High School Recommended Reading List: Non Fiction

Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abeulaish reflects on his life, discussing his childhood in the Jabalia refugee camp, his Harvard education, his work as a physician and humanitarian, the deaths of his daughters by Israeli soldiers, and more.

Poet Maya Angelou chronicles her early life, focusing on her childhood in 1930s rural Arkansas, including her rape at the age of five, her subsequent years of muteness, and the strength she gained from her grandmother and Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a respected African-American woman in her town.

Ishmael Beah describes his experiences after he was driven from his home by war in Sierra Leone and picked up by the government army at the age of thirteen, serving as a soldier for three years before being removed from fighting by UNICEF and eventually moving to the United States.

Examines and provides real-life accounts of urban poor families living in Bombay, India.

Details how Adam Braun, inspired after meeting a begging young boy on the streets of India, quit his job at Bain & Company to start up the organization Pencils of Promise, which has since built more than two hundred schools around the world.

Provides a global history of the year 1945, discussing the events that occured after World War II ended.

Details the massacre that took place in December 1937 when the Japanese army overthrew the ancient city of Nanking, China, and raped, tortured, and murdered over 300,000 civilians; examining the atrocity from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers, the Chinese civilians, and the Europeans and Americans who created a safety zone for survivors.

Traces the history of the hip-hop culture, discussing how hip-hop came to define a new generation of youth rebellion and expression in North America.

Memoir of three Chinese women, Jung Chang, her mother, and her grandmother in twentieth-century China.

For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of?

Draws from the writings of turn-of-the-century French novelist and critic Marcel Proust to provide lessons on how best to live life, discussing topics such as expressing emotions, being happy in love, developing good friendships, and the use of time.

Explores the trail of early scientists' quest to uncover the deepest mysteries of the origins of life.

Describes death customs and rituals from around the world, exploring how they compare to the impersonal American system and how mourners respond best when they participate in caring for the deceased.

Examines cultural issues in the American health care system through the case of Lia, a Hmong-American girl suffering from epilepsy whose treatment by doctors in California conflicted with the traditional healing beliefs held by her family.

Chronicles the life of Paul Farmer, focusing on his efforts to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring modern medicine to the countries and people who need them most.

A collection of often humorous anecdotes about the 1965 Nobel Prize winner for physics.

The story of a young Syrian refugee's attempt to reach Sweden, focusing on her ordeal in icy waters after the dilapidated fishing vessel in which she was traveling--along with 500 others--sinks. Written by the chief spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Examines various philosophical topics related to vegetarianism and eating habits in general, chronicling the author's struggle, as he approaches fatherhood, with how to make dietary choices on a child's behalf, and analyzes various aspects of folklore, culture, tradition, and myth that help people justify eating habits.

An autobiography in which Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi shares the story of his life and the development of his concept of active nonviolent resistance which he employed in the struggle for the independence of India.

The... true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary. Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary--and yet how typical--her family history truly was.

Goodall guides the reader through five seismic developments in the history of Western music: the invention of notation, taking in the invention of equal temperament, the invention of the piano and that of opera and finally the first recording.

Details English explorer Percy Fawcett's exploration for a lost city in the jungles of South America and relates efforts made by the author and other individuals to find out what happened to him.

Explores the history of human beings.

The author tells fifty stories of the ideas, people, and tools that have shaped the modern economy.

The story of the Peace Pact by placing it in the long history of international law from the seventeenth century through the present, tracing this rich history through a fascinating and diverse array of lawyers, politicians and intellectuals. It tells of a centuries-long struggle of ideas over the role of war in a just world order. It details the brutal world of conflict the Peace Pact helped extinguish, and the subsequent era where tariffs and sanctions take the place of tanks and gunships.

Provides an introduction to today's scientific ideas about the cosmos and reviews past theories. Also covers black holes, quarks, antimatter, and other mysteries of physics.

The true story of the relationship between brothers Theo and Vincent van Gogh.

An account of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, from the viewpoint of the people who lived through it.

A biography of Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, who had been rambunctious in childhood before succeeding in track and eventually serving in the military, which led to a trial in which he was forced to find a way to survive in the open ocean after being shot down.

Memoir by an American geochemist, geobiologist, and professor who built three laboratories. She tells about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom's labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and the disappointments, triumphs and exhilarating discoveries of scientific work.

Hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Jay-Z discusses his life and offers a revealing look at the influences and processes behind his lyrics.

Describes the life of Mariatu Kamara, focusing on her experiences as a child during the civil war in Sierra Leone where she was raped, tortured, and had her hands cut off by juvenile rebel soldiers; and discusses her experiences after the war.

A round-the-globe journey through the periodic table exploring how the air people breathe reflects the world's history, tracing the origins and ingredients of the atmosphere to explain oxygen's role in reshaping continents, steering human progress, and powering revolutions.

Examines the stories behind the creation of the periodic table, focusing on the history of gold, carbon, silicon, and neon.

Nawuth Keat, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge invasion of Cambodia, describes his experiences, discussing the killings of his family members, his enslavement, the relationships that were formed between people from his community, and more.

Astronaut Scott Kelly shares details about his life, discussing his childhood in New Jersey, training, space missions, and more.

