The best nonfiction books add up to a biography of our culture

It’s a frighteningly giant universe to survey, but picking 100 great books that fall under this baggy rubric promises real insights

Follow the 100 best nonfiction books of all time here

Once upon a time, the educated reader in, for example, the 17th or even the 18th century could load an essential library of classics on to a horse and cart. Even in Victorian times, you could easily masquerade as well-read with a wagonload of books. Today, you might fill a container truck with all the titles you considered to be representative of the western intellectual tradition – and still find yourself playing catch-up.

Today, in what I have described elsewhere on this site as a golden age of reading, there are so many books to investigate, in so many genres: popular culture, anthropology, biography, travelogue, philosophy, reportage, history, memoir and on and on. The discriminating contemporary reader, drowning in ink, both real and virtual, faces an almost impossible challenge. Where to start? How to go on? Where to stop? Thus: the raison d’etre of the popularity of book lists.

Related: The 100 best novels written in English: the full list

Unlike fiction, nonfiction is not a genre. It’s a headache

Related: What makes a book great? with Frances Hardinge and Robert McCrum – books podcast

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