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
- The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla
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
- Empireland: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
City History
- Rome: A History in Seven Sackings by Matthew Kneale
- Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood by Tyler Anbinder
- The Big Oyster: A Molluscular History of New York by Mark Kurlansky
- The World That Made New Orleans by Ned Sublette
- Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City by Gary Kamiya & Paul Madonna
- Hogenberg & Braun’s Cities of the World by Stephan Füssel (ed.)
History Through Objects, Concepts, & Pastimes
- Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans
- 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
- The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History by Craig Brandon
- The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press by Jeremy Clay
- The Book of Circles: Visualising the Spheres of Knowledge by Manuel Lima
- The Book of Trees: Visualising the Branches of Knowledge by Manuel Lima
II. Architecture
- Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of Twenty Lost Buildings by James Crawford
- Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
III. Music
- Five Centuries of Keyboard Music by John Gillespie
- Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill
- A Journey of a Thousand Miles by Lang Lang
- 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
- Talking Music: Five Generations of American Experimental Composers by William Duckworth
- Fryderyck Chopin: A Life and Times by Alan Walker
IV. 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
- Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade
- A Year in Marrakesh by Peter Mayne
- Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson
- Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men by Holger Kalweit
V. Cookbooks, and Culinary Culture & History
- Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
- The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden
VI. Science, Space, & Universe
- If Universe is Teeming with Aliens…Where is Everybody? 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
- The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking by Dennis Danielson
VII. 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 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
- Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran
- Am I Dreaming? by James Kingsland
- Shell-Shock: A History of the Changing Attitudes by Anthony Babbington
VIII. 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
- Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori
- Dangerous Garden: The Quest for Plants to Change Our Lives by David Stuart
IX. Philosophy & Religion
- The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton 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
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
X. 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 & Aileen Smith
- Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
- The Skies Belong to Us: Love & Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan Koerner
- The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Ted Bundy by Stephen Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth
- Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange by Fred Wilxoc
- How Corrupt is Britain? by David Whyte
- Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma by David DeKok
XI. Cinema/Film-Making
- Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
- Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood… by Gavin Edwards
- Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema by Robert Bird
- Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer by Paul Schrader
XII. Memoir/Biography
Memoir
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
- Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya
- An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas K. Gandhi
- The Railway Man by Eric Lomax
- Still Me by Christopher Reeve
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
- 100 Japanese You Should Know by Gen Itasaka
- The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives by Christopher Harding
- Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna
- The Faithful Executioner by Joel F. Harrington