Non-Fiction That Makes You Go Hmmmm
Explore thought-provoking non-fiction books that challenge your perspective. Discover titles that make you go 'Hmmmm' with our curated list of mind-expanding reads.
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A Long Way Gone
by Ishmael Beah
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
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A Deadly Game
by Catherine Crier
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Catherine Crier, a former judge and one of television's most popular legal analysts, offers a riveting and authoritative account of one of the most memorable crime dramas of our time: the murder of Laci Peterson at the hands of her husband, Scott, on Christmas Eve 2002. Drawing on extensive interviews with key witnesses and lead investigators, as well as secret evidence files that never made it to trial, Crier traces Scott's bizarre behavior; shares dozens of transcripts of Scott's chilling and incriminating phone conversations; offers accounts of Scott's womanizing from two former mistresses before Amber Frey; and includes scores of never-before-seen police photos, documents, and other evidence. The result is thoroughly engrossing yet highly disturbing -- an unforgettable portrait of a charming, yet deeply sociopathic, killer.
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For Laci
by Sharon Rocha
The mother of homicide victim Laci Peterson discusses Laci's life, the crime that took the lives of her daughter and her unborn grandson, the trial and conviction of Laci's husband Scott, and the impact of the tragedy on her family.
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A Rose for Mary
by Casey Sherman
An analysis of the Boston Strangler case also offers an insider perspective on the murder of final victim Mary Sullivan, as told by her nephew, and discusses how the chief suspect had no physical evidence linking him to the crimes and was killed before he was charged.
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Prisoner of Tehran
by Marina Nemat
Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic Revolution--arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death for "political crimes."--From publisher description.
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My Life as a Traitor
by Zarah Ghahramani
Iranian student Ghahramani was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison. Her crime was in wanting to slide back her headscarf to feel the sun on her hair. This is her richly textured memoir that celebrates a triumph of the individual over the state.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
by Frederick Douglass
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader contend with Douglass? nineteenth-century style and vocabulary.Born into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of America's best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass? own account of his journey from slave to one of America's great statesmen, writers, and orators is as fascinating as it is inspiring.
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Kabul Beauty School
by Deborah Rodriguez
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.
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Mistaken Identity
by Don & Susie Van Ryn
Two families forever bound by tragedy describe the accident that claimed the lives of five Taylor University student and the shocking case of mistaken identity that occurred--a mix-up that led one girl to be buried under the wrong name and the only survivor in a coma cared for by the wrong family--the healing journey of survivor Whitney Cerak, and the bond of faith that sustains both families. 150,000 first printing.
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Columbine
by Dave Cullen
On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence, irrevocable branding every subsequent shooting "another columbine." When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window, the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal. The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.