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The 100 Greatest Non-fiction Books
ArtThe Shock of the New by Robert Hughes (1980)Hughes charts the story of modern art, from cubism to the avant garde
The Story of Art by Ernst Gombrich (1950)The most popular art book in history. Gombrich examines the technical and aesthetic problems confronted by artists since the dawn of time
Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1972)A study of the ways in which we look at art, which changed the terms of a generation's engagement with visual culture
BiographyLives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari (1550)Biography mixes with anecdote in this Florentine-inflected portrait of the painters and sculptors who shaped the Renaissance
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791)Boswell draws on his journals to create an affectionate portrait of the great lexicographer
The Diaries of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys (1825)"Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health," begins this extraordinarily vivid diary of the Restoration period
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (1918)Strachey set the template for modern biography, with this witty and irreverent account of four Victorian heroes
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929)Graves' autobiography tells the story of his childhood and the early years of his marriage, but the core of the book is his account of the brutalities and banalities of the first world war
The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933)Stein's groundbreaking biography, written in the guise of an autobiography, of her lover
CultureNotes on Camp by Susan Sontag (1964)Sontag's proposition that the modern sensibility has been shaped by Jewish ethics and homosexual aesthetics
Mythologies by Roland Barthes (1972)Barthes gets under the surface of the meanings of the things which surround us in these witty studies of contemporary myth-making
Orientalism by Edward Said (1978)Said argues that romanticised western representations of Arab culture are political and condescending
EnvironmentSilent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)This account of the effects of pesticides on the environment launched the environmental movement in the US
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)Lovelock's argument that once life is established on a planet, it engineers conditions for its continued survival, revolutionised our perception of our place in the scheme of things
HistoryThe Histories by Herodotus (c400 BC)History begins with Herodotus's account of the Greco-Persian war
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1776)The first modern historian of the Roman Empire went back to ancient sources to argue that moral decay made downfall inevitable
The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1848)A landmark study from the pre-eminent Whig historian
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (1963)Arendt's reports on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and explores the psychological and sociological mechanisms of the Holocaust
The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson (1963)Thompson turned history on its head by focusing on the political agency of the people, whom most historians had treated as anonymous masses
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (1970)A moving account of the treatment of Native Americans by the US government
Hard Times: an Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel (1970)Terkel weaves oral accounts of the Great Depression into a powerful tapestry
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński (1982)The great Polish reporter tells the story of the last Shah of Iran
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm (1994)Hobsbawm charts the failure of capitalists and communists alike in this account of the 20th century
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Familes by Philip Gourevitch (1999)Gourevitch captures the terror of the Rwandan massacre, and the failures of the international community
Postwar by Tony Judt (2005)A magisterial account of the grand sweep of European history since 1945
JournalismThe Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1990)An examination of the moral dilemmas at the heart of the journalist's trade
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)The man in the white suit follows Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the US in a haze of LSD
Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977)A vivid account of Herr's experiences of the Vietnam war
LiteratureThe Lives of the Poets by Samuel Johnson (1781)Biographical and critical studies of 18th-century poets, which cast a sceptical eye on their lives and works
An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe (1975)Achebe challenges western cultural imperialism in his argument that Heart of Darkness is a racist novel, which deprives its African characters of humanity
The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (1976)Bettelheim argues that the darkness of fairy tales offers a means for children to grapple with their fears
MathematicsGodel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979)A whimsical meditation on music, mind and mathematics that explores formal complexity and self-reference
MemoirConfessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)Rousseau establishes the template for modern autobiography with this intimate account of his own life
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845)This vivid first person account was one of the first times the voice of the slave was heard in mainstream society
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde (1905)Imprisoned in Reading Gaol, Wilde tells the story of his affair with Alfred Douglas and his spiritual development
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (1922)A dashing account of Lawrence's exploits during the revolt against the Ottoman empire
The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi (1927)A classic of the confessional genre, Gandhi recounts early struggles and his passionate quest for self-knowledge
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1938)Orwell's clear-eyed account of his experiences in Spain offers a portrait of confusion and betrayal during the civil war
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)Published by her father after the war, this account of the family's hidden life helped to shape the post-war narrative of the Holocaust
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)Nabokov reflects on his life before moving to the US in 1940
The Man Died by Wole Soyinka (1971)A powerful autobiographical account of Soyinka's experiences in prison during the Nigerian civil war
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (1975)A vision of the author's life, including his life in the concentration camps, as seen through the kaleidoscope of chemistry
Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)Sage demolishes the fantasy of family as she tells how her relatives passed rage, grief and frustrated desire down the generations
MindThe Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899)Freud's argument that our experiences while dreaming hold the key to our psychological lives launched the discipline of psychoanalysis and transformed western culture
MusicThe Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen (1998)Rosen examines how 19th-century composers extended the boundaries of music, and their engagement with literature, landscape and the divine
PhilosophyThe Symposium by Plato (c380 BC)A lively dinner-party debate on the nature of love
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (c180)A series of personal reflections, advocating the preservation of calm in the face of conflict, and the cultivation of a cosmic perspective
Essays by Michel de Montaigne (1580)Montaigne's wise, amusing examination of himself, and of human nature, launched the essay as a literary form
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621)Burton examines all human culture through the lens of melancholy
Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes (1641)Doubting everything but his own existence, Descartes tries to construct God and the universe
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume (1779)Hume puts his faith to the test with a conversation examining arguments for the existence of God
