Ten favourite non-fiction books.

I recently wrote about why I only read non-fiction then I proceeded to list some favourite works of fictions. A friend suggested I write about my favourite non-fiction books. That is a big challenge, so I spent a lot of time reviewing my Books Read list on Goodreads, and wrote this article.

Here is a gallery of some of the book covers.

Here are the ten books.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Richard Rhodes (1986)

I bought this book in the USA in early 1990 and spent several months reading it. Here are some notes from Wikipedia.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a contemporary history book written by the American journalist and historian Richard Rhodes and covers people and events from early 20th century discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Praised both by historians and former Los Alamos weapon engineers and scientists, the book is considered a general authority on early nuclear weapons history, as well as the development of modern physics in general, during the first half of the 20th century.

Vietnam: The Australian War – Paul Ham

Notes from Wikipedia.

I have read many books on the history of the Vietnam War, and this book is the best of them all. This book was written by Australian author and historian Paul Ham and published in 2007. It is a comprehensive history of the First and Second Indochinese wars, written from a predominantly Australian point of view, namely, the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War. It sets the Australian involvement in the war in Vietnam in the context of the American and Vietnamese experiences. The book examines the impact of Australian and American relations on military decisions, the relationship between the two countries’ governments, and the aftermath of the war.

I learnt a lot about the deployment of Agent Orange and the disastrous after-effects on the Vietnamese as well as the Australian soldiers. This book prepared me well for when I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr

This book explores how the Internet affects our brain. What is happening now that nearly everyone is addicted to their phones, social media and the Internet. One of the messages in the book is: When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking

How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

This is a classic self-help book first published in 1936 and contains a lot of practical advice. One of the lessons is if you want to be a good conversationalist is to get the person talking about themselves. I think I should read the book again to refresh my memory of the contents.

Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell

Published in 2008, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, how the Beatles became one of the most successful musical acts in human history, and many more examples. He also writes about how cultural differences play a large part in perceived intelligence and rational decision making.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban – Malala Yousafzai

The book details the early life of Yousafzai, her father’s ownership of schools and activism, the rise and fall of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in Swat Valley and the assassination attempt made against Yousafzai on 9 October 2012. The story was a real page turner and I was very inspired listening to her speeches which you can find on YouTube.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers – Loung Ung

This book was recommended to me by the travel agent when I booked a holiday to Cambodia and Vietnam. It was written by Loung Ung, a Cambodian-American author and childhood survivor of Democratic Kampuchea and published in 2000.
The book is a first-person account, as seen through the eyes of a child, of the rise of the Communist Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, its enforced mass relocation of the urban population to the countryside to do manual labour (leading to massive levels of fatalities), and the regime’s eventual collapse.

Unpolished Gem – Alice Pung (2006)

I am interested in reading about the migrant experience especially from the perspective of children of migrants. Unpolished Gem is Alice Pung’s first book. Here is a description from the publisher:

In a wonderland called Footscray, a girl named Alice and her Chinese-Cambodian family pursue the Australian Dream – Asian style. Armed with an ocker accent, Alice dives head- first into schooling, romance and the getting of wisdom. Her mother becomes an Aussie battler – an outworker, that is. Her father embraces the miracle of franchising and opens an electrical-appliance store. And every day her grandmother blesses Father Government for giving old people money. Unpolished Gem is a book rich in comedy, a loving and irreverent portrait of a family, its everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs.

I also recommend Pung’s Growing up Asian in Australia which is a selection of essays by Asian Australians. Another fun book by an Asian Australian is The Family Law by Benjamin Law.

Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany – Norman Ohler (2017)

Description from the Booktopia website.

The entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops’ resilience – even partly explaining German victory in 1940.

The promiscuous use of drugs at the very highest levels also impaired and confused decision-making, with Hitler and his entourage taking refuge in potentially lethal cocktails of stimulants administered by the physician Dr Morell as the war turned against Germany. Blitzed forms a crucial missing piece of the story of WW2.

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom – Yeonmi Park

I have read several books by North Korean defectors and this is the most recent. Yeonmi’s story is very gripping and the book is a real page turner. I recommend you search for a Ted talk of her experience. Here is a description of the book from the Penguin web site.

Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn’t even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die – from starvation, or disease, or even execution. This book is the story of Park’s struggle to survive in the darkest, most repressive country on earth; her harrowing escape to South Korea through China’s underworld of smugglers and human traffickers; and her emergence as a leading human rights activist – all before her 21st birthday.