Fiction can be eye-opening and life-changing, but what about nonfiction? Recently, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share which nonfiction books genuinely changed the way they see the world.

Here are 21 of their top responses:

1. "Brian Broome's Punch Me Up to the Gods helped me to better understand the levels of damage white people can cause Black people to face. While Broome faces explicit racism in the book, there is a scene where a white woman is by a Black boy who is just playing. This scene, and the book overall, taught me that doing normal kid things is sometimes not afforded to Black kids. Also, a mere facial expression may be the reason a Black kid loses their spark and realizes that their skin color affects the way white people perceive them. Because of this story, I've taken care to do a better job of noticing how I seem in public spaces."

3. "Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici recontextualizes the witch hunts in Europe (and elsewhere) as part of creating the gendered workforce and the transition to capitalism. Everything that has never quite made sense about learning their history in high school suddenly became clear when in the context of colonialism, early capitalism, and the emergence of structural patriarchy. It's a dense book and not a casual read, but after I told people about it, a whole bunch of folks in my community also read it. Every woman I know has said it completely changed their perspective."

4. "Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. We may deal with unfair book banning in the US, but no one has ever come into my home and removed 'inappropriate' literature. We have free access to libraries, and so many people take that for granted. The women in this book risked their lives to learn. What would Americans do if the same thing happened here?"

5. "I just finished The Day I Die by Anita Hannig. It's a fascinating look at a controversial topic: the right to die with dignity. I have personally always supported a person's right to choose to end their life if they have a terminal or seriously debilitating disease, and this book reaffirmed some of the things I believe about the subject.

7. "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version. He reads it himself, and it's excellent. Honestly, I didn't even realize how much of it was written as poetry, which is a turn-off for some people with this book, apparently, because I listened to it. It's about grief after the death of his mother. It hit hard for me because my mom died two months after his. Even given the subject matter, and even if you're unfamiliar with his work, it's still hysterical (in general, he is a very comedically gifted writer). Like, 'I almost crashed my car while listening to it in a snowstorm' kind of funny."

11. "I highly recommend The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Actually, I highly recommend anything by Richard Preston. If you like reading about medical science, diseases, global politics, terrorist plots, and even true crime, then his books are for you! His work is meticulously researched and detailed, but laid out in a way that you don't need a science degree to follow along. His books on diseases read like thrillers, but they also highlight just how much the citizens of Earth can accomplish when we band together for global humanitarian causes (and what happens when, for whatever reason, we don't). It's important to know how diseases spread and to see how we, as a global population, have wiped out or held back past epidemics. It's also interesting to compare efforts from decades past to our own realities with COVID."

12. "Bitch by Lucy Cooke. As a woman who has long been very annoyed by the restrictive way 'masculine' and 'feminine' have been defined in our society, I found this book to be a breath of fresh air. Written by zoologist Lucy Cooke, it presents example upon example of the various ways in which females across the animal kingdom are every bit as active, promiscuous, and aggressive as their male counterparts. It also shows how, in many species (including humans), sex is not nearly as binary as we tend to think. Basically, this book is a wonderful, scientifically sound source for those who want to correct stereotypes of the active male vs. the passive female."

13. "I read a book called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. He looks at a number of different disasters and how people respond to them. I always thought, as many people do, that survivors are those who have trained in survival and have lots of experience. That's not necessarily the case. It's more about a person's attitude and how they deal with the disaster they are facing. It's fascinating to learn about these experiences and who survives."

14. "Jack Weatherford's book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, changed how I saw civilization itself. Did you know that Genghis's grandson, Kublai Khan, founded what is now modern Beijing? Genghis also established legal foundations, including civil rights for women and the freedom to practice one's religion of choice. It gives you a whole new perspective on who actually laid the groundwork for human civilization and societal norms. Alexander the Great was an amateur!"

15. "The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. I read it in high school, and it absolutely blew my mind."

17. "Here's a recent one: The Score by C. Thi Nguyen. It has compelling explanations for so many things that I never knew I wanted explained — why humans love playing games, why we measure land area and distance the way we do, why standardized tests suck so much, etc. — and parts of it are hilarious."

18. "The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson will make you seriously appreciate how much your body has to do for you on a daily basis and how lucky we are with medicine compared to previous generations."

20. "Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell redefined the way I measure success in my own life and opened my eyes to the layers and layers that lead to 'spontaneous success.'"

21. And finally: "Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis is billed as an 'anti-textbook.' Information is presented in a Q&A format that's easy to follow and far, far more nuanced than what you usually get in school. Davis focuses on human stories, interesting facts, and coincidences to make history feel relevant and alive. A newer edition goes up through the Obama administration."

Which other perspective-altering nonfiction books would you add to this list? Why? Tell us in the comments or in the anonymous comments box below!

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length/clarity.