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Both informative and entertaining, these books not only teach but help us to question our beliefs about the world.
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4,418 books · 2,564 voters · list created September 30th, 2009 by Mia (votes) .
699 likes · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.


Mia 1808 books
12 friends
Greyweather 2660 books
65 friends
Rindee 291 books
138 friends
Cynthia 628 books
22 friends
Liane 930 books
13 friends
Roberta 2491 books
20 friends
Dorothy 3008 books
54 friends
Marilyn 399 books
14 friends

More voters…


Comments Showing 1-12 of 12 (12 new)

dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Roberta (new)

Roberta This is a great list. I love non-fiction so will be able to use it as a guide. I don't know how to add a book but would like to reccomend Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris by Michael Allin.


message 2: by Ben (new)

Ben Great list! Some non-fiction is just so utterly boring . . thank you for creating such a wonderful list.


Susanna - Censored by GoodReads You add books at the top of the list, at the tab next to "all votes."

However, if you are the author I believe that is no longer possible; too many authors were abusing the privilege.


message 4: by Lisa (new)

Lisa I read a ton of non fiction, I have added my limit of 100 books.


BookLovingLady (deceased Jan. 25, 2023...) @Stacey
Said it before and I'll say it again: As you share the same first name with the author, I can't escape the notion that you might be one and the same person?


message 6: by Rosa (new)

Rosa She has the same last name, too.


message 7: by Sally (new)

Sally 8 duplicates found and removed


message 8: by Sally (new)

Sally 4 duplicates found and removed


message 9: by Vicki (last edited Sep 29, 2023 03:43PM) (new)

Vicki # 757 The Woman in White and # 797 A Darkness Absolute are both fiction, as are #1014 Still Life, #1027 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and #1089 Murder on the Orient Express.

#1181 The Great Gatsby (THE great American NOVEL!!!)


message 10: by Agnieszka (new)

Agnieszka 21 duplicates found and removed

I’ll start in the next days removing fiction, appreciable any listings (less books to check it if I know for sure it’s fiction :-D)


message 11: by Gillian (new)

Gillian Agnieszka wrote: "21 duplicates found and removed

I’ll start in the next days removing fiction, appreciable any listings (less books to check it if I know for sure it’s fiction :-D)"


Murder on the Orient Express is fiction.


message 12: by Steve (last edited Apr 24, 2026 07:04AM) (new)

Steve Shelby There is a lot of spam on this list. Spam is the use of clearly bogus accounts created for no other purpose than to inflate book ratings and vote for them on a lists. Sad that this happens.

How can you trivially spot spam?
The most popular book on the list is Freakonomics, which has 900,000 ratings and 129 votes. That’s maybe a normal ratio, 1,000 ratings per vote roughly. When you see a book with no more than 10 ratings per vote, it is almost definitely spam. Many of these books have as low as 2 ratings per vote, which is at the thoroughly egregious level of spam. Definitely not natural.

And when this book is not in the top 50 and then is suddenly in the top 20 within a week, that is definitely a coordinated swarm of spam, and as of 2026, this is not uncommon. Goodreads should have AI to identify and stop this but they do not. It is an excessive manual burden to report and delete the spam manually.

First Time Dad The Ultimate 42-Week Pregnancy Handbook for Expecting Fathers Support Your Partner, Prepare for Baby, and Build Confidence as a New Dad by James Macdonald One Dad & His Dog 21-Week Golden Retriever Puppy Training Guide for Busy Dads – Boost Mental Health, Master Potty Training & Family Bonding by James Macdonald
First Time Dad by James Mcdonald
One Dad & His Dog by James Mcdonald

All 97 votes for First Time Dad came from accounts created with the last few weeks, all of which rated James Mcdonald’s books 5 stars and vote for them on this list and a dozen others. This is just about all they do, though a subset vote for one particular science book too. They all have 0 friends and no other activity and all appeared and did the same thing at the same time. This is clear spam. These accounts should all be deleted.

This has 129 ratings and 97 votes. Wow. Definitely spam.

The Amazing Marriage -3rd Edition by Nico Smit Miracles Beyond The Crowd the power of persevering faith by Nico Smit
The Amazing Marriage : -3rd Edition By Nico Smit
Miracles Beyond The Crowd: the power of persevering faith By Nico Smit

All of those voters follow the same identical spam pattern. All recent, 5 star for Nico Smot books, vote for them and dozens of lists. Should you take advice about marriage or miracles of faith from a book that has been so egregiously falsely promoted by spam accounts?

There is a list of about a dozen or more pro-communist books here that is clearly an orchestrated spam attack to run these books up many lists. All 86 voters of this group vote for a dozen books. These voters are mostly spam, those that vote for a dozen of these at once on many lists … definitely.

Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism! The Marx Code—Socialism with a Human Face A New World Order by Todor Bombov Utopia by Thomas More The Myth of American Idealism How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World by Noam Chomsky Why Socialism Works by Harrison Lievesley Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!
Utopia by Thomas More
The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World by Noam Chomsky
Why Socialism Works by Harrison Lievesley
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
What Is to Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin
To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism
by Sean McMeekin
Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost A.M. Meerloo
The Law by Frédéric Bastia
Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code—Socialism with a Human Face: A New World Order by Todor Bombov
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman

Obscured Intent by R.R. Smith
Obscured Intent by RR Smith

This is another book where rather than having thousands of ratings, has just as many as voted for the book on this list, who all amazingly are accounts created in the last month mostly on the same day, mostly one of a few names over and over, who 5-star this book and vote for it on this list. Interesting that other books it takes thousands of ratings for every list vote and this is one to one in nearly 3 weeks.

The Cosmic Experience of One An awareness-expanding course for human beings by Jasun Ether
The Cosmic Experience of One

This books and a couple others appeared out of nowhere recently near the top of the list, voted by many spam accounts in a short time that all rate the books well and vote them same books or 2 or 3 up on the same set of several lists.

Shattering Silence A Story of Survival, Justice, and the Power of Telling the Truth by Darlene Lekowski
Shattering Silence: A Story of Survival, Justice, and the Power of Telling the Truth

This book wasn’t on this page last week, and is now #20, with 78 ratings and 54 votes. Egregious spam accounts.


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