• In total there are 0 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 0 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 616 on Thu Jan 18, 2024 7:47 pm

Life-changing nonfiction books

This forum is devoted to conversations about your favorite NON-FICTION authors, books, and genres.
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
Lucian Hodoboc
Getting Comfortable
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 10:55 am
5
Location: Eastern-Europe
Been thanked: 3 times
Contact:

Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Have you ever come across a non-fiction book that you would call "life changing"? Has any non-fiction book had such a powerful impact upon your beliefs or principles that it made you see life in a different light (whether in a positive or a negative manner)? Feel free to share the title(s) in this thread and tell us a bit about the influence it had on you. :)
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Without a doubt I'd choose Thoreau's Walden. It had anthem-like qualities for me as a teenager, and I think it still influences me. It's not that I model myself after HDT--in fact I push back at him to a degree--but I admire most of the values the book embodies. Most of all, I love the writing.
jackyjim
Official Newbie!
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2019 2:02 am
5
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Of all the wonderful books I have read over the last years, one that had a significant impact on how I view life, health, ageing and mortality were Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. In Being Mortal, Atul Gawande reveals the suffering that comes from the inescapable realities of how our society deals aging and death. It is a raw and important view into how doctors and family members, uncomfortable with dealing with our inevitable mortality, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.
Paulekotz
Official Newbie!
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:46 pm
5
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Tattoos on The Heart - The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle is a book that shows the struggle of gang life, and how it is difficult to break the cycle once you are in it. Boyle shows that when we show compassion without limits, we can move past a person's past decisions and provide avenues of hope for the future. I truly enjoyed the authors approach to life, sense of humor which permeates this book, and the message it conveyed.
User avatar
Harry Marks
Bookasaurus
Posts: 1920
Joined: Sun May 01, 2011 10:42 am
12
Location: Denver, CO
Has thanked: 2335 times
Been thanked: 1020 times
Ukraine

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

My formative non-fiction books were providers of intellectual structure. It was interesting to read here about people who were changed or shaped by essays and expressions of values.

"Habits of the Heart" by Bill Bellah, et al, would not be life-changing for most, but it gave me words and concepts to express a deeply felt experience in my own life, that living for what we might call 'advantage' is cold and isolating, and that communities who can sustain warmth, mutuality and support depend on a vocabulary of purpose greater than the individual.

Likewise "I and Thou" gave me a vocabulary for understanding how the sacredness of other people taps my own deepest sense of how meaning works. The book is still waiting to be written that unpacks the neuropsychology of it, but I am convinced that instrumental thinking, in which others become means to an end, cuts us off from an otherwise immediate experience of the radiance of living.

"Getting to Yes" explained the "how to" of win/win negotiation. Everyone should read it.

I might tentatively add "Thinking, Fast and Slow." I have not even finished it, years after beginning it, but its implications for understanding mental processes are so far-reaching that I keep running into them in the most unlikely places.
swara31
Official Newbie!
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2019 6:10 am
4

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

For me it is "The Alchemist" From Paul Coehlo
ellisacoy
Master Debater
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2019 1:17 am
4
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

I really enjoy reading memoirs and while life changing is a heavy concept, i do think If I Had to Tell it Again by Dr Gayathri Prabhu was very impactful for its stylistic choice and truth about alcoholic father and childhood abuse. It is a treatise which gives voice to conversations which could have been had. It does what Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completrey Fine in fiction.
Majora_T
Official Newbie!
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun May 19, 2019 7:27 pm
4
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

I recently read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Seeing the hardships of war and how people came out beaten, battered and emotionally scarred and yet still managed to find forgiveness in their hearts inspires me to look past what suffering in my life is trivial by comparison.
User avatar
Harry Marks
Bookasaurus
Posts: 1920
Joined: Sun May 01, 2011 10:42 am
12
Location: Denver, CO
Has thanked: 2335 times
Been thanked: 1020 times
Ukraine

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Majora_T wrote:I recently read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.
I found that one a very moving and inspiring story as well. Kind of strange how the camp commander settled on the main character, Zamperini, as his designated victim, seemingly trying to prove his ideology that foreigners are weak. And it's unclear how Zamperini found the inner resources to endure, except that his time on the life raft, complete with a vision, seems to have changed him.
Majora_T wrote: Seeing the hardships of war and how people came out beaten, battered and emotionally scarred and yet still managed to find forgiveness in their hearts inspires me to look past what suffering in my life is trivial by comparison.
Maybe all of us could benefit from a near-death experience to put things in perspective? Initiation rites used to serve that purpose. I don't think the suffering in each of our lives is trivial, (some more than others, of course), but a sense that it comes with the territory is part of getting ourselves together to overcome it, I think.
AVonrad
Getting Comfortable
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Jun 30, 2019 8:56 pm
4
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Life-changing nonfiction books

Unread post

Two truly life changing books for me were The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and The End of Dieting by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. These two combined enabled me to radically change my diet over a period of three years. But even more, I am using the principles of that success to improve other areas of my life.
Post Reply

Return to “Non-Fiction General Discussion”