The Best Books I Read in 2023, Part 3

Nonfiction

This is the third of three best-books posts. For those just joining us, the first post covered literary fiction, and last week’s post covered genre fiction.

I’ll admit my bias when it comes to nonfiction: I love books that introduce us to new worlds and perspectives, but I prefer books that do so by presenting information and allowing us to draw our own conclusions. As you’ll see below, this means that my top nonfiction choices are mostly apolitical. Worse, I don’t particularly enjoy history, so my nonfiction list is always deficient in that area. If you are looking for a book for your dad, who is probably a history buff (as John Mulaney jokes, “All of our dads are cramming for some World War 2 quiz show”), I can’t help you.

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To compensate for my deficits, I have deputized my son, Noah, who is a historian, to write a couple of history recommendations for us. As he notes about his top two books, “Ironically I now realize that both of these books feature well-meaning but naive and ineffectual leaders who lost power to populist ‘revolutionaries’ who proceeded to make things worse for everyone.”

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, by Vladislav M. Zubok (2021)

Noah’s review:

This book is obviously incredibly relevant right now, but it’s also excellent history in its own right. The economics can be challenging to get a handle on, but the political drama is told in a really engaging way. The book shows that so much current conflict in the former USSR has its roots in the way in which the USSR collapsed: Even as Boris Yeltsin preached liberalization, he was pushing territorial claims against Ukraine, and the failures of Yeltsin and Gorbachev poisoned democracy in the eyes of Russian political culture. Overall, this book is a great read both as background for current events and as a narrative of one of the most interesting political struggles in history.

Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976–1980, by Rick Perlstein (2020)

Noah’s review:

Any book in Perlstein’s quadrilogy is excellent, but Reaganland is the one I read this year. Perlstein is one of the greatest historical writers alive, and this book is both readable and very informative. The book’s main insight is to explore the way in which President Carter failed American liberalism. The traditional narrative is that Carter was an ultra-liberal, but in reality he was a technocrat who ceded the rhetoric of optimism and hope to the Right. Liberalism should never give up on being about building a better world and must earnestly believe that this better world is possible.

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Thanks, Noah! And now for my list of best nonfiction books. One quick note: I wrote a separate post a few weeks ago about another best nonfiction book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, by Michael Lewis (2023):

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (2022)

Rudolf Vrba, a Jewish teenager, is imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1942 and forced to work as a slave unloading the property of the thousands of Jews who are sent to the gas chambers every day. He notices that the only reason the Nazis are able to kill on an industrial scale is deception. The Jews being forced off the trains, the officials in their home countries, and the allied forces who could end the slaughter are all kept ignorant of what is really happening. Vrba, believing that the outside world would put a stop to the atrocities if only they were informed of them, and that if Jews knew the truth they would refuse to board the trains to the camps, hatches a plan to escape from Auschwitz and report what he has seen. His escape is successful, but he is wrong about everything else.

The story of his survival and escape starts as horror and turns into a thriller. Once Vrba is free, the book becomes a Cassandra story of a prophet who is doomed not to be believed. Even though Vrba managed to escape Auschwitz, he carried it with him for the remainder of his life. And yet

He loved travel and restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, exploring a new city and an occasional three-hour lunch in the faculty club, and derived an almost childlike pleasure from things others might take for granted: international phone calls, radio and television, antibiotics and painkillers, French wine and Scotch whisky. … During a rainstorm, Rudi might look out of the window and exult in his good fortune. “Ah, isn’t that beautiful?” he would say. “And we’re inside”—the voice of a man who had known nakedness in the bitterest Polish winter.

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia, MD (2023)

Seemingly within minutes of its publication, this book rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists. And no wonder! Attia argues that with the appropriate lifestyle and medical interventions, we can defeat or at least forestall what he calls the Four Horsemen—heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and dementia—and live longer, healthier lives.

I found this book fascinating not only for its clearly-communicated, detailed medical information, but even more so for the portrait of Attia that emerges. He can come off as extraordinarily intense—at times repellently so. He talks about working out for three or four hours a day, and for fun he swims from Los Angeles to Catalina Island (76 kilometers/47 miles! which is bonkers!). When he hikes in the mountains, he puts weights in his backpack to increase the challenge.

A typical slope on one of my summit hikes—Eggishorn (2178m/7146ft) in this case. Seriously, mountain hiking is tough enough! There is no need to put weights in our backpacks!

But just when readers are starting to be reminded of the joke about Puritans living longer (they don’t live longer; it just SEEMS longer), Attia surprises us. He tells us that he has changed his mind about many health interventions—for example, he used to be one of those keto and intermittent-fasting bores, ahem, advocates, but now he recommends these diets in only a few very specific cases.

Even more important, Attia believes that sufficient sleep and emotional well-being are crucial components of our physical health, and he is candid about his own failure and transformation in these areas. In fact we can read his book on a meta-level, as an autobiography of a person who suffered great trauma, whose maladaptive response to that trauma made him so insufferable that it almost ruined his life, and who managed, through hard work and a good therapist, to become a real mensch. We may not adopt all of Attia’s suggestions, but I predict that he will inspire us to make at least a few healthy changes in our lives.

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues, by Jonathan Kennedy (2023)

Kennedy’s fascinating and well-researched book follows humanity from prehistory through the Covid pandemic and leaves readers with a profound feeling of humility. Those of us who favor the Great Men of History theory might believe that the Alexanders, Luthers, Washingtons, and kings and generals make history. Those of us who favor History from Below might believe that ordinary people shape events. Kennedy shows, by contrast, that it is those critters that are seemingly the least significant on earth, bacteria and viruses, that drive humanity’s story.

