10 must-read non-fiction books for World Book Day 2026
Retreat from furby-organ-pilled mass culture and read one of these excellent books.
We’ve got all the non-fiction food groups covered in this World Book Day 2026 edition of our book round-ups.
You’ve got a slab of protein-rich ‘artificial biological intelligence’ to really sink your teeth into, for greens there’s a Gordon Brown biography, some spicy Russian history and a takedown of capitalism, and over in comfy carbs, the life of a space scientist and Albion’s national myths, both made super accessible.
For dessert? A crunch of Nintendo and a lick of De La Soul.
Feast on these words.
Living In A D.A.I.S.Y. Age (Austin McCoy)
Stick 3 Feet High And Rising on and crack open this heartfelt, joyous, always astute De La Soul book. Absolute bliss. It’s from Austin McCoy, an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University who specialises in, amongst other topics, hip-hop culture. This is part De La Soul history, part cultural commentary on hip-hop’s place in America for the past 50 years and part memoir from McCoy who writes thoughtfully and vulnerably about what the music has meant to him through different chapters of his own life.
You get deep dives into individual tracks, albums, samples and collaborations with explorations into Black masculine nerd-dom, creative expression and freedom, East Coast vs West Coast beefs, middle aged rappers and renewal and, of course, all the record label and music streaming battles which De La Soul have conquered. Plus an in-depth Listening Guide for further discoveries and connections. McCoy takes this all seriously, as he should. A dream read for new, one-time or long-time fans of Posdnuos, Trugoy, Maceo and Prince Paul.
Super Nintendo (Keza Macdonald)
If you’ve dipped out of gaming (or haven’t played much since you were a kid) then Super Nintendo, from The Guardian’s video games editor Keza Macdonald, will really energise you to get back into them. With Macdonald’s 1-50 rundown of the best Nintendo titles at the end, she spends most of the book weaving a history of the secretive company and reflections on the innovations of iconic games and consoles with her many interviews with the famous names behind them like Shigeru Miyamoto (who still oversees the movies and theme parks), Takashi Tezuka, Eiji Aonuma and Masahiro Sakurai, plus former Nintendo president, the late Satoru Iwata.
The book is a great mix of insight into the serendipity, genius, teamwork and all-nighters that went into the greats - Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros - and plenty of love for the likes of WarioWare, Pikmin, in-Zelda fishing games, Nintendo’s bizarro toys and all manner of other spin-offs, side projects and half-forgotten lore. We also get Macdonald’s own contagiously enthusiastic personal memories and interviews with the types of super-fans who build shrines to hanafuda playing cards in their gardens. Who are we to yuck their yum, eh?
Finding Albion (Zakia Sewell)
Finding Albion is real special. A mix of travelogue, folk culture compendium and post-colonial analysis, the 6 Music DJ Zakia Sewell takes us on a journey around both the pagan wheel of the year and around the British Isles in search of a new, much needed alternative spirit for the country. This is exactly the kind of open-hearted, clear-sighted riposte we need to the nationalist “flag shaggers” (our words, not hers) who are singularly obsessed with us defeating the Nazis and not much else.
Sewell finds new significance in folk music, ‘pre-consumerist’ customs and neo-traditions as varied as morris dancing, midwinter brussel sprout fights, fire breathing, poaching, crafting, wassailing, May Day and masquerades. The chapter on the Notting Hill Carnival, its origins and the interplay between Britain and colonised countries and islands, is a standout. Less prescriptive and much more imaginative than an old-school love of crown, country, military and empire, and with a lens that pre-dates Christianity to go back to pagans, Druids and Welsh myth cycles, this book’s message is complicated but ultimately hopeful.
On the Future of Species (Adrian Woolfson)
When you give your science book a title like this, you gotta live up to it. And Adrian Woolfson, co-founder of biotech company Genyro, sure does. He takes us through pivotal and recent developments in molecular biology and synthetic genomics and argues that we’ve already taken meaningful steps towards reaching ‘Artificial Biological Intelligence’. In other words not just sequencing - or reading - DNA and the human genome, but writing it too. Woolfson explores the likely impacts on medicine, food security and even the potential to create new synthetic species, touching on all manner of wild experiments and milestones involving yeast, E.coli, nematode worms, artificial moss, de-extincted dire wolves and yes, humanised mice.
Woolfson has a welcome and (rare for STEM intellectuals) respect and admiration for the humanities and how art, music and literature can inspire, counter and explain scientific breakthroughs. Of course, recent innovation in AI has played a seismic role in biological engineering but look — analysing huge datasets of amino acids in order to help eradicate diseases is precisely what AI should be deployed for, not just replacing business software. While intentionally avoiding “abhorrent” eugenics ideologies, he briefly nods to the difference between Deaf culture and communities and say, diseases such as cancer. Woolfson ends with his ‘Manifesto for Life’: let’s get that global regulatory body up and running sharpish, lads. Fascinating, terrifying, fascinating, terrifying.
Gordon Brown: Power With Purpose (James Macintyre)
It’s OK if you have a political crush on Gordon Brown, we do too. Those stirring speeches in favour of a united United Kingdom! In case there’s any doubt, political journalist and former senior producer for Question Time James Macinytyre spells it all out in this terrific biography: the most consequential and redistributive chancellor of the past fifty years, who almost halved child poverty and made strides towards eradicating pensioner poverty, the force behind the cancellation of $100 billion of global south debt and the most popular Labour figure as of 2024.
