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A list of the most revelatory nonfiction books voted by 200,000 readers, covering history, science, politics, culture, and more. Find out which books made the cut and why they are worth reading.
- Biography
Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration...
- Magical Realism 101
15 spellbinding magical realism books. With authors...
- Biography
- Jennifer Kushnier
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (2012) What does it mean to strive for a better life when everything is against you?
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005) The concept of Freakonomics looks at a variety of behavioral and social phenomena through an economic lens.
- Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (2012) The winner of more than a dozen awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and Books for a Better Life Award, Solomon’s work draws on a decade of research interviewing more than 300 families.
- Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (2020) Published mere months after the discovery of the novel coronavirus and just ahead of the resulting surge of anti-Asian violence and othering that Asian Americans experienced in its wake, this is an essential read for the moment we’re in.
Dec 31, 2017 · Orientalism by Edward Said (1978) This polemical masterpiece challenging western attitudes to the east is as topical today as it was on publication. 9. Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977) A ...
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010) I read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow when it first came out, and I remember its colossal impact so clearly—not just on the academic world (it is, technically, an academic book, and Alexander is an academic) but everywhere.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies (2010) In this riveting (despite its near 600 pages) and highly influential book, Mukherjee traces the known history of our most feared ailment, from its earliest appearances over five thousand years ago to the wars still being waged by contemporary doctors, and all the confusion, success stories, and failures in between—hence the subtitle “a biography of cancer,” though of course it is also a biography of humanity and of human ingenuity (and lack thereof).
- Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) As a strongly humanities-focused person, it’s difficult for me to connect with books about science.
- Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (2010) Timothy Snyder’s brilliant Bloodlands has changed World War II scholarship more, perhaps, than any work since Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, an apt comparison given that Bloodlands includes within it a response to Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil (Snyder doesn’t buy it, and provides convincing proof that Eichmann was more of a run-of-the-mill hateful Nazi and less a colorless bureaucrat simply doing his job).
- The Kissing Bug, Daisy Hernández
- Finding The Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard
- The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen
- A Swim in A Pond in The Rain, George Saunders
- Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe
- Aftershocks, Nadia Owusu
- How The Word Is Passed, Clint Smith
- Invisible Child, Andrea Elliott
- Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
- A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib
WhenDaisy Hernández was a child, her aunt traveled from Colombia to the U.S. in search of a cure for the mysterious disease that caused her stomach to become so distended that people thought she was pregnant. Growing up, Hernández believed her aunt had become sick from eating an apple; it wasn’t until decades later that she learned more about Chaga...
In her first book, pioneering forest ecologist Suzanne Simard blends her personal history with that of the trees she has researched for decades. Finding the Mother Treeis as comprehensive as it is deeply personal, especially as Simard explores her curiosity about trees and what it has been like to work as a woman in a field dominated by men. Her pa...
Originally published as three separate books in Danish between 1967 and 1971, The Copenhagen Trilogy, now presented in a single translated volume, is a heartbreaking portrait of an artist. In precise and brutally self-aware terms, Tove Ditlevsenreflects on her life, from her turbulent youth during Hitler’s rise to power to her discovery of poetry a...
George Saunders is deeply familiar with the 19th-century Russian short story—he’s been teaching a class on the subject to M.F.A. students for two decades. Here, he opens up his syllabus, analyzing seven iconic works by authors including Chekhov and Tolstoy to highlight the importance of fiction in our lives. In a world bursting with distractions, A...
From the author of the 2019 best seller Say Nothing, which dove into Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Empire of Pain is a stirring investigation into three generations of the Sackler family. Patrick Radden Keefe explores the Sacklers and the source of their infamous fortune, earned by producing and marketing a painkiller that became the drivin...
Born in Tanzania and raised all over the world, from England to Italy to Ethiopia, Nadia Owusu never felt she belonged anywhere. In her aching memoir, she embarks on a tour de force examination of her childhood, marked first by her mother’s abandoning her when she was a toddler and later by the death of her beloved father. Through assessing the peo...
Amid a discussion of what students should be learning about history, Clint Smith, a poet and journalist, takes readers across the U.S.—from the Monticello plantation in Virginia to a maximum-security prison in Louisiana—to underline the legacy of slavery and how it has shaped the country. The result, longlisted for the National Book Award, is an i...
For almost a decade, reporter Andrea Elliott observed the coming-of-age of a girl named Dasani, who has lived in and out of the New York City shelter system for most of her life. Dasani’s existence is full of contradictions—her Brooklyn shelter is just blocks away from some of the borough’s most expensive real estate—and Elliott is relentless in he...
When Michelle Zauner, founder of the indie-rock band Japanese Breakfast, was 25 years old, her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That illness and her mother’s eventual death shattered Zauner’s sense of self—and forced her to re-evaluate her relationship with her Korean culture. In her memoir, Zauner searches for answers about the influence...
A finalist for the National Book Award, Hanif Abdurraqib’s work of cultural criticism is an astonishing accounting of Black performance. In essays full of snappy prose, Abdurraqib analyzes everything from the rise of Whitney Houstonto a schoolyard fistfight. The author, also a poet, seamlessly blends pop culture references with U.S. history and sto...
- Annabel Gutterman
Dec 6, 2022 · From Stacy Schiff's 'The Revolutionary' to Imani Perry's 'South to America,' here are the best nonfiction books of the year. The memoirs, essay collections, and biographies that dared us to...
Apr 21, 2021 · To give nonfiction books the recognition they deserve and help authors choose the right category for their work, here’s a list of the 24 most common genres of nonfiction along with their identifying features.
