Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature on Oct 7, 2015. [Photo/IC]

On Oct 7 in Stockholm, Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer Svetlana Alexievich was announced as winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The chair of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, called her non-fiction writing "a monument to courage and suffering in our time".

It has been half a century since a writer working primarily in non-fiction won the Nobel and Alexievich is the first journalist to win the award.

Here, we have collected 10 non-fiction works by journalists and writers - most of them New York Times bestsellers - that use hard facts woven into mesmerizing prose to help you better understand the world we live in.