Non-Fiction Books that Confirm Your Suspicion the World is Fucked
Is it too late for us to turn it around?
I remember at the beginning of this reading journey saying I will read a non fiction book quite often but to be honest the real interesting ones are hard to find and when I do find them - they are bloody depressing.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the quarter century following the introduction of OxyContin, some 450,000 Americans had died of opioid-related overdoses. Such overdoses were now the leading cause of accidental death in America, accounting for more deaths than car accidents – more deaths, even, than that most quintessentially American of metrics, gunshot wounds. In fact, more Americans had lost their lives from opioid overdoses than had died in all of the wars the country had fought since World War II.”
The entire reason I wanted to make this list is because of this book. It was mind blowing – in a bad way. It follows the legacy of the Sackler family – a dynasty much like the Rockefeller’s or Rothschilds but less well known and arguably more damaging.
The name Sackler was vaguely in my subconscious but I couldn’t even attempt to guess who they were and now I kind of wish I didn’t know.
Most non -fiction books do carry some bias – this is an unavoidable part of being a human being and expediting the world then attempting to write objectively about it – but essentially the Sackler family are the reason for the opioid epidemic and subsequently the war on drugs.
Driven by money and power it illuminates the very purposeful steps taken by the Sackler’s that brought about the rise in addictions to prescription painkillers like OxyContin. Think Succession meets Breaking Bad.
Absolutely extraordinary in what they could and are currently getting away with – it has all your favourite ingredients for a dystopian nightmare – money, greed, capitalism and taking advantage of peoples pain.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
“It was as if Boeing built one plane and, without doing a single flight test, told airline passengers, “Hop aboard.”
As a fiction story this would read like a Gillian Flynn novel – would definitely be one of my favourite books – which is how I read it until I realised this is real.
Unfortunately for Elizabeth Holmes she is one of the bad guys that don’t get away with it; probably because she’s not a guy but a woman but that is an entirely different conversation for another day; she fucks up big and as of January 2022 pays the price even bigger.
What starts of as a hopeful tale about a promising young female entrepreneur turns into a fable that success at any cost isn’t always worth it.
She creates Theranos, a medical start up, designing devices that are looking to revolutionise blood testing – brilliant in concept except … her devices didn’t work – they never worked; the amount of people she was able to fool is JAW DROPPING. These were titans in the industry and government that invested in a project they never saw.
I actually kind of admire her – she is a legitimate genius or completely insane – either way she very much embodies the unhinged woman trope I love so much.
A story about the desire to succeed, the perils of lack of female led companies, the privilege of family connections and the sad reality that if she was a man she probably won’t be going to prison at all.
The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken by Anonymous
“despite the grand principles at its heart, at nearly every stage of our prized system of criminal justice we see things going badly, and preventably, wrong.”
You’ve probably heard of this one.
A lot is made of how fucked the American judicial system is but we need to stop pointing and laughing because ours is no better.
Deep down we probably all know this – generally speaking letting a system that was designed 100s of years ago govern our laws and how they are protected doesn’t sound logical – as logical as following rules in a book written 2000 years ago …
Most things get a makeover – we redesigned the sewage system, public transport, schooling – kind of – but God forbid we touch the criminal justice system.
It’s very true that if you don’t interact with they system it’s unlikely you’ll know how broken it is – and boy does this book peel back the layers and show the gory guts.
It depicts several cases that the barrister has seen throughout his career make its way within the overworked and underfunded courts and how the hope people place in justice fails them every time.
Odd how this book and This is Going to Hurt advocate for more money in these government institutions that people depend on for their livelihood – funny that !
Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up by Tom Phillips
“Evolution gets results not by planning ahead, but rather by simply hurling a ridiculously large number of hungry, horny organisms at a dangerous and unforgiving world and seeing who fails least.”
Now this book is scary because it not only talks of recent fuck ups but gives a detailed explanation on how we fucked up before in the exact same way.
For the amount of time and energy we put into studying sociology and psychology we still fall victim to it every time. People are weird.
This describes the numerous ways individuals or whole countries have made questionable decisions that have caused such a colossal fuck up it alters history. And then gives more examples of how we repeated the same mistake … many times.
It’s definitely more light hearted, it’s hard not to laugh when the ridiculous things we fight about or do are written in black and white.
Depending on your philosophical beliefs you’ll come away thinking “what is the point we are going to fuck it up anyway” or “ who cares, chill out, we are going to fuck it up anyway”.
I need to take a long look at myself as to why I can’t read non-fiction books that aren’t tragic. Sadly I always find them to be the best stories.
