2024 – My ten favourite non-fiction titles

This is the second of my three planned blogs about my favourite books of 2024 – all the books were new to me this year although they may have been published some time ago. Today’s books are all non-fiction. They are books that I am glad I have read, that I found inspiring or informative, or that that gave me an insight into something of which I was not previously aware. I can’t say that I enjoyed all of the books, because of some difficult subject matter, but I am glad that I read them.

These titles are mostly history or biography/memoir. They cover a wide range of subjects from slavery to paralysis to assassination. This was a golden year for my non-fiction reading and I found choosing only ten to be very difficult. I list them below and a click on the title will take you to my original review.

If you are interested in my fiction choices then please see this list of my novels of the year. The next blog will have my list of my favourite audiobooks of the year.

• A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan – A history of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana in the twentieth century, how they nearly gained federal power and how one woman’s testimony changed everything. Very interesting insight into a bit of history.

• Broken Threads by Mishal Husain – The story of the author’s family, their lives in India and what happened to them during Partition. Interesting personal history.

• Homegrown by Jeffery Toobin – The story of the Oklahoma City bombing, its perpetrator and the links with contemporary right wing extremism in America. Chilling.

• The House of the Dead by Daniel Beer – What it meant to be exiled to Siberia, who went, who sent them and what their crimes were. Two centuries of misery in the name of government control.

• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer – The story of an ill-fated expedition to climb Mount Everest told by a journalist who was there. A tragic tale of over confidence and lack of assessment of risk.

• Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll – An account of the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher by a bomb in a Brighton Hotel by the IRA. Fascinating information and the stories of all those involved.

• Knife by Salman Rushdie – The author talks about his attack, what happened and its aftermath. A story of a life changed forever by one man’s mission to kill.

• Shattered by Hanif Kureishi – The author shares his story of how a short fall resulted in his almost complete paralysis and what that means for his life now and in the future. A reminder about how easily our lives can change by accident.

• The Trader, the Owner, the Slave by James Walvin – The horrendous story of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its effect on people told in the lives of three individuals. Sad and often shocking.

• Wifedom by Anna Funder – A biography of the life of the wife of George Orwell, how her contribution to his work has always been overlooked and what effect the relationship had on her life. A sad story of sacrifice and self-effacement.