To encourage you to get this book—for yourselves or for a friend who loves history, anthropology, or science—I’ll offer the following small teaser, a summary of the first chapter’s argument. Kennedy uses newly-discovered facts about our genetic heritage to overturn destructive narratives we have told ourselves about our past. We’ve all heard the story about how Homo sapiens came to dominate the earth through our superior brain power, which allowed us to exterminate the Neanderthals and other hominids, right? Well, it turns out that a better slogan for this period of history is “make love, not war.” The evidence shows that we didn’t outsmart other hominids in battle; after all, our prehistoric cousins also possessed superior brain power and left behind signs of intelligence, creativity, and even (in the case of Neanderthals) the capacity for language.

Depiction of aurochs, horses, and deer from Lascaux Cave. I found this image here.

We already know from our DNA that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and other hominids. Kennedy uses the evidence from DNA found in fossil mouth bacteria to show that such interbreeding was likely consensual: The best explanation for the presence of the mouth bacteria is that it was transmitted by kissing. Homo sapiens did have an advantage over other hominids though—great genetic diversity and millennia of evolution in a biologically rich environment. This genetic advantage helped Homo sapiens’ immune systems fight off most pathogens. Neanderthals, by contrast, were genetically homogenous and evolved in a harsher climate that had a paucity of microbes. They were thus vulnerable to sicknesses to which Homo sapiens was immune. Homo sapiens prevailed not because of our special virtue or brains, but because sickness killed off our competitors.

The other chapters in the book tell similar stories about such periods as the rise of Christianity, England’s success during the Industrial Revolution, and the United States’s victory during the American Revolution. In every chapter we learn something new—and enjoy having our assumptions overturned too.

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, by Rachel Aviv (2022)

It’s one of civilization’s oldest debates: Is mental illness a moral defect, a chemical imbalance, or a logical reaction to an intolerable situation? Aviv explores the stories we tell ourselves in order to cope with our circumstances. She argues that these stories can take on a life of their own and destroy us. (Examples of destructive stories in the book include “If I stop eating I will be perfect and holy”; “In order to worship God, I must abandon my family and live on the street as an ascetic”; and “White people are trying to hurt me and my children.”)

I was struck by Aviv’s repeated use of the word “insight.” “Insight” traditionally refers to a goal of psychoanalysis—to get patients to acknowledge and understand their flawed ways of thinking. But “insight” can also be the sudden moment of clarity that saves the life of a schizophrenic. Aviv makes the case that those of us who don’t suffer from mental illness need insight too, into the ways that our culture burdens and destroys vulnerable people. Beautifully written and thought-provoking, this book encourages readers to avoid simplistic explanations for the tragic challenges of mental illnesses.

There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits, and Who Pays the Price, by Jessie Singer (2022)

One summer, I temped at a DC nonprofit that worked to improve traffic safety. They instructed me that, when editing anything, I should replace the word “accident” with “crash,” because “accident” minimizes the horror of these events and implies that they are inevitable. In fact, as Singer notes, people used to refer to fatal car crashes as “car murder.”

This book completely revolutionizes how you will think about disasters, most of which could be prevented if we put thought, effort, and money into improving systems. Accidents are not a problem of individual error and carelessness, but result instead from dangerous conditions that persist because of prejudice and profit. Think of how officials blamed the railway workers for the Ohio train derailment and toxic spill instead of asking why the railroad had only three workers on a mile-long train. Or think of how we blame jaywalkers when they are hit by cars instead of asking why we don’t enforce crosswalk laws.

The book is full of passionate advocacy and fascinating facts. For example, did you know that one reason the Three Mile Island disaster wasn’t stopped in time is that the designers of the plant made the warning lights green instead of red, and so when the workers saw the green lights, they assumed everything was ok? Singer argues that we don’t have to accept these injuries and deaths as inevitable, and she ends with suggestions for how we can make life safer for everyone.

Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, by Dawn Turner (2021)

To reiterate the point that opened this essay, I believe that the best nonfiction invites us into worlds we might not otherwise encounter. A college friend gave me this book not only because it is a powerful and beautifully-written story, but also because we went to college in a neighborhood that borders Bronzeville. We students had been warned never to set foot in that neighborhood for our own safety, so it was fascinating to read about the neighborhood’s origins as a haven for working- and middle-class Black families who had come to Chicago during the Great Migration. As is so often the case, the reality is more complicated than the stereotypes.

Dawn Turner, her sister, Kim, and her friend Debra grew up in a functional community with decent schools and teachers. They had loving mothers, aunts, and grandmas to look out for them. (Turner has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and it is a treat to eavesdrop with her when the older women get to gossiping.) All three girls would seem to have had a shot at stable, successful lives. And yet there are also myriad, powerful forces that could derail them. The book reminds me of season four of The Wire, which tells the story of four disadvantaged boys, each of whom has a responsible older man in his life who wants to help him. Only one boy escapes tragedy. Those are terrible odds, and a terrible waste of human lives.

Turner is keenly aware of the role of luck in her life. As she says in a college graduation speech,

We all make mistakes. We all make good and bad choices. Life can change in an instant and sometimes we avoid peril not because of any series of things we’ve done perfectly but by a grace far bigger than our own steps and missteps.

In spite of the tremendous challenges and tragedies the people in Turner’s community encounter, the book ends with a message of hope, forgiveness, and redemption.

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How about you, readers? What were the best nonfiction books you read this year? Please share your thoughts (and recommendations) in the comments!

The Tidbit

I think we all could use this song right now, don’t you?

One day this all will change, treat people the same,

stop with the violence, down with the hate.

One day we’ll all be free and proud to be

under the same sun, singing songs of freedom.