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1781)If western philosophy is merely a footnote to Plato, then Kant's attempt to unite reason with experience provides many of the subject headings
Phenomenology of Mind by GWF Hegel (1807)Hegel takes the reader through the evolution of consciousness
Walden by HD Thoreau (1854)An account of two years spent living in a log cabin, which examines ideas of independence and society
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859)Mill argues that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others"
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1883)The invalid Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and the triumph of the Ubermensch
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1962)A revolutionary theory about the nature of scientific progress
PoliticsThe Art of War by Sun Tzu (c500 BC)A study of warfare that stresses the importance of positioning and the ability to react to changing circumstances
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)Machiavelli injects realism into the study of power, arguing that rulers should be prepared to abandon virtue to defend stability
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)Hobbes makes the case for absolute power, to prevent life from being "nasty, brutish and short"
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791)A hugely influential defence of the French revolution, which points out the illegitimacy of governments that do not defend the rights of citizens
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)Wollstonecraft argues that women should be afforded an education in order that they might contribute to society
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)An analysis of society and politics in terms of class struggle, which launched a movement with the ringing declaration that "proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains"
The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (1903)A series of essays makes the case for equality in the American south
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)De Beauvoir examines what it means to be a woman, and how female identity has been defined with reference to men throughout history
The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon (1961)An exploration of the psychological impact of colonialisation
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan (1967)This bestselling graphic popularisation of McLuhan's ideas about technology and culture was cocreated with Quentin Fiore
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)Greer argues that male society represses the sexuality of women
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988)Chomsky argues that corporate media present a distorted picture of the world, so as to maximise their profits
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (2008)A vibrant first history of the ongoing social media revolution
ReligionThe Golden Bough by James George Frazer (1890)An attempt to identify the shared elements of the world's religions, which suggests that they originate from fertility cults
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (1902)James argues that the value of religions should not be measured in terms of their origin or empirical accuracy
ScienceOn the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859)Darwin's account of the evolution of species by natural selection transformed biology and our place in the universe
The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynmann (1965)An elegant exploration of physical theories from one of the 20th century's greatest theoreticians
The Double Helix by James Watson (1968)James Watson's personal account of how he and Francis Crick cracked the structure of DNA
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)Dawkins launches a revolution in biology with the suggestion that evolution is best seen from the perspective of the gene, rather than the organism
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988)A book owned by 10 million people, if understood by fewer, Hawking's account of the origins of the universe became a publishing sensation
SocietyThe Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pisan (1405)A defence of womankind in the form of an ideal city, populated by famous women from throughout history
Praise of Folly by Erasmus (1511)This satirical encomium to the foolishness of man helped spark the Reformation with its skewering of abuses and corruption in the Catholic church
Letters Concerning the English Nation by Voltaire (1734)Voltaire turns his keen eye on English society, comparing it affectionately with life on the other side of the English channel
Suicide by Émile Durkheim (1897)An investigation into protestant and catholic culture, which argues that the more vigilant social control within catholic societies lowers the rate of suicide
Economy and Society by Max Weber (1922)A thorough analysis of political, economic and religious mechanisms in modern society, which established the template for modern sociology
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (1929)Woolf's extended essay argues for both a literal and metaphorical space for women writers within a male-dominated literary tradition
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans (1941)Evans's images and Agee's words paint a stark picture of life among sharecroppers in the US South
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)An exploration of the unhappiness felt by many housewives in the 1950s and 1960s, despite material comfort and stable family lives
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)A novelistic account of a brutal murder in a town in Kansas, which propelled Capote to fame and fortune
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968)Didion evokes life in 1960s California in a series of sparkling essays
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1973)This analysis of incarceration in the Soviet Union, including the author's own experiences as a zek, called into question the moral foundations of the USSR
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (1975)Foucault examines the development of modern society's systems of incarceration
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez (1996)Colombia's greatest 20th-century writer tells the story of kidnappings carried out by Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel
TravelThe Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta (1355)The Arab world's greatest medieval traveller sets down his memories of journeys throughout the known world and beyond
Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (1869)Twain's tongue-in-cheek account of his European adventures was an immediate bestseller
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (1941)A six-week trip to Yugoslavia provides the backbone for this monumental study of Balkan history
Venice by Jan Morris (1960)An eccentric but learned guide to the great city's art, history, culture and people
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor (1977)The first volume of Leigh Fermor's journey on foot through Europe - a glowing evocation of youth, memory and history
Danube by Claudio Magris (1986)Magris mixes travel, history, anecdote and literature as he tracks the Danube from its source to the sea
China Along the Yellow River by Cao Jinqing (1995)A pioneering work of Chinese sociology, exploring modern China with a modern face
The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald (1995)A walking tour in East Anglia becomes a melancholy meditation on transience and decay
Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban (2000)Raban sets off in a 35ft ketch on a voyage from Seattle to Alaska, exploring Native American art, the Romantic imagination and his own disintegrating relationship along the way
Letters to a Young Novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa (2002)Vargas Llosa distils a lifetime of reading and writing into a manual of the writer's craft
What have we missed? Help fill in the gaps and join the debate on the blog
This article was amended on 18 July 2011. The original entry for Truman Capote's In Cold Blood referred to an account of a brutal murder in Kansas city. This has been corrected. The article was further amended on 27 November 2012. The original said Durkheim argued that less vigilant social control within catholic societies lowered the rate of suicide. This has been corrected.
English KS1 / KS2: The Facts About Non-Fiction
With the help of some well-known faces, these short films for primary schools are designed to help pupils make their non-fiction writing the best it can be.
Famous faces include Michael Rosen, Newsround's Leah Boleto, and wildlife expert Chris Packham.
This series is relevant for teaching English at KS1 and KS2 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and 1st and 2nd Level in Scotland.
NON-FICTION: ERASED FROM MEMORY
Hum Ne Jo Bhula Dia:Tareekh-i-Pakistan Ke Gumshuda AuraqBy Dr Farooq AdilQalam Foundation, LahoreISBN: 9786275020172434pp.
Don't judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Dr Farooq Adil's Hum Ne Jo Bhula Dia: Tareekh-i-Pakistan Ke Gumshuda Auraq [What We Have Forgotten: The Lost Pages of Pakistan's History], go ahead, because the cover is a real eye-catcher. With a minimalist design, a captivating title, artfully chosen historical illustrations and a wealth of information, this 434-page gem leads you down the shadowy lanes of Pakistan's history.
From the complications faced after its creation, the hurdles placed in its trajectory due to repeated change of commands in the 1950s and the issues that were raised when the economy was booming, the book gives a clear idea about what was cooking behind closed doors in the early days of Pakistan.
A veteran journalist, Dr Adil carries decades of experience under his hat. He has been associated with many reputable organisations and people, including working as a PRO (Public Relations Officer) to the late President of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain. I worked with him when Dawn News turned into an Urdu channel, in 2010, after transmitting news in English for two-and-a-half years. As my shift in-charge, he was a man of few words.
The book is a compilation of articles by Dr Adil, published on the BBC Urdu website from time to time. Yet he has made some changes to them before compiling them into a book.
A veteran journalist's book reminds us that all that is served up in Pakistani textbooks is not the whole truth
Filled with references from authentic books and newspapers, Hum Ne Jo Bhula Dia begins with what went wrong in Kashmir after Partition. Be it the shaky 1950s or the booming '60s, the book continues to expose era after era.
The chapter concerning the famous Moscow invite, circa 1949, reveals that it was intrigue from within that kept Pakistan's leadership from going to the USSR. Pakistan's rejection of that early invitation, in favour of a later one from the United States, has often been cited as setting the tone for Pakistan's dependence on the US. Tracing back from the very moment the vehicle of the Second Secretary of the USSR pulled up in the porch of the Pakistan Embassy in Tehran, everything has been explained step-by-step until the end.
The culprits behind the rejection, according to Dr Adil, were finance minister Ghulam Muhammad (later governor general), foreign minister Zafarullah Khan and foreign secretary Mohammad Ikramullah. All were against Pakistan getting closer to the communist nation. These gentlemen even warned Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan of dire consequences, if he ever went to the USSR.
The book needs to be avoided at all costs by those who still argue that the muhajireen [refugees] from India in 1947 were welcomed with open arms in Karachi and that the bureaucracy were content to live in tents and burnt houses. Liaquat Ali Khan was never happy with the residences the 'rulers' were provided with in 1947, and finance minister Ghulam Muhammad wanted a bungalow in a posh area, but expressed his grievances to Ayub Khuhro, the then chief minister of Sindh, for not providing his son-in-law a residence that matched his standards.