In April 1992, Chris McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family, hitch-hiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness. Four months later, he was found dead. This book uses McCandless's restless progress around Alaska to explore the call of the wild and the mentality of those who succumb to it.

Tells the story of the discovery in 1991 of a World War II German U-boat, sunk sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey, by deep sea divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, and their six year obsession with identifying the submarine which sank with its crew onboard.

'The North Ship', 'The Less Deceived', 'The Whitsun Weddings' and 'High Windows' in their original sequence.

Chronicles the events leading up to the economic crash in 2008 by following the lives of various individuals, including Steve Eisman, Vincent Daniel, Michael Burry, Greg Lippmann, Gene Park, Howie Hubler, and others.

Examines the mathematical strategies by which manager Billy Beane handled the financially strapped Oakland Athletics' 2002 draft and led the baseball team to success despite its lack of high profile players.

Explores the collaboration between Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and looks at their role in undoing assumptions about the human mind and the decision-making process.

Jeffrey Lieberman shares the story of psychiatry's origins and the chequered history of useless or harmful treatments - including hydrotherapy, lobotomies and primal screaming - that made psychiatry the black sheep of medicine.

H is for Hawk is a record of a spiritual journey--an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T.H. White, best known for The Once and Future King. It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.

Describes the discovery and history of the number e from a human and a mathematical perspective.

In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.

'Born To Run' tells the amazing story of the Tarahumara, a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians who are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world.

In February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world’s first workers’ state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? In a panoramic sweep, stretching from St Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness.

The author explores the current political climate and the rise of nationalism, racism, and misogyny, casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century.

Discusses prominent Asian intellectuals and how their goals shaped the future of post-colonial Asia.

A discussion of the history of the fight to cure, control, and defeat cancer, covering its origins, relevant scientific research, and other related topics.

In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of races, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing.

Azar Nafisi chronicles her life in post-revolutionary Iran, focusing on her organization of a group of young women in 1997 who met secretly once a week to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother-his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

An autobiography of lawyer and American First Lady Michelle Obama.

Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before [now] has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape.

Set as a story of a cross-country trip on a motorcycle by a father and son, the narrative becomes a personal quest to discover the fundamental questions of how to live.

Tells the dramatic story of U.S. Army scientists and soldiers who worked to stop the outbreak of a deadly and extremely contagious virus in 1989.

David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them--such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health.

Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks or plastic, its entire economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary.

Explores space travel and answers a number of curious questions about what life would be like without gravity.

The author explains how his research into a potential hoax being played on scientists prompted him to explore an asylum for the criminally insane, where he met a wide variety of individuals and learned that the lines between ordinary and mentally ill are not always clear.

Chronicles modernist music's twentieth-century history, examining developments in avant-garde and minimalist music in settings such as 1920s Paris, Hitler's Germany, and 1970s New York.

Neurologist and storyteller Oliver Sacks recalls his childhood fascination for numbers, metals, and natural patterns, and tells how he was encouraged by his Uncle Dave, a lightbulb manufacturer known as "Uncle Tungsten," to investigate the mysteries of chemistry.

Provides an account of the voyage undertaken by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the Endurance in 1914-15, telling how the men survived after their ship became locked inside an island of ice and drifted for ten months before being crushed.

Before John Glenn orbited Earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as 'human computers' used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation.

Chronicles the life of Dong-hyuk Shin, who was raised in a political prison camp in North Korea, and describes the inhuman conditions inside, his harrowing escape from the camp and the country, and his efforts to raise awareness of the camps to others.

Examines the experiences of the children and husband of Henrietta Lacks, who, twenty years after her death from cervical cancer in 1951, learned doctors and researchers took cells from her cervix without consent which were used to create the immortal cell line known as the HeLa cell; provides an overview of Henrietta's life; and explores issues of experimentation on African-Americans and bioethics.

If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended.

Medical doctor and economist Christopher Murray began the Global Burden of Disease studies to gain a truer understanding of how we live and how we die. Murray argues that the ideal existence isn't simply the longest but the one lived well and with the least illness. Until we can accurately measure how people live and die, we cannot understand what makes us sick or do much to improve it.

The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.

When a forty-seven-foot sailboat disappears in the Gulf Stream in the throes of a calamitous storm, it leaves behind three weary passengers struggling to stay alive afloat a life raft in violent waves 80 feet tall.

Loung Ung, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh, tells of her experiences after her family was forced to flee from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, discussing her training as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, and telling of how her surviving siblings were eventually reunited.

Sudhir Venkatesh recounts how he managed to work his way into one of Chicago's must brutal crack-dealing gangs and describes the horrific events he witnessed, and sometimes participated in.

From world-renowned biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal, a groundbreaking work which explores the depth of animal intelligence.

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbours began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were 'thunder'. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety - perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive. When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted asylum in the United States, where she embarked on another journey - to excavate her past and, after years of being made to feel less than human, claim her individuality.

A memoir about a young American girl who, kept out of school, leaves her Mormon survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

Presents a true account of the author's experiences as a Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp.

In 'The Hidden Life of Trees', Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination.