Top Ten: Non-Fiction Lockdown Reads
Whenever I realise I’m not doing much reading, I think back to Tim Urban’s Your Life In Weeks post and do some quick mental arithmetic. If I’m being super slow and work is busy, maybe I only manage to get through two books a month. Keeping up that pace would mean 24 books per year, or a total of 720 books between now and 2050. Given that 200,000 books are published each year in the UK alone, that figure seems pretty meagre — certainly enough to make 1001 Books To Read Before You Die sound less eye-catching and more forebodingly literal.
A global house-arrest then, whilst awful in all sorts of ways, is the dream scenario for your inner bibliophile. Working from home, no pubs or bars open, banned from seeing friends and family, no sports on TV — all these factors combine to make this a one-off opportunity to get some serious Art Garfunkel-level reading done.
So, in the spirit of personal development, here’s ten non-fiction books I’ve read recently which have all helped to shape my understanding of the world in one way or another. I’ve tried to put them in a loose ranking, guided by which books have, in my opinion, the most life-altering potential. Enjoy!
10: Naomi Klein — No Is Not Enough
Naomi Klein has been in a league of her own for a very long time. As you’d expect from the author of The Shock Doctrine, her writing is incendiary here — with the book completed in a matter of weeks following the Trump inauguration. As with her previous works, she explores the idea of how bad actors capitalise on crises to push through policies whilst everyone else is reeling from the shockwaves. This idea of misinformation, distraction and subterfuge has only become more apparent in the three subsequent years, and Klein’s sharpness on the topic hits you like plunging into an ice-bath. Inspirational stuff.
9: Rutger Bregman — Utopia For Realists
Following the likes of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, Utopia For Realists is a work of carefully-distilled optimism that seeks to outline the better world that’s tantalisingly within our grasp. It draws on the historical long-view to assert the remarkable progress that civilisation has made in a relatively short space of time, before going on to outline how that trajectory can be sustained. Bremen is a smart, young, left-leaning economist whose ideas (UBI, wealth distribution, abolition of GDP as a measure of prosperity) seem increasingly difficult to argue with in a time of such radical inequality. His style is clear, accessible and overwhelmingly positive — it’s a really refreshing read.
8: Michael Pollan — How To Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
In the years that followed Albert Hoffman’s first synthesis of LSD in 1936, many scientists considered the substance a portal into consciousness — potentially offering for psychiatry what the microscope offers to biology. Yet fast-forward thirty years and LSD, fatally associated with hippies and the counter-cultural movement, was banned, along with funding for clinical research. That these substances exist and that we understand them so poorly is the main focus for this book, which gives a grand sweep of the history of psychedelics and their potential uses both medicinally and recreationally. As well as containing some mind-bending passages as the author trips out on a Psilocybin-fuelled voyage (in the name of research!) the book gives a refreshingly level-headed view of a future in which these substances are integrated into our understanding of the world rather than their current position of being needlessly exiled.
7: Margo Jefferson — On Michael Jackson
In my pre-teen years, nothing fascinated me more than Michael Jackson. I would sit in front of the TV, lulled into a low-level hypnosis by the impossible lean in Smooth Criminal and his messianic performance in Moonwalker. When I first saw footage from the Dangerous tour in 1992, I was pretty damn close to hyperventilating. That MJ had this reaction on people is a given, but why? What particular alchemy did he possess that triggered this worldwide frenzy, and was that quality an inherent part of his subsequent unravelling? This book is a gorgeous, slim volume — beautifully crafted and dealing with the troubled legacy of Jackson in a near-philosophical way. Jefferson writes sparsely and elegantly, reaching for the big questions of why we make idols of celebrities and what necessitates the downfall of those who become beholden to the hopes, dreams and fears of their audience.
