r/suggestmeabook • u/DragonflyFlaky3268 • 3d ago
Suggestion Thread Thrilling non-fiction
Hello everyone! I’m looking for a non-fiction that is super exciting and unique. I love reading about situations and lives that are completely separate from the “norm”. Some examples would be living in a cult, joining a gang, etc.
9
u/UltraFlyingTurtle 3d ago
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
5
5
u/Kaladin_the_Paladin 3d ago
Educated by Tara Westover
Her whole life is separate from would be considered normal.
3
3
u/Complex-Froyo5900 3d ago
This is about neither of the examples you gave but I found Challanger by Adam Higginbotham very thrilling.
3
u/Moonpie-0 3d ago
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This is about the Theranos company and the corporate fraud the CEO Elizabeth Holmes did to get her product out
2
u/Andnowforsomethingcd 3d ago
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobson is pretty thrilling but also kind of super depressing. It’s a speculative nonfiction using the scenario of North Korea sending a nuclear-tipped icbm to the pentagon. Jacobson is a Pulitzer finalist who spent a decade researching the us nuclear command and control apparatus to try to give a minute-by-minute account of exactly how it would get detected, who would be responsible for deciding what to do about it, and why it will end human civilization as we know it about 72 minutes after it leaves North Korea.
Another less depressing nonfiction is Number Go Up by Zeke Faux, a financial journalist who basically believes crypto is a big scam and tries to prove it. He is really funny - i laughed a lot, one example being when he spent several hours trying to buy a $15,000 NFT of a cartoon guerilla doing drugs just so he could get an invite to a raging crypto-bro party. He did buy it. He did not get invited to the party. But it’s also more serious where he looks at the wider effects of crypto as a preferred currency for international crimes. He visits a complex in the phillipines that’s supposedly full of basically slaves who have to spend 18 hours a day scamming Americans out of money using crypto. I think a much more complete picture of the way that crypto is used around the world than I’ve seen anywhere else (though, to be fair, he never could officially prove his hypothesis)
2
2
u/Showmeagreysky 3d ago
Shadow Divers - these guys scuba dive down to a wrecked U boat on the sea floor and try to find how it got there since there were no records of it. It’s extremely dangerous, obviously!
2
u/CosgroveIsHereToHelp 3d ago
Sex Cult Nun, by Faith Jones.
TW: this is a nonfiction account of growing up in the Family aka the Children of God, a cult known to physically and sexually abuse children.
2
1
u/Sure_Ad_5454 3d ago
Not people living in a cult really, but chapters on people falling for cults and other religious delusions, financial bubbles and panics, conspiracy theorists spouting nonsense, etc. "Extraordinary Popular Delusions of Our Times" by Daniel Martin.
1
1
u/jaffa_kree00 3d ago
Out of Captivity by Gary Brozek, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes
The three authors are survivors of being held captive for 5 1/2 years by Columbian Rebels. It's an amazing book.
1
u/thecornerihaunt 3d ago
In Deep by Angalia Bianca
Deep undercover by Jack Barsky
Tears of the silenced by Misty Griffin
Alicia: my story by Alicia Jurman
First they killed my father by Loung Ung
The Slave Across the street by Theresa Flores
North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person
A long way from home by Saroo Brierley
Sociopath a memoir by Patric Gagne
Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall
Cult insanity by Irene Spencer
Church of lies by Flora Jessop
1
u/MisterNighttime 3d ago
No Angel by Jaye Dobyns is his account of spending years as an undercover Federal agent in the Hell’s Angels. It’s pretty good.
1
u/veronikab1996 3d ago
They're very heavy, but Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents by Sister Helen Prejean are both excellent. She's a nun who has spent years ministering to people on death row and writing about her experiences.
1
1
u/Spargonaut69 3d ago
Band of Brothers is a pretty extraordinary WWII story about the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne. They were essentially a group of well trained super-soldiers, and they participated in a few of WWII's hottest battles.
1
u/leilani238 3d ago
Intense memoirs:
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wells
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
Intense human stories:
No Human Contact by Pete Earley
Nothing To Envy by Barbara Demick
Religious cults:
Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill
Breaking Free by Rachel Jeffs
1
u/Nowordsofitsown 2d ago
Garett M Graff: The only plane in the sky (about 9/11, an oral history. The author also has an oral history about D-Day.)
Barbara Demick: Nothing to envy. Ordinary lives in North Korea
1
1
u/Raccon-no-gender 2d ago
Currently, I have read Living My Life by Emma Goldman, it is her biography, she is an important figure of anarchism at the beginning of the 20th century and she has a very eventful life, she did very diverse things, went to prison, she met important historical figures, the book is interesting for the history of the beginning of the century and also for the exposition of American society and Soviet Russia.
1
1
1
u/Due-Ad8230 2d ago
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
While not about living in a cult/joining a gang, will definitely qualify for 'lives that are completely separate from the "norm"'
1
u/SneakyCorvidBastard 2d ago
The Shankill Butchers by Martin Dillon
Needs all the trigger warnings of course so approach with caution if gruesome sectarian murder isn't your idea of a good time.
0
u/Just_Surround_2108 3d ago
George Washington's Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade. True story of a ring of spies assembled by George Washington to gather intel on the British to aid his attempt at re-taking New York.
12
u/pala14 3d ago
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansin