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Books That Taught Me Something
15 items
By
Savannah Heil
Books that left me knowing a little more than I did before, in ways both factual and emotional
Taught me: how powerful memory and perspective are, that the way we remember life can change everything about how we live it
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Taught me: about the real history of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and how unethical adoption practices affected families for generations
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Taught me: a ton about sign language & deaf culture
True Biz by Sara Nović
Taught me: how cultural expectations, immigration, and patriarchy intersect — and how silence is often taught and reinforced within families
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
Taught me: about post-independence India, traditional henna practices, and how women navigated independence within rigid social systems
The Henna Artist (The Jaipur Trilogy, #1) by Alka Joshi
Taught me: about historical herbalism, women’s informal medical roles, and how limited options shaped women’s survival strategies in the past
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Taught me: real scientific concepts related to physics, chemistry, and space travel, along with problem-solving through experimentation and logic
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Taught me: about the history of forced sterilization in the U.S. and how systemic racism and medical ethics failures harmed vulnerable communities
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Taught me: about the real Soviet female sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and women’s roles in WWII combat and wartime diplomacy
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
Taught me: about the structure of geisha life, traditional training, social hierarchy, and misconceptions about what geishas actually were
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Taught me: about indigo production in colonial America and how women contributed to early industry and economic survival
The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd
Taught me: about genetic editing, intelligence enhancement, and the ethical risks of accelerating human evolution without oversight
Upgrade by Blake Crouch
Taught me: about the environmental impact of logging, labor conditions in timber towns, and the long-term cost of resource extraction
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
Taught me: how women were institutionalized for non-medical reasons and how journalism exposed abuse within 19th-century asylums
The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
Taught me: about the Dust Bowl, migrant labor, and how economic collapse reshaped family structures and survival in 1930s America
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
