The Books

• Hotel Scarface by Roben Farzad
• Acid for the Children by Flea
• The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Neils Strauss
• Solito by Javier Zamora
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
• Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

With so many action-packed fiction novels flooding the bookstores these days, it’s easy to forget to go near the non-fiction stacks, but real life can be just as interesting as any fiction book, if not more. The cool thing about non-fiction is that we share the same world of these authors and their mind-blowing stories, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to visit the places where these stories happened. Below you’ll find eight non-fiction books that remind you just how dangerous, exciting, and fun life can get under the right circumstances. These books will not only teach you invaluable lessons, but they’ll also expand your knowledge about things you’d otherwise never learn about.

Hotel Scarface by Roben Farzad

• Number of Pages: 305 (lol)
• Genre: Non-fiction, US History, 70s-80s Culture, True Crime, Politics, Investigative Journalism
• Published: 2018

Hotel Scarface is a collection of 55 short chapters that paints the portrait of a city full of greed, amnesia, perversions, corruption, etc. 

This expertly-told recount tells the story of how Miami became the cocaine capital of the world, fueled by many infamous characters besides the well-known Pablo Escobar. Escobar was only the tip of the iceberg in Colombia, just as Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta were the tip of the iceberg in the States.

Many, if not all, of the high-ranking drug lords would convene at The Mutiny, a hotel in Coconut Grove that is still open and functioning, that served as the inspiration for the 1980s movie Scarface starring Al Pacino. 

This book depicts the Mutiny’s role in Miami’s cocaine business, how cocaine hit the US economy like no other illicit activity before, and how Sal and Willy were able to escape the US Justice System not once or twice, but three times before finding themselves behind bars.

Acid for the Children by Flea

• Number of Pages: 400
• Genre: Non-Fiction, Music Biography, Pop Culture, 70s-80s Culture 
• Published: November 5, 2019

The book opens with the following sentence: “Ethiopia, I yearn for you, I aspire to you, to feel you again reminding me who I am and what I am for.”

Flea’s vulnerable, self-interrogating writer’s voice takes us on a journey across the troubled years of his youth, taking us from Australia all the way to New York and, finally, Los Angeles, where the semi-neglected Red Hot Chili Pepper’s bassist learned about substance abuse, sex, and rock and roll. 

The book contains funny and heart wrenching anecdotes about Flea, born Michael Peter Balzary. His life was fairly normal up until his parents split when he was still very young, and his mother married a jazz musician. The household was “violent, alcoholic, and full of music.” 

Flea refers to this book as his origin story: it begins when his parents split, and it ends just as he meets Anthony Kiedis and RHCP is born. He covers about 20 years of his life and there is no shortage of wildness: his account is raw, crude, and by the first 10 pages you’ll want to either hug him or smoke a joint with him. Depends on what kind of person you are. 

He does a deep examination of each life experience and how these have caused him to struggle as an adult with things such as identity, love, self-expression, and drug abuse. Reading this book is very much like sitting down with Flea and having a heart-to-heart with him.

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Neils Strauss

• Number of Pages: 448
• Genre: Non-fiction, US History, Pop Culture, 80s Culture
• Published: 2002

Much like the band itself, readers will either absolutely love this book or hate it so much they’ll set it on fire. The Dirt is one of the most detailed accounts of what living like a rock star in the 80s looked like, and what the consequences were for each of the band members as the years progressed and the band lost notoriety. This book isn’t trying to get you to like rock metal, or Motley Crue, or their kind of lifestyle; it’s more about understanding what drives people and their actions, and how easy it is to lose control of something you thought you had control of. This book is a train wreck happening right in front of your eyes: it’s both fun and horrible to watch.

Told in the distinct voices of each band member, The Dirt tells the story of how these four musicians came together and formed the longest-lasting band of the 80s. It’s dirty and definitely gory at times, but this detailed account leaves no rock unturned. 

PS: Netflix did a movie on this book called The Dirt, and while it’s no Ray or Walk The Line, it’s definitely very entertaining and faithful to the book.

