There is a category of non-fiction that I've started calling architecture books — books that explain how something is built, not in the literal sense but in the sense of how a complex system or institution or tradition was assembled over time. How cathedrals were built. How the common law developed. How jazz harmonics evolved.

The architecture books I've found most useful: A Pattern Language by Alexander, which is ostensibly about architecture and is actually about how communities can design environments that support human flourishing. The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is about how Robert Moses built modern New York and also about how power accumulates in bureaucratic systems. And Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which I've read as a book about how to think rather than as a programming textbook.

These books teach by showing the structure of their subject in a way that generalizes beyond the specific case.