One of Jinnah's able lieutenants, Khuhro was ousted through a conspiracy and Pir Ilahi Bakhsh stepped in, founding a housing development in his own name (PIB Colony) that 'welcomed' the migrants, while destroying Karachi's infrastructure.
Do you also know that Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin was referred to as "Hazimuddin" due to the wheat shortage in Pakistan of the 1950s? The reasons for the 'father of all shortages' were not at all political.
The entire drama regarding the dissolution of the first Constituent Assembly gets due mention, and the formation of One-Unit and Iskandar Mirza's short tenure are explained beautifully as Dr Adil's pen takes the reader back in time. Similarly, Prime Minister Feroz Khan Noon's lie to the nation about acquiring Gwadar free of cost was exposed by Time magazine, which revealed that the land had been purchased for over 42 million rupees.
Liaquat Ali Khan was never happy with the residences the 'rulers' were provided with in 1947, and finance minister Ghulam Muhammad wanted a bungalow in a posh area, but expressed his grievances to Ayub Khuhro, the then chief minister of Sindh, for not providing his son-in-law a residence that matched his standards.
Dr Adil even compares former premier Nawaz Sharif's vote-of-confidence of 1993 with the vote-of-no-confidence that became the reason for Prime Minister Imran Khan's ouster in 2022. He also traces the use of the word 'Lota' in Pakistan politics, which has become a part of our culture since then.
The book elaborates on every topic that has been erased from our textbooks and our memories. Justice Munir, one of the most controversial characters in Pakistan's history, gets a full chapter all to himself, while the rise of Ayub Khan and his thirst to rule has been explained along with his eventual downfall. One can also trace the incidents that led to the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
All four army rulers have also been taken to task in the book, which exposes their double standards and their ability to fight their 'enemies'. The way the first President of Pakistan, Iskandar Mirza, was exiled still sends shivers down the spine, while the ill-planned operations before the 1965 war with India are also shocking. The passing of the Elected Bodies Disqualification Order was nothing more than a joke, while the days when a strict censor policy was in place, are also recalled.
What really followed in Tashkent after the 1965 war, which ended in a stalemate, also gets a detailed account, which is rather shocking for many who believed what was published in the newspapers back then. Everyone knows the opposition Pakistan National Alliance talks with Z.A. Bhutto in 1977 led to the Gen Ziaul Haq-led martial law but, in this book, one also gets to read about the last few hours of Bhutto as a leader, and the chaos that followed.
The most shocking was the 'drama' staged to make Pakistanis believe that the entire United Nations stood still in October 1980 to listen to the Tilawat-i-Quran during Zia's time. Dr Adil claims it was all the work of Pakistan Television. He claims they merged two shots from the UN and an earlier recording of Qari Shakir Qasmi, manipulating it to look as if Gen Zia had come to the rostrum after the recitation.
The infamous yet mostly-unknown reception of Zia in Dadu, at the height of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, would bring a smile to one's lips, when the most powerful man of the country did not have the guts to face his own people. The army's role in its failure to suppress the movement, the resolution of the tussle between President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1993, and the unceremonious exit of an elected president Rafiq Tarar bring the real rulers of the state to the fore. Dr Adil also gives minute-by-minute descriptions of Gen Pervez Musharraf's military coup.
Unlike other history books, Hum Ne Jo Bhula Dia has a large portion dedicated to East Pakistan — its politics, the treatment meted out to the Bengalis, the neglect of East Pakistan by West Pakistan, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's six points and their rejection, the agitation in the eastern wing and the army's role, the blocking of information and the eventual break-up of the country. It has all been summed up beautifully.
There is also a detailed account of the ruckus in the Dhaka Assembly, which led to the death of the honourable speaker, becoming the reason for the first martial law in the country in 1958.
How Gen Musharraf destroyed the administrative system set up by the British and the concluding chapter, where the use of jadu tona [magic and superstition] by the rulers of Pakistan, is a surprising revelation. Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad's inclination towards a 'baba' in Ajmer and Zardari's reliance on a particular pir, clearly negate the notion that only Imran Khan had been ruling with the help of a "spiritual adviser."
For those who had the disadvantage of growing up in the Ziaul Haq era, this book is pure gold. For those who believe the 1950s were peaceful and the economy of Pakistan was 'booming' in the '60s, this book should serve as an eye-opener. It is certainly not for those who have a weak heart (and a weaker mind), and who believe Pakistan won all its wars with India, or that the country was created to safeguard the rights of those who had made sacrifices for the nation.
In an era when movies are experimenting with multi-verses and time travel, this book will take you back in time as well as present a Pakistan for you which might seem as if it hails from an alternate universe.
The reviewer writes on old films,music and loves reading books.X: @suhaybalavi
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 17th, 2023
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