I read more non-fiction than fiction, and I generally enjoy it more, too. (There is SO MUCH bad fiction out there!) As my list shows, I like historical non-fiction and biographies/memoirs. Here are my five-star non-fiction reads from 2007-2016.
My Life in France, Julia Child
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great
American Dust Bowl, Timothy Egan
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Amy Tan
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, Maureen Corrigan
The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton: The First Domestic Goddess, Kathryn Hughes
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, Aaron Lansky
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, Tony Hurwitz
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His
Greatness, Joshua Wolf Shenk
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt
Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, Lawrence Goldstone
The Children's Blizzard, David Laskin
One For the Road: An Outback Adventure, Tony Hurwitz
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Tony Hurwitz
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, Karen Armstrong
Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, Karen Armstrong
Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists, Tony Perrottet
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn
Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough
The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany, Martin Goldsmith
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, Alex von Tunzelmann
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, Lucette Lagnado
Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden, Quentin Bell
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, John Matteson
Everybody Was So Young: A Lost Generation Love Story, Amanda Vaill
Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Jennet Conant
The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Edward Dolnick
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, Joan Reardon
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University, Kevin Roose
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, Laura
Hillenbrand
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
The Island At the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America , Russell Shorto
Talking With My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories, Bonny Wolf
Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, Ellen F. Brown
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale
Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, Helen Bryan
Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, Andrea Wulf
Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr and the International Hunt for His Assassin, Hampton Sides
You're Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death and Other Humiliations, Michael Ian Black
Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick
Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel
Clemens, Andrew Beahrs
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick
Under a Wing: A Memoir, Reeve Lindbergh
My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, Ariel Sabar
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, Keith Lowe
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, Candice Millard
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, Candice Millard
Johnny Cash: The Life, Robert Hilburn
The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra, Helen Rappaport
The Wright Brothers, David McCullough
Sinatra: The Chairman, James Kaplan
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World, Matthew Goodman
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, S.C. Gwynne
Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War, Annia Ciezadlo
Tea With Jane Austen, Kim Wilson
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Daniel James Brown
I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend, Martin Short
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures, Maureen Corrigan
Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife, Gioia Diliberto
How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life, Ruth Goodman
The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World, Paul Collins
Jane Austen's Country Life, Deirdre Le Faye
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, Kate Clifford Larson
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin
