John Green's 8 Top Recommendations For Non-Fiction Books

Published Oct 16, 2026, 10:43 AM EDT

Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.

Author John Green is best known for The Fault in Our Stars. He also wrote the controversial Young Adult novel Looking for Alaska, and this year's buzzy hit Hollywood, Ending, as well as nonfiction books like The Anthropocene Reviewed and Everything Is Tuberculosis. Green is also a prolific recommender of books, fiction and nonfiction, and this list collects some of his strongest recs in the latter category.

The nonfiction classics below range from memoir to history. They cover philosophy and pop culture with equal critical touch. And for fans of John Green's work, the influences of each of these books on him as an author are evident. Each one is a must-read in its own right, but especially for anyone who wants to know what shaped Green as a writer and thinker.

8 Regarding The Pain Of Others

Written By Susan Sontag; Published In 2003

Susan Sontag wrote novels, collections of short stories, and plays, but she is most highly regarded as an essayist and critical thinker. Regarding the Pain of Others is one of Sontag's final works published in her lifetime, before she passed away in 2004. Regarding the Pain reprises the subject of her earlier essay collection, On Photography, but from a much more philosophically raw POV.

In particular, Sontag presciently focused on the way images of pain and violence impact the viewer psychologically. It is more than just a matter of desensitization; for Sontag, consuming violent imagery changes a person. Especially images of real violence. Susan Sontag died before the advent of social media, but already during the final years of her life, the internet was making it easier than ever to engage with "the pain of others." Nearly 25 years after the book's release, Regarding the Pain of Others is even more of a must-read.

7 Bossypants

Written By Tina Fey; Published In 2011

Tina Fey's memoir Bossypants is a great read for anyone who likes to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on pop culture. The book is funny, of course; practically every page is infused with Fey's signature sense of humor. Still, it is the story of her career, from her improv beginnings, to becoming the first woman to be Saturday Night Live's head writer, to the creation of 30 Rock, and beyond, that makes Bossypants a true pageturner.

Fey knows how to keep readers invested in a story. She's a fantastic writer, with a keen sense of how and when to deliver information to her audience. That's an essential to the art of autobiography, just like it is to telling a joke. Bossypants is insightful, informative, amusing, and all the things that make a memoir impossible to put down.

6 Between The World And Me

Written By Ta-Nehisi-Coates; Published In 2015

Between the World and Me is a life-changing book, and one of the most pivotal works of the 21st century so far. Coates' book is a work of epistolary nonfiction, a letter from father to son reckoning with the fraught nature of being black in America. Coates wrestles with America's history of violent racism, and it pains him to know his son will have to wrestle with it too, and Between the World and Me is an attempt to do that groundwork for the next generation of anti-racist Americans.

The result is a powerful text. It is autobiography, but also something more than just the story of one person. It is a generational saga, a tragedy, a cultural critique, a philosophical powerhouse. A decade on from its publication, Between the World and Me is starting to find its next generation of new readers, especially given its increasing popularity in high school and college curriculums.

5 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Written By Mary Beard; Published In 2015

Mary Beard is a lauded scholar of antiquity, particularly her work on the Roman Republic. She has written highly specialized books like Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, and Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up, as well as texts aimed at a more general audience, like SPQR.

The title of the book comes from the Latin "Senatus Populusque Romanus," which translates approximately to "The Senate and People of Rome."

Beard starts her book with the Cataline conspiracy, and primarily focuses on the final centuries of the Republic, before wrapping up with a chapter on the reign of the emperor Caracalla. If those names mean nothing to you, read SPQR to find out. There are a surplus of A+ books about Rome out there, but few serve as better primers, or refreshers, than Mary Beard's version of the story.

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4 Upstream

Written By Mary Oliver; Published In 2016

From one prolific Mary to another. Mary Oliver is one of the greatest poets America has ever produced. She published dozens of poetry collections across the span of her fifty-year career. She won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and many more literary awards. Upstream was her late in life collection of essays reflecting on her career, her craft, and her perennial subject: nature and humanity's relationship to the natural world.

In Upstream, Oliver takes readers back to her childhood, situates herself in the tradition of American writers like Whitman and Emerson, and offers insight into how he wrote. For readers who want to understand the minds of great writers, Upstream should be close to the top of their "To Read" stack. It is a mesmerizing and life-giving self-portrait of the artist as a role model. And for many readers, hopefully it will be an introduction to Mary Oliver's poetry.

3 The Water Will Come

Written By Jeff Goodell; Published In 2017

Subtitled Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, author Jeff Goodell's book is an eye-opening look at the inevitability of climate change. The Water Will Come takes readers to places around the world threatened by rising sea levels, examining how the people there are dealing with it now, or plan to face it in the future. Goodell also highlights the lapses in infrastructure and foresight that could be catastrophic, and costly, for coastal locales in the future.

Climate change is natural, and inevitable. It is also undeniably being accelerated by human civilization. A topic John Green meditated on extensively in his podcast, and later essay collection, The Anthropocene Reviewed. The Water Will Come's influence on Green is clear, and nearly ten years after its publication, the book's message has only gotten more urgent, its ticking clock louder.

2 World Of Wonders

Written By Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Published In 2020

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is another poet, like Susan Sontag and Mary Oliver, who also works in prose. Her book of essays, World of Wonders: In Praise Of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments is a beautiful collection of meditations on various animals and what the author has learned from them.

World of Wonders is a stellar example of an essay collection that readers don't have to rush through. Yes, you might be captivated by Nezhukumatathil's prose, and her ideas, and wind up reading her book in a single day. Alternatively, readers can savor the book, reading it slowly, maybe one essay a night. World of Wonders is a perfect read for those who want to be intellectually and emotionally uplifted. It is an ode, not a dirge, and that is the appeal.

1 How The Word Is Passed

Written By Clint Smith; Published In 2021

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America is about how the history of slavery is taught in the United States. Not just in classrooms, but in the places where the history happened, and in private spaces. How knowledge is transmitted culturally, and institutionally, but also personally. Or, in some cases, not transmitted.

It is a complex and difficult subject, one author Clint Smith handles as deftly as he does evocatively. Smith confronts hard truths, while also exploring how misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and straight-up fiction gather like storm clouds around those truths. How the Word is Passed is aware of itself as one more salvo in the fight for control of the narrative, and it is written accordingly, fiercely, and the result is a work of nonfiction as gripping as it is informative.