I've been on a long science fiction reading spree, but I'm also trying to work in some historical books to balance it out recently. At the moment, I'm reading The Great Influenza, a documentary about the Spanish Flu and what built up to it. I'm only a third through the book, but it's fascinating reading how far behind American medicine was compared to Europe until the turn of the century. No standard medical education requirements, few laboratories for research. It took benefactors making significant donations to rebuild medical education from scratch. All of that just beginning to improve and take shape when influenza struck in the middle of the Great War. The greatest American figures in medicine were assisting the military, trying to implement plans to avoid mass outbreaks of disease, and still got blindsided.
I'll probably need to read something more pleasant afterwards, but I'm at a loss for what that could still be educational to me.