Best Non-Fiction Reads of 2021

I'll be back to add mine later, just wanted to start the threads.

Edited to add: You can pick as many as you need to. I try to keep my list to around five or six, but some people need much longer lists. (And some can narrow it down to one!)

I didn't read a lot of non-fiction in 2021 but the two best were...

- Wally Funk's Race for Space: The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer (4 stars)
- Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood (4.5 stars)

Dead heat between A Promised Land and Dreams of My Father.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol F. Karlsen
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change by Thor Hanson

My runner up is We're going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Glad to see Clam's added note in >1 clamairy:, as I had first thought I'd need to prune a shortlist of nine heavily. They are, in reverse chronological order:

Bridges that changed the world
Paws in the Proceedings
Life on Air
Kruger's War
Legacy: one family, a cup of tea and the company that took on the world
Seven Votes
Africa's top geological sites

>5 hfglen: There is never a limit!

>6 clamairy: Then one can add

Lear's Italy and
The Durrells of Corfu!

Adding another dead-heat: Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but these were the ones I liked best in 2021:

Plant Partners : Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden by Jessica Walliser
The Way of the Gardener : Lost in the Weeds Along the Camino De Santiago by Lyndon Penner
This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

I read little non-fiction but what I did read in 2021 was very good:
Secret Barrister
Dear Reader
Black and British a short history

I read a surprising amount of non-fiction in 2021 (for a variety of work, freelance and personal reasons). I can recommend the following:

The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin
The Address Book by Deirdre Mask
Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson
Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization by Roger Schonfeld and Deanna Marcum
Capitol Men by Philip Dray

I enjoyed nonfiction more than ever this year.

My five stars:
Geology of the Sierra Nevada by Mary Hill
The Divine Comedy I: Inferno as translated by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Divine Comedy II: Purgatory as translated by Dorothy L. Sayers
Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow
Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien

Interesting note (to me) I read about half as many books by women as by men, but 4 of these 5 are by women. I count Dante as by a woman because without Sayers, I would never have completed them. I know, I've tried before. With her, it was a delight.

As usual I didn't read as much non-fiction as I intended, but most of what I did read was very good. The highlights were:
Red comet by Heather Clark
The shameful life of Salvador Dali by Ian Gibson
Entangled life by Merlin Sheldrake
Laughing torso by Nina Hamnett
A woman in the polar night by Christiana Ritter.

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

Notes on Nationalism by George Orwell

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

The Song of Roland (unknown author)

and also

Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination by David Graeber (very flawed, but with some interesting essays)