Non-Fiction

I. History & History of Science 

Prehistoric Times: 

• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte 
• Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods by Danna Staaf
• Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea by Richard Ellis

Roman Empire: 

• Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland 
• A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela

The Middle Ages: 

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
• A Viking Town by Fiona Macdonald & Mark Bergin 

Modern History: 

• Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution by R. R. Palmer
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
• Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham

City Histories: 

• Rome: A History in Seven Sackings by Matthew Kneale 
• Five Points by Tyler Anbinder 
• The Big Oyster: A Molluscular History of New York by Mark Kurlansky 

Objects/Concepts/Cities/Pastimes:

• The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives by Christopher Harding
• Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans 
• Five Centuries of Keyboard Music by John Gillespie
• A People’s History of Tennis by David Berry 
• Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium by Lucy Inglis 
• Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel 
• The History of Chess in Fifty Moves by Bill Price
• Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World by Matt Al
• Black: The History of Colour by Michel Pastoureau
• Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation by Timothy Jorgensen

II. Travel, Survival & Anthropology 

• Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel
• The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley 
• Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado 
• A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Odyssey by Sybille Bedford 
• The World That Made New Orleans by Ned Sublette 
• Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade 
• A Year in Marrakesh by Peter Mayne 
• Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson
• Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City by Gary Kamiya & Paul Madonna 
• Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men by Holger Kalweit 

III. Architecture 

• Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of Twenty Lost Buildings by James Crawford
• A Medieval Cathedral by Fiona Macdonald & John James
• A Medieval Monastery by Fiona Macdonald & Gerald Wood 
• A Samurai Castle by Fiona Macdonald, John James & David Antram
• Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams (to read)

IV. Science, Space & Universe 

• If Universe is Teeming with Aliens…Where is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life by Stephen Webb 
• Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli
• Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum & Fred Kuttner
• A History of the Universe in 21 Stars (and 3 Imposters) by Giles Sparrow 

V. Medicine & Human Mind

• The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art by David Lewis-Williams 
• The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks 
• The Woman with a Worm in Her Head by Pamela Nagami 
• Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings by Pamela Nagami 
• Gracefully Insane‬: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital by Alex Beam
• DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman
• Mad in America by Robert Whitaker 
• The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa
• The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes 
• When Brains Dream by Antonio Zadra & Robert Stickgold 

VI. Nature & Environment 

• The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
• Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis
• Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori (to read)
• Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori (to read)

VII. Philosophy & Religion 

• The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton (ed. by Stanton J. Linden) 
• The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
• The Way of Zen by Alan W. Watts 
• Characters by Jean de La Bruyère 
• Ethics by Benedict Spinoza (to read)
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca (to read)
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (to read)

VIII. International Crime, True Crime & Drugs 

• Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright 
• Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge 
• The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina 
• A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup
• Minamata: The Story of the Poisoning of a City by Eugene W. Smith & Aileen M. Smith
• Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
• The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan I. Koerner 
• The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy by Stephen G. Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth 
• Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange by Fred Wilxoc
• Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away by David DeKok (to read)

IX. Cinema/Film-Making

• Making Movies by Sidney Lumet 
• Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema by Robert C. Bird (to read)

X. Memoir/Biography

Memoir:

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance 
• Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya 
• The Railway Man by Eric Lomax 
• Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna
• Still Me by Christopher Reeve
• An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas K. Gandhi 
• Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill
• A Journey of a Thousand Miles by Lang Lang

Biography:

• The Good Neighbour: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King 
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
• Mozart: The Man Revealed by John Suchet
• Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by John Eliot Gardiner 
• Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge 
• Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story by Nigel Cliff
• 100 Japanese You Should Know by Gen Itasaka