The Greatest True Story Books of All Time

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
598 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
979 The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922 British English
1075 The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl 1948 Norwegian Norwegian
1138 The Unwomanly Face Of War Svetlana Alexievich 1985 Russian Russian
1204 Nickel And Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich 2001 American English
1315 Voices from Chernobyl Svetlana Alexievich 1997 Belarusian Russian
1495 Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo 2012 American English
1580 The Struggle for Europe Chester Wilmot 1952 British English
1701 The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander 2010 American English
1817 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot 2010 American English
1873 And the Band Played On Randy Shilts 1987 American English
1884 The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright 2006 American English
1974 The Emperor of All Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee 2010 American English
1987 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks 1985 British English
2585 A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn 1980 American English
2612 Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant U. S. Grant 1885 American English
2653 Suicide Emile Durkheim 1897 French French
2710 Alan Turing Andrew Hodges 1983 British English
2841 Children of Crisis Robert Coles 1967 American English
2898 Moneyball Michael M. Lewis 2003 American English
2991 Frederick Douglass David W. Blight 2018 American English
3091 On Death and Dying Elisabeth Kübler-Ross 1969 Swiss English
3099 Why We Can't Wait Martin Luther King 1964 American English
3148 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
3194 The Best And The Brightest David Halberstam 1972 American English
3261 The Perfect Storm Sebastian Junger 1997 American English
3301 The Red Record Ida B. Wells 1895 American English
3421 The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein 2007 Canadian English
3522 Bad Blood John Carreyrou 2018 American English
3556 The Black Jacobins C. L. R. James 1938 British English
3589 Just Mercy Bryan Stevenson 2014 American English
3637 Armenian Atrocities Arnold J. Toynbee 1915 British English
3821 Lenin's Tomb David Remnick 1993 American English
3896 Zoo Station Christiane V. Felscherinow 1978 German German
4074 Travels With Lizbeth Lars Eighner 1993 American English
4100 Life And Death In Shanghai Nien Cheng 1986 Chinese English
4157 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families Philip Gourevitch 1998 American English
4167 The History of the Standard Oil Company Ida Tarbell 1904 American English
4416 A Bright Shining Lie Neil Sheehan 1988 American English
4576 No Ordinary Time Doris Kearns Goodwin 1994 American English
4806 The Burden of Southern History C. Vann Woodward 1960 American English
4813 Dreamland Sam Quinones 2015 American English
4821 Thirteen Years After; A Great War Veteran Returns To The Old Battlefields Will R. Bird 1931 Canadian English
4893 Influence Robert B. Cialdini 1984 American English
4898 The Redeemed Captive John Williams 1707 American English
4948 Dark Money Jane Mayer 2016 American English
5086 Imperial Life in the Emerald City Rajiv Chandrasekaran 2006 American English
5092 Amity and Prosperity Eliza Griswold 2018 American English
5130 All But My Life Gerda Weissmann Klein 1957 American English
5184 The Struggle For Mozambique Eduardo Mondlane 1969 Mozambican English
5267 A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah 2007 Sierra Leonean English
5352 Stasiland Anna Funder 2002 Australian English
5372 Endurance Alfred Lansing 1959 American English
5413 Bad Science Ben Goldacre 2008 British English
5436 Death On The Ice Cassie Brown 1972 Canadian English
5497 Ethnic America Thomas Sowell 1981 American English
5624 Wave Sonali Deraniyagala 2013 Sri Lankan English
5806 Five Days at Memorial Sheri Fink 2013 American English
6194 Know My Name Chanel Miller 2019 American English
6328 No Good Men Among The Living Anand Gopal 2014 American English
6378 Leonardo Da Vinci Walter Isaacson 2017 American English
6526 The Private Life of Chairman Mao Li Zhi-Sui 1994 Chinese English
6595 The Rape Of Nanking Iris Chang 1997 American English
6605 Hillbilly Elegy J. D. Vance 2016 American English
6613 Gorillas In The Mist Dian Fossey 1983 American English
6816 Open Andre Agassi 2009 American English
6957 The Fifth Risk Michael M. Lewis 2018 American English
7094 The Color Of Law Richard Rothstein 2017 American English
7110 Journey Into The Whirlwind Eugenia Ginzburg 1967 Russian Russian
7122 127 Hours Aaron Ralston 2004 American English
7158 The Wager David Grann 2023 American English
7572 The House of Morgan Ron Chernow 1990 American English
7608 The Complete War Memoirs Of Charles De Gaulle Charles De Gaulle 1954 French French
7713 We Were Not The Savages Daniel N. Paul 1993 Canadian English
7722 Unnatural Selection Mara Hvistendahl 2011 American English
7805 First They Killed My Father Loung Ung 2000 Cambodian English
7816 In My Hands Irene Opdyke 1999 American English
7903 The Social Transformation of American Medicine Paul Starr 1982 American English
7903 Move Your Shadow Joseph Lelyveld 1986 American English
7903 Arab and Jew David K. Shipler 1986 American English
7903 Locking Up Our Own James Forman 2017 American English
7960 The Starr Report Kenneth W. Starr 1998 American English
8003 Play Their Hearts Out George Dohrmann 2010 American English
8023 Cadillac Desert Marc Reisner 1986 American English
8062 The Future Is History Masha Gessen 2017 Russian English
8221 Tombstone Yang Jisheng 2008 Chinese Chinese
8310 Nixonland Rick Perlstein 2008 American English
8536 Prisoner Of The State Zhao Ziyang 2009 Chinese Chinese
8558 A Thread Of Violence Mark O'Connell 2023 Unknown English
8566 Slavery by Another Name Douglas A. Blackmon 2008 American English
8752 금요일엔 돌아오렴 세월호 참사 기록위원회 작가기록단 엮음 2014 Korean Korean
8757 Disney War James B. Stewart 2005 American English
8861 A Commotion in the Blood Stephen S. Hall 1997 American English
8876 How To Survive A Plague David France 2016 American English
8891 Midnight In Chernobyl Adam Higginbotham 2024 British English
9261 From Beirut to Jerusalem Thomas L. Friedman 1989 American English
9607 The 9/11 Commission Report 9/11 Commission 2004 American English
9653 The People's Republic Of Amnesia Louisa Lim 2014 Unknown English
9799 No Friend But The Mountains Behrouz Boochani 2018 Unknown Persian
9888 A Woman In Berlin Marta Hillers 1954 German German
9905 The Demon Haunted World Carl Sagan 1995 American English
9937 One Child Mei Fong 2016 Unknown English
10094 Deep Down Dark Héctor Tobar 2014 American English
10305 The Russian Revolution N. N. Sukhanov 1922 Russian Russian
10439 Women In The Resistance And In The Holocaust Vera Laska 1975 Czech English
10450 What The Eyes Don't See Mona Hanna-Attisha 2018 American English
10528 Lumumba Speaks Patrice Lumumba 1967 Congolese French
10555 The Body Keeps The Score Bessel van der Kolk 2014 American English
10952 Spillover David Quammen 2012 American English
10990 Not Without My Daughter Betty Mahmoody 1987 American English
10998 City Of Joy Dominique Lapierre 1985 French French
11209 Based On A True Story Norm Macdonald 2016 Canadian English
11321 Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge, Ana Camallonga 2017 British English
11605 The Wisdom Of Crowds James Surowiecki 2004 American English
11661 Days Of Fire Peter Baker 2013 American English
11661 The Good Soldiers David Finkel 2009 American English
11661 The Dark Side Jane Mayer 2008 American English