With interviews with Brown himself, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Neil Kinnock, Ed Balls, Nick Clegg, aides, MPs, family and friends, there’s plenty of astute and timely analysis of both personal details - his faith, his habits, his marriage and his relationship to the Murdoch media - and his mistakes, including not doing more to block the Iraq war and the lack of regulation of the financial sector in the run up to the 2007-08 recession. As Macintyre stresses, it’s perhaps his time since being PM that has best shown the world the character of this man: thinking deeply about devolution frameworks, working with the UN and the WHO on education and health financing and still, still campaigning against child poverty. If there’s one biography Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should be reading right now, they could do much worse than this one.
Starchild (Maggie Aderin)
Maggie Aderin seems like she’d be So Much Fun on a night out, star-gazing or otherwise. The dame, space scientist and presenter of The Sky At Night (amongst other things) is funny and candid in this memoir. Starchild takes us from Aderin’s childhood in and around London, watching The Clangers, Star Trek and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then it’s through Imperial and UCL to working on the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the James Webb Space Telescope before moving into science communication. Everything here is accessible but budding telescope enthusiasts especially will get a kick out of all the geeky details.
Throughout, Aderin touches on family, relationships, health, her experiences of racism in the industries she’s worked in and beyond. And some of the details of her incredible life will be extremely reassuring to any younger space-inclined readers, in particular: she has dyslexia and ADHD! She got a D in her physics A-Level because she took too many subjects! Her PhD was in mechanical engineering! Hella inspiring.
Escape From Capitalism (Clara E. Mattei)
Escape From Capitalism, from Italian academic and professor of economics at the University of Tulsa Clara E. Mattei, is one of those joining-the-dots must-reads that manages to make sense of our upside-down world. Mattei patiently and meticulously explains the brutal impacts of so-called ‘pure economics’, and related decisions around inflation, interest rates, unemployment levels and austerity, on our everyday lives. Her overarching thesis? No economics is ever a pure rational science, it’s always a political decision. (Speaking of Gordon Brown, Mattei has a lot of thoughts around the role of independent central banks in all of this.)
Mattei brings her abstract ideas to life at every turn. The book shines a light on how liberal economists and far-right fascists worked together to defeat nascent alternatives to capitalism in the era of Mussolini and Gramsci and the shocking current-day economic dependency of Palestinians in Gaza on Israeli corporations and banks. Don’t let this get you depressed, instead let this get you angry: this is designed as both a rallying cry and an intellectual backbone for future radical movements.
Rasputin (Anthony Beevor)
Ugh, the man, the myth, the legend indeed. Grigori Rasputin was the ‘moujik’ peasant and holy mystic who enthralled Tsar Nicholas II and, especially, Tsaritsa Alexandra. Anthony Beevor, the historian famous for his Stalingrad account in particular, wants to get into the nitty gritty of all the accusations, all the sordid stories here. The result is both impressively credible, with a huge range of sources and perspectives, and incredibly readable. Beevor argues that Grigori may well have had an outsized effect on history by driving a wedge between the imperial family and conservative elites at a time of brewing revolution in early 20th century Russia.
Rasputin, also known as Our Friend, Grishka and assorted other monikers, had a unique effect on people’s demeanors - St Petersburg society ladies especially - and even some people’s health, notably the young Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia. His healing powers towards the latter - coincidence? hypnosis? - became the source of his power over the Empress. At a certain point he was effectively hiring and firing prime ministers and high-ranking church officials. An unputdownable account of a unique figure in history.
Hard Streets (Jacqueline Riding)
Jacqueline Riding’s Hard Streets is a fascinating and incredibly moving study of working-class lives in ‘Charlie Chaplin’s London’, AKA South London, mostly around Lambeth, Kennington and Walworth in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Riding’s approach is clever: she uses the life of another successful working-class son of Lambeth, the sculptor George Tinworth, from Chaplin’s parents’ generation, together with a staggering number of voices and stories from the ordinary people who lived in places like East Street, Kennington Cross, York Road and New Cut alongside the soon-to-be world-famous comedian.
As Riding traces Chaplin’s upbringing, one of poverty, precarity, street sellers, pubs and music halls, she widens out the view at every opportunity - who else was arrested the same day as his father and for what minor crime? Which other women had to submit to the workhouse alongside his mother and why? We get the full context behind the Little Tramp and that momentous speech at the end of The Great Dictator, from the Chartists, Charles Booth and Keir Hardie to Fred Karno and the lives of working-class entertainers. A tribute to stubborn resilience in the face of hardship as well as the creative spark, comedy and community. South Londoners will dig it.
A Vast Horizon (Anna Thomasson)
This collage-like book offers up a couple of magic tricks. First, a rather alluring (turning serious) group portrait of the ‘artists and lovers’ of the subtitle, the painters, photographers and poets including Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Eileen Agar, taking as a focus point, a summer holiday in the South of France in 1937. Second, a jolt of inspiration as we follow their playful collaborations, from beach combing, jewellery making, postcard collages, food, fights, conversation and modelling for photographs and paintings.
Split into three main sections - pre-war, World War II and post-war, Thomasson is interested in the bohemian, anti-bourgeois life as opposition to fascist order and filling in the gaps surrounding some of the lesser known members of this set, including poet Paul Éluard’s wife Nusch and model and dancer Ady Fidelin. The vignettes on how they each spent the war - Lee Miller pushing towards the front lines, Éluard in hiding after publishing resistance poetry, Picasso painting in Occupied Paris - are well chosen and poignant.Nothing is ever straightforward and simple here, though: by the time this lot were undressing each other in ‘37, Picasso had already painted Guernica.
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