Night by Elie Wiesel

• Number of Pages: 120
• Genre: Holocaust, World History, Fictional Autobiography 
• Published: 1956

While Night isn’t technically a non-fiction book, this testimony by Elie Wiesel is based on his experience as a teenager during the Holocaust. Night is narrated by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager (and a stand-in figure for Wiesel) who lives in Sighet, a town in Hungarian Transylvania, when the Nazis occupy Hungary in the spring of 1944. After many repressive measures, Wiesel arrives at Birkenau in Auschwitz. 

This autobiographical account is more than just a showcase of the horrible things mankind is capable of: it addresses many philosophical questions regarding the absolute evil of man and how innocence fits in, and how hope can exist in the midst of an infinite misery.

The amazing (yet horrible) thing about this book is that it’s not overtly dramatic retelling of the horrors of the Holocaust; it’s the lack of emotion while Wiesel gets deep into the details what makes your skin prickle. “An SS came towards us wielding a club. He commanded: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother.”

While not many survivors of the Holocaust are alive nowadays, their children and grandchildren most definitely are, and this book along with Anne Frank’s Diary serve as a reminder that this did in fact happen, that truth can be stranger than fiction, and that history can repeat itself if we’re not careful. If we don’t remember. 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

• Number of Pages: 204
• Genre: roman a clef,  Autobiography, pop culture, Gonzo journalism
• Published: 1971

Hunter S. Thompson is the father of Gonzo journalism, a writing style that uses an energetic, comical, satirical first-person narrative where the author is the protagonist, and draws social criticism through his/her experiences. It’s the opposite of regular journalism, which is detached and relies on facts and quotations, and this book is the best example of this style. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1971 as a roman a clef, aka an autobiographical account of the original two trips he made to Vegas to report on Ruben Salazar, a Mexican-American journalist the LAPD shot and killed with a tear gas grenade in 1970. The line between art and reality in this book is extremely thin, if not non-existent.

The story follows Raoul Duke, Thompson’s alter ego, and his attorney Dr Gonzo (aka Oscar Zeta Acosta, Thompson’s real life lawyer), as they arrive in Vegas to report on the Mint 400 motorcycle race in 1971. Throughout the weekend, they engage in an absurd number of psychedelics and hard-core drugs and philosophize about life and its fucked-up-ness. All in all, this is a chronicle about American stupidity told in the funniest, most bizarre way ever.

Fear and Loathing is a snapshot of America as it went through the insanity of the drug experience as well as the depravity of American politics. This book is a wild, wild ride.

Solito by Javier Zamora

• Number of Pages: 400
• Genre: Non-fiction, immigration, biography memoir, race
• Published: 2022

Javier Zamora is 9 years old when he embarks on a three-thousand mile journey from El Salvador to the U.S. border to reunite with his parents. He travels alone with a coyote and a group of strangers through Guatemala and Mexico, and while the trip was initially expected to be two weeks, it ends up being a life-altering 2 months. 

This is a story about perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other. This isn’t just Zamora’s story; this is the reality of millions of immigrants who have to leave their homes behind in hopes of finding a better life in someone else’s home. Zamora faces hardship with humor, with a childlike innocence full of faith and hope, which is what makes this book so incredibly special. It redefines what family means, and it will most definitely resonate with every Latin American immigrant who reads it.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

• Number of Pages: 304
• Genre: Non-fiction, investigative journalism, female sexuality
• Published: 2019

Taddeo spent eight years creating this book, driving back and forth across the country in order to interview three women of different (yet conservative) backgrounds: Lina lives in suburban Indiana, she’s a mother of two and her marriage has lost its passion; Maggie, who lives in North Dakota, is a seventeen-year-old high school student who has a clandestine relationship with her married English teacher; lastly, Sloane is a gorgeous, successful restaurant owner whose husband likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. 

This is, in its simplest form, a portrait of the sex lives of three different women. But it’s definitely much more than just a story about sex; Three Women is a book about human desire. At first, Taddeo talked with three men and realized male desire “bleeds in together,” and that it often ends with an orgasm. Women’s desire, on the other hand, only begins to gains complexity in the same situations where a man’s desire starts waning. 

PS:
Maggie Wilken is one of Taddeo's three women; her trial for having a relationship with Aaron Knodel was a highly publicized one in the U.S., reason why she’s the only one without a pseudonym.

PS 2: Amazon's doing a TV show about this book!!