7 Awesome Non-Fiction Books That Will Transform Your Life (Really)

I love books so much. They are like a magical tool to access another person’s mind and be changed forever by it.

I especially love non-fiction books, because they teach you something new and often change your perspective. In this story, I want to introduce you to some of the books that changed me (or other people) forever. You may not like all of them, but I guarantee you that each book in this list is legit: no self-help guru crap or whatever.

Let’s begin.

1. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

This is probably my favorite book ever. Before reading it I kinda liked history, after reading it I LOVED history.

BEFORE you skip this point, I know what you are thinking.

“Yeah, I don’t really like history, I don’t think it’s for me”

Think again. While this IS a history book, it’s not just about history. And it’s not the type of history they taught you at school.

This book is about what history should actually be, a tool that helps us understand ourselves and the world.

I can assure you, after reading it, your perspective of the world will be changed forever. You will understand how everything is made up and how fiction was necessary to build societies.

This is also a book about humility. The reason why we are the so-called “dominant species” is because we channeled the power of fiction to organize masses and build the world as we know it. The author is very clear about how we are not different from other animals, especially other mammals. We are not smarter and we don’t have a more developed consciousness. Ten thousand years ago we were just another animal in the savannah.

Harari insists on this aspect to the point that sometimes the book may even sound like vegan propaganda (the author IS vegan), but don’t be let down by this. I’m not vegan nor vegetarian, but I still take the author’s lesson as a humility one.

Be prepared to be as open-minded as possible while reading this book, and be prepared to have at least a small existential crisis. Harari is not afraid to share harsh facts sometimes that may even sound depressing. But they are just that, facts. No bullshit.

If you like this book, and I’m sure you will, you can also take a look at its two sequels, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

2. Factfulness by Hans Rosling

What percentage of children in the world do you think are currently vaccinated?

Say the answer out loud right now…

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.

.

.

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Wrong.

The correct answer is 80%. Surprised?

Most of our basic knowledge about the world is wrong. This happens because, as humans, we are highly prone to biases. The author lists 10 “instincts” that mislead us when thinking about the world.

One of these instincts, that I will spoil here for you, is that we are unable to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time, like “the world has big problems” and “the world is getting better”.

The author makes an analogy with a premature baby in an incubator. The baby’s health is at a critical point, but it still improves every day. The world is similar. While its health is poor, it’s still getting better, and we are better now than at any other time in history.

We have a natural bias towards negative thinking. The author provides a quiz (where, SPOILER, almost every correct answer is the most positive one) and shows that most people perform worse than random. Or, as Rosling puts, worse than a dart-throwing chimp.

Hopefully, after reading this book, not only you will be able to better recognize your biases and think more rationally, but you will also be more optimistic about the world.

3. Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner

The purpose of this book is similar to the previous one. Both books provide tools to think rationally.

While Factfulness helps you understand the world as is now, Superforecasting helps you understand the world as it will be.

The most important lesson from this book is the following: it’s damn difficult to make predictions. Trying to predict anything farther than three years from now is almost impossible. In these cases, you may as well predict randomly (or give a dart to a chimp).

Anyone who claims to be sure about something is likely to be as correct as a dart-throwing chimp. Confidence looks good on paper and makes you more trustworthy, but if you care about finding the truth, it’s a liability.

The good news is that anyone can be trained to be better than a dart-throwing chimp, as long as they are aware of the degree of uncertainty of their predictions.

The book provides some guidelines to become better at making predictions. One of my favorites is the balance between inside and outside views. When we make predictions, we often forget about the basic thing: start by analyzing similar events and quantifying their probability.

I’m not gonna lie, this book heavily influenced the way I make predictions and decisions every day. I’ve become more rational and started reasoning by analogy. I have added a lot of “maybes”, “buts” and “probablys” to my arguments. This may (see what I did there?) sound weak, but it’s just rational. This means that when I’m really sure about something, it’s probably (ehm…) going to be true.

4. Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom

I wasn’t sure about adding this book to the list. This is very specific and you may love it or hate it. Since it’s one of the most important books for me, I decided to consider it anyway.

This book talks about Artificial Intelligence and its future. At some point in the future, AI may become more intelligent than us. The book explores in very detailed ways some possible scenarios in a world with an Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), and what we can do to avoid worst-case outcomes.

While I may be a bit biased in suggesting this book as an AI researcher, it’s clear that the effects of AI on the world will influence all of us. Probably an ASI will be created in the course of our lifetimes. This will completely transform our lives in ways that never happened before and in ways that we can’t even comprehend now.

It may sound too sci-fi and too distant from your life, but it’s not. If you are in your twenties or thirties and sometimes think about yourself at the age of 80, you probably imagine a scenario that isn’t anything similar to the actual future. This book will completely transform your view on the future of humanity. If an ASI will exist by the time you are 80, your own life will be completely transformed. Assuming that such ASI will keep you alive.

The reason for that last sentence is that many things can go wrong with ASI. The book does a very good job explaining what kinds of dangers we can expect. It’s too complex of a topic to be summarized here, but these kinds of dangers are way worse than “AI stealing our jobs”.

This is also a book about philosophy and ethics. One major critic for this book is that it’s very hard to read. The author uses a strongly academic language, this is not a book you may want to read in bed to relax. Bostrom may be a very good philosopher, but he just can’t write popular science and the book seems like a long-ass scientific paper.

If you like the topic but hate academic language, I suggest you a more layperson-friendly alternative: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark. And if you are into these kinds of things, I also suggest the other Tegmark’s book: Our Mathematical Universe.

5. So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

This is another book that influenced me more than I would like to admit. I would lie if I said that I decided not to leave my Ph.D. because of this book.

I’m not a huge fan of Newport. I find him a bit cocky, very repetitive, and his books seem like unnecessary long high school essays.

But he makes very good points.

In this book, the author argues the passion hypothesis. He tries to answer the question: how good the “follow your passion” advice is?

SPOILER: not that much.

Newport argues that passion is overrated. Here are two reasons for this:

• Once you turn your passion into a job, you start losing interest in it. It happened to me with coding.
• A good job causes passion, not otherwise. If you become very good at what you do, you can create the conditions to make your job awesome for you.

The author suggests doing whatever you are already good at, and becoming the very best at it, even if you don’t really feel passionate about it.

I suggest giving this book a try. It may influence your career for the better.

6. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

You’ve probably heard of this one. This is the book everyone is supposed to love. It is considered one of the most life-changing books ever.

I have to be honest. I didn’t really love this book. Probably my expectations were too high and I was disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it. It’s just not the best book I’ve ever read, as many people claim.

I’ve decided to put it on this list because many people I admire claim that this book has been life-changing for them, so chances are that it will be the same for you. If it didn’t happen for me, it’s probably because I’m an exception.

Of course, many people also say that books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill have been life-changing, but this is different. Hill’s book is a huge pile of bullcrap, while Frankl’s book really has value into it.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part describes the life in concentration camps, and I found this part very informative (but sadly not very empathetic). The second part describes logotherapy, the branch of psychology founded by Frankl, which argues that the main driving force of one’s life is its meaning.

Statistically speaking, you will love this book and it will change your life. If you decide to skip on this, here’s the short version: you should find a purpose in your life. Some people had such strong meaning in their lives that they could endure even concentration camps. Or, in Nietzsche’s words:

He who has a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW — Friedrich Nietzsche

7. Atomic Habits by James Clear

We all want to change our life. We often look for radical leaps, but if you really want a better life, you should look at your habits. Your habits define you.

Clear provides a framework to effortlessly implement habits in your life. It is based on the habit loop described in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

This book is a practical guide with real exercises you can do to create good habits or get rid of bad ones. The author stresses that habits and systems are more important than goals and plans, and I fully agree with him.

Habits are actions that you repeat every day and their effects build up. Years of working out, meditating and reading can lead to a wonderful life. Years of smoking, procrastinating and being an asshole can lead to a disastrous one. I think that this book is complementary to The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, in which the author argues that small actions define your life more than big ones, since their effect is analogous to compound interest.

Bonus: The Precipice by Toby Ord

Why bonus? Because I haven’t read it yet.

I know. Suggesting a book that I haven’t read goes against any principle of common sense. But I’m very hyped about it and I wanted to share it with you.

I like Ord’s work, that has been introduced to me by 80000hours. This non-profit promotes the concept of Effective Altruism and advises people on career paths with strong impact on global problems.

This book supposedly talks about the possible existential dangers in this century, and it’s worth reading for the same reason I suggested Superintelligence. We all should be aware of our future and whenever possible do something about it.

I hope you liked this list. As you see, I covered different themes because I like to expand my horizontal knowledge about the world. If you read any of these books, you will notice that each of them is very deep and researched, not shallow motivational bullcrap as in most of today’s book suggestion listicles.

Even if you read only one of them, I’m sure it will change your life.