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Indulge into The Guardian’s top one hundred list of the very best factual writing, organised by category.
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Literature
The Lives of the Poets by Samuel Johnson (1781)
Biographical and critical studies of 18th-century poets, which cast a sceptical eye on their lives and works
An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe (1975)
Achebe challenges western cultural imperialism in his argument that Heart of Darkness is a racist novel, which deprives its African characters of humanity
The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (1976)
Bettelheim argues that the darkness of fairy tales offers a means for children to grapple with their fears
Mathematics
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
A whimsical meditation on music, mind and mathematics that explores formal complexity and self-reference
Memoir
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
Rousseau establishes the template for modern autobiography with this intimate account of his own life
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845)
This vivid first person account was one of the first times the voice of the slave was heard in mainstream society
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde (1905)
Imprisoned in Reading Gaol, Wilde tells the story of his affair with Alfred Douglas and his spiritual development
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (1922)
A dashing account of Lawrence’s exploits during the revolt against the Ottoman empire
The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi (1927)
A classic of the confessional genre, Gandhi recounts early struggles and his passionate quest for self-knowledge
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1938)
Orwell’s clear-eyed account of his experiences in Spain offers a portrait of confusion and betrayal during the civil war
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
Published by her father after the war, this account of the family’s hidden life helped to shape the post-war narrative of the Holocaust
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)
Nabokov reflects on his life before moving to the US in 1940
The Man Died by Wole Soyinka (1971)
A powerful autobiographical account of Soyinka’s experiences in prison during the Nigerian civil war
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (1975)
A vision of the author’s life, including his life in the concentration camps, as seen through the kaleidoscope of chemistry
Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)
Sage demolishes the fantasy of family as she tells how her relatives passed rage, grief and frustrated desire down the generations
Mind
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899)
Freud’s argument that our experiences while dreaming hold the key to our psychological lives launched the discipline of psychoanalysis and transformed western culture
Music
The Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen (1998)
Rosen examines how 19th-century composers extended the boundaries of music, and their engagement with literature, landscape and the divine
Philosophy
The Symposium by Plato (c380 BC)
A lively dinner-party debate on the nature of love
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (c180)
A series of personal reflections, advocating the preservation of calm in the face of conflict, and the cultivation of a cosmic perspective
Essays by Michel de Montaigne (1580)
Montaigne’s wise, amusing examination of himself, and of human nature, launched the essay as a literary form
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621)
Burton examines all human culture through the lens of melancholy
Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes (1641)
Doubting everything but his own existence, Descartes tries to construct God and the universe
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume (1779)
Hume puts his faith to the test with a conversation examining arguments for the existence of God
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1781)
If western philosophy is merely a footnote to Plato, then Kant’s attempt to unite reason with experience provides many of the subject headings
Phenomenology of Mind by GWF Hegel (1807)
Hegel takes the reader through the evolution of consciousness
Walden by HD Thoreau (1854)
An account of two years spent living in a log cabin, which examines ideas of independence and society
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859)
Mill argues that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1883)
The invalid Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and the triumph of the Ubermensch
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1962)
A revolutionary theory about the nature of scientific progress
Politics
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (c500 BC)
A study of warfare that stresses the importance of positioning and the ability to react to changing circumstances
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)
Machiavelli injects realism into the study of power, arguing that rulers should be prepared to abandon virtue to defend stability
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)
Hobbes makes the case for absolute power, to prevent life from being “nasty, brutish and short”
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791)
A hugely influential defence of the French revolution, which points out the illegitimacy of governments that do not defend the rights of citizens
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
Wollstonecraft argues that women should be afforded an education in order that they might contribute to society
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)
An analysis of society and politics in terms of class struggle, which launched a movement with the ringing declaration that “proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains”
The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (1903)
A series of essays makes the case for equality in the American south
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
De Beauvoir examines what it means to be a woman, and how female identity has been defined with reference to men throughout history
The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon (1961)
An exploration of the psychological impact of colonialisation
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan (1967)
This bestselling graphic popularisation of McLuhan’s ideas about technology and culture was cocreated with Quentin Fiore
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
Greer argues that male society represses the sexuality of women
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988)
Chomsky argues that corporate media present a distorted picture of the world, so as to maximise their profits
My favorite: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.
A vibrant first history of the ongoing social media revolution.
“Clay Shirky may be the finest thinker we have on the Internet revolution. Here Comes Everybody is more than just a technology book; it’s an absorbing guide to the future of society itself.”
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Get the complete list of the classic 100 non-fiction books, compiled by The Guardian
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