non fiction essay books

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Climate 100
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Wine Offers
• Betting Sites

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.  

The best non-fiction books to read in 2024

From candid memoirs to provocative essay collections, 2024’s forthcoming non-fiction is enticing. jessie thompson shares our guide to what you need on your reading pile.

Article bookmarked

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails, thanks for signing up to the breaking news email.

S orry, but we’re about to make your reading pile for 2024 very big. From candid memoirs to provocative essays, little-told histories to behind-the-scenes accounts of sensational trials, the new year is full of must-reads to suit every taste. Here’s our guide to the unmissable non-fiction books of the year.

Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story by Robert Hardman

Boris Johnson gave a copy of Robert Hardman’s last book,  Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II , to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a gift – so you know this probably won’t be an Omid Scobie -style takedown. Instead, with impressive access to the royal family, Robert Hardman offers an insider account of the first year of King Charles III’s reign, including the royal’s plans for reform and his relationships with his sons.  18 Jan, Macmillan

Buy the book now:

• Amazon: £15, Amazon.co.uk

Only Say Good Things by Crystal Hefner

Crystal Hefner married Playboy tycoon Hugh when he was 86 and she was 26. In her memoir, she lifts the lid on life inside the Playboy mansion, which – in a surprise to no one – was apparently rife with misogyny and objectification. Hefner’s story has the potential to be as provocative as Ariel Levy’s cult feminist classic,  Female Chauvinist Pigs . 25 Jan, Ebury

• Amazon: £16, Amazon.co.uk

Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera

With  Empireland , Sathnam Sanghera wrote the British history book that should be on every school reading list, laying bare how imperialism formed modern Britain. In  Empireworld  he takes it further, looking at the legacy of the British empire around the globe.  25 Jan, Viking

• Amazon: £14, Amazon.co.uk

Hardy Women by Paula Byrne

Women in Thomas Hardy’s novels tend to have an absolutely terrible time – but what about the women he knew in his own life? Paula Byrne, who has written biographies of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, turns her eye to the female figures that formed him, shedding light not just on his mother, sisters, girlfriends and wives, but creating a refined portrait of the author himself.  1 Feb, William Collins

• Amazon: £21.79, Amazon.co.uk

Keir Starmer by Tom Baldwin

He’s described by many as the PM-in-waiting , but he’s also regularly accused of being dry and boring. So who is Keir Starmer, really? This new biography of the Labour leader attempts to shed light on the man who may lead our next government.  29 Feb, William Collins

Pre-order the book now:

• Amazon: £20.99, Amazon.co.uk

A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley

In the 1980s, feminist bookshop Silver Moon opened its doors on Charing Cross Road and became home to a generation of creative women. Jane Cholmeley, one of the owners, is putting it back in the history books with her new memoir of that time. The perfect read for anyone who dreams of running away and opening a bookshop with all their friends (I know it isn’t just me).  29 Feb, Harper NonFiction

• Amazon: £15.63, Amazon.co.uk

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

Drag Race  addicts get ready: RuPaul has written the story of his life. The drag superstar describes his journey from growing up Black, queer and poor in a broken home to becoming a celebrated