||||||
| 32 | 1971 | Eric Newby | Love and War in the Apennines | |||||||
| 33 | 1973 | William Manchester | The Glory And The Dream | |||||||
| 34 | 1978 | William Manchester | American Caesar | |||||||
| 35 | 1979 | Tom Wolfe | The Right Stuff | |||||||
| 36 | 1980 | William Manchester | Goodbye, Darkness | |||||||
| 37 | 1980 | Michael Porter | Competitive Strategy | |||||||
| 38 | 1982 | Tracy Kidder | The Soul Of A New Machine | |||||||
| 39 | 1983 | Tom Hopkins | How To Master The Art Of Selling | |||||||
| 40 | 1983 | Robert Mason | Chickenhawk | |||||||
| 41 | 1984 | Harold McGee | On Food and Cooking | |||||||
| 42 | 1985 | Richard Fennman | Surely you’re joking, Mr Feynman | |||||||
| 43 | 1986 | Richard Rhodes | The Making of the Atomic Bomb | |||||||
| 44 | 1986 | Chuck Yeager | Yeager | |||||||
| 45 | 1986 | Charles Henderson | Marine Sniper | |||||||
| 46 | 1987 | Gustav Hasford | The Short-Timers | |||||||
| 47 | 1988 | Paul Kennedy | The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers | |||||||
| 48 | 1989 | David Hackworth | About Face | |||||||
| 49 | 1989 | Michael Lewis | Liar’s Poker | |||||||
| 50 | 1989 | Clarence L. Johnson | Kelly: More Than My Share of It All | |||||||
| 51 | 1990 | Bryan Burrough | Barbarians at the Gate | |||||||
| 52 | 1991 | Daniel Yergin | The Prize | |||||||
| 53 | 1991 | Harold Moore | We Were Soldiers Once … And Young | |||||||
| 54 | 1991 | J. Foss and M. Brennan | Top Guns | |||||||
| 55 | 1992 | William Manchester | A World Lit Only By Fire | |||||||
| 56 | 1993 | Matt Ridley | The Red Queen | |||||||
| 57 | 1993 | Rick Atkinson | Crusade | |||||||
| 58 | 1993 | Charles Adams | For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilisation | |||||||
| 59 | 1993 | Andy McNab | Bravo Two Zero | |||||||
| 60 | 1994 | John Berendt | Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil | |||||||
| 61 | 1995 | Richard Rhodes | Dark Sun | |||||||
| 62 | 1995 | Robert Hagstrom | The Warren Buffet Way | |||||||
| 63 | 1996 | Samual Huntington | The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order | |||||||
| 64 | 1997 | Fairlie Taylor | Bid Time Return | |||||||
| 65 | 1997 | Tom Clancy | Into the Storm | |||||||
| 66 | 1997 | Mitch Albom | Tuesdays with Morrie | |||||||
| 67 | 1998 | PJ O’Rourke | Eat The Rich | |||||||
| 68 | 1998 | S. Sontag and C. Drew | Blind Man’s Bluff | |||||||
| 69 | 1998 | Ron Chernow | Titan | |||||||
| 70 | 2000 | Robert Harvey | Cochrane | |||||||
| 71 | 2002 | Jeremy Scott | Fast and Louche | |||||||
| 72 | 2002 | David Hackworth | Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts | |||||||
| 73 | 2002 | Robert Corum | Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War | |||||||
| 74 | 2003 | James Hornfischer | The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors | |||||||
| 75 | 2003 | George Crile | Charlie Wilson’s War | |||||||
| 76 | 2004 | Evan Wright | Generation Kill | |||||||
| 77 | 2004 | David Zuchinno | Thunder Run | |||||||
| 78 | 2005 | Bing West | No True Glory: A Frontline Account Of The Battle For Fallujah | |||||||
| 79 | 2005 | S. Levitt and S. Dubner | Feakonomics | |||||||
| 80 | 2005 | Tim Pritchard | Ambush Alley | |||||||
| 81 | 2006 | Nicholas Wade | Before the Dawn | |||||||
| 82 | 2007 | Richard Rhodes | Arsenals of Folly | |||||||
| 83 | 2007 | K. Bird and M. Sherwin | American Prometheus | |||||||
| 84 | 2007 | James Watson | Avoid Boring People | |||||||
| 85 | 2008 | David Bellavia | House to House | |||||||
| 86 | 2009 | Nicholas Wade | The Faith Instinct | |||||||
| 87 | 2009 | George Orwell | Collected Essays | |||||||
| 88 | 2010 | Michael Lewis | The Big Short | |||||||
| 89 | 2010 | Laura Hillenbrand | Unbroken | |||||||
| 90 | 2010 | Fergal Keane | Road Of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 | |||||||
| 91 | 2011 | Stephen Pinker | The Better Angels of Our Nature | |||||||
| 92 | 2011 | Robin Olds | Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds | |||||||
| 93 | 2011 | Norman Davies | Vanished Kingdoms | |||||||
| 94 | 2011 | Ray Clark` | Just Let Me Walk Away | |||||||
| 95 | 2012 | D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson | Why Nations Fail | |||||||
| 96 | 2013 | Rupert Darwall | The Age of Gobal Warming | |||||||
| 97 | 2017 | Lew Jennings | 19 Minutes to Live – Helicopter Combat in Vietnam | |||||||
| 98 | 2017 | Steve Mosher | Bully of Asia | |||||||
| 99 | 2018 | Michael Walsh | The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West | |||||||
| 100 | 2018 | Jordan Peterson | 12 Rules for Life | |||||||
David Archibald is the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia.
