Microhistories: 40 Great Works of Narrative Non-Fiction

Spanning history, biography, true crime, popular science and even sports writing, microhistories focus on single events and themes as well as groups of fascinating - and oft-neglected - real-life figures. The genre came into being in the mid-1970s and scored some early classics in The Cheese and the Worms and The Return of Martin Guerre. But it was the global success and acclaim of Dava Sobel’s Longitude in 1995 that saw the genre enter a glorious renaissance. So from the history of cod to the birth of the FBI, here are 40 of the best microhistories.

Longitude - Dava Sobel (1995)

Cod - Mark Kurlansky (1997)

Fermat’s Last Theorem - Simon Singh (1997)

The Surgeon of Crowthorne - Simon Winchester (1998)

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg - Giles Milton (1999)

Seabiscuit - Laura Hillenbrand (1999)

Mauve - Simon Garfield (2000)

In the Heart of the Sea - Nathaniel Philbrick (2000)

Brunelleschi’s Dome - Ross King (2000)

Batavia’s Graveyard - Mike Dash (2001)

The Lunar Men - Jenny Uglow (2002)

The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson (2003)

Sentimental Murder - John Brewer (2004)

The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson (2006)

A Night at the Majestic - Richard Davenport-Hines (2006)

Vermeer’s Hat - Timothy Brook (2007)

Mother Leakey and the Bishop - Peter Marshall (2007)

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale (2008)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot (2010)

Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre (2010)

The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal (2010)

The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)

The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson (2010)

The Swerve - Stephen Greenblatt (2011)

Into the Silence - Wade Davis (2011)

Lost in Shangri-La - Mitchell Zuckoff (2011)

Blood Work - Holly Tucker (2011)

Mr Briggs’ Hat - Kate Colquhoun (2011)

The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey (2012)

Consider the Fork - Bee Wilson (2012)

The Faithful Executioner - Joel F Harrington (2013)

Village of Secrets - Caroline Moorehead (2014)

A Very English Scandal - John Preston (2016)

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann (2017)

The Radium Girls - Kate Moore (2017)

Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe (2018)

The Five - Hallie Rubenhold (2019)

The Professor and the Parson - Adam Sisman (2019)

Stranger in the Shogun’s City - Amy Stanley (2020)

Alexandria - Edmund Richardson (2021)

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