6: John Jeremiah Sullivan — Pulphead: Notes From The Other Side of America
I was introduced to Sullivan as the natural heir to David Foster Wallace — a comparison that few could live up to, but one that absolutely applies to Sullivan. In this collection of essays, Sullivan surveys the most surreal corners of America, from Christian Rock Festivals to a post-Katrina New Orleans. His writing is in the mode of The New Journalists like Tom Wolfe, Hunter S Thompson, Norman Mailer et al — immersing himself in his subject matter but using the tools of fiction to do so. The result is an immersive mix of observation, wit and vernacular told with an immediately recognisable and warm voice. It’s one that you could quite easily get addicted to and mainline in the same way that Foster Wallace managed with A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
5: Toby Ord — The Precipice
Toby Ord is a Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute who specialises in Existential Threat. He is, therefore, better placed than most to discuss exactly how f*cked we are as a species. On this topic, he’s ambivalent; suggesting that humanity has a one in six chance of a civilisation-ending event happening in the next one hundred years. This book proceeds to outline each of these threats in turn, beginning with nuclear war and taking a perilous journey through AI, pandemics, climate change, civilisational collapse and even the prospect of an asteroid colliding with Earth (the least likely way we’ll meet our end, if he’s to be believed.) The book is surprisingly hopeful, suggesting throughout that it is within our co-operative capability to extend humanity into the furthest reaches of time. Published just before COVID-19, it is a prescient work on a topic that could hardly be of more global importance.
4: Johann Hari — Lost Connections
In this book, Hari explores whether we’ve collectively slept-walked into a way of life that a) doesn’t jive with our evolutionary hard-wiring and b) is sinking many of us into chronic depression. He opens with a strong refutation of prescription drugs, instead arguing that depression is an inevitable response to a feeling of disconnect from the world we inhabit. Through nine key chapters and detailed case studies, he explores each disconnect in turn — from Lost Connection to the Natural World through to Lost Connection to Meaningful Work and beyond. Hari is a meticulous researcher (see: Chasing The Scream) and the book is a product of dozens of interviews with medical professionals and their patients. It’s a convincing read, providing a clear and intuitive exit-strategy from the ever-present fog of gloom that threatens to engulf us all from time to time.
3: Richard Dawkins — The Blind Watchmaker
As a non-biologist I was floored by this book. Dawkins has a peerless writing style — indebted to empiricism but filled with a profound sense of wonder. He is to the natural world what Carl Sagan is to the Cosmos, and this book is a chance to revisit evolutionary theory as though through a new pair of eyes. In the course of the book, Dawkins writes a piece of computer software to mimic natural selection, zooms in on some of nature’s most stunning adaptations (most memorably bats’ development of echo-location) and offers a view of evolution as even more miraculous than the titular theological equivalent. It’s a pleasure to be drawn so close to one of Britain’s greatest minds.
2: Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind
Singularly the best diagnosis of political polarisation that I’ve yet to read. Haidt, a renowned social psychologist, uses the tools of moral philosophy to argue why so many seemingly similar people occupy oppositional positions on the political spectrum. Through this book I developed a much better understanding of why Corbyn was electoral poison, why Trump can do no wrong for his base and why the policies of the right often appeal to a broader sub-section of voters than the left. Haidt’s ideals are that we should step outside of ideology, dogma and orthodoxy in order to arrive at rational solutions for global problems. As someone with an instinctive aversion to tribalism, I found his way of thinking to be truly enlightening.
1: Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow
There could only be one book to end this list. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve bought this for on account of it being the single most instructive manual of human cognition that’s likely to exist. It is, put simply, the life’s work of a Nobel Prize winning psychologist compressed into one volume. His studies on decision-making, cognitive biases and the psychology of judgement are foundational in the field, and virtually every day I’m presented with a situation in which lessons learned from this book appear salient. Most noted for his System 1 (fast, automatic, frequent, emotional) / System 2 (slow, effortful, infrequent, logical) distinction in how the brain processes thought, the book is a wide-ranging and immensely rewarding study of how our brains process information and how this manifests in our subjective experience of the world. Without question this is the one book I would most recommend to everyone — and certainly one to get through before you die.
