Best non-fiction books of 2020
Usually I give this list much later in November, but shopping rhythms are off this year. Furthermore The Strand bookstore in NYC is rather desperately asking for your business, as is Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, and many other independent bookshops. Nor would it hurt Barnes & Noble if you spent your money there, and I hear Amazon is hiring and boosting the macroeconomy. I believe bookstores in England will be closing in a few days, so hurry now. Finally, I hope you will stay home and read these rather than traveling for Thanksgiving!
As usual, these are (roughly) in the order I read them, not ranked by preference or quality.
Anton Howes, Arts & Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation.
Garett Jones, 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust the Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.
Bruno Macaes, History has Begun: The Birth of a New America.
Thane Gustafson, The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe.
Dietrich Vollrath, Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy is a Sign of Success.
Ronald S. Calinger, Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius of the Enlightenment.
Ashley Mears, Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit.
Jay Belsky, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt, and Richie Poulton, The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life.
Hollis Robbins, Forms of Contention: Influence and the African-American Sonnet Tradition.
Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.
Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story.
Joe Henrich, The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.
Oliver Craske, Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar.
Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.
Deirdre Mask, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.
Daniel Todman, Britain’s War 1942-1947.
Brent Tarter, Virginians and Their History.
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures.
Matt Yglesias, One Billion Americans.
Ed Douglas, Himalaya: A Human History.
Michael Wood, The Story of China: A Portrait of a Civilization and its People.
Kevin Davies, Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing.
Nicholas McDowell, Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
This is indeed a fantastic list, really strong, and apologies to those I have forgotten (there are always some). I will be doing a revised, updated, and last two months filled in list much later in December.
And here are the additions:
Darmon Richter, Chernobyl: A Stalker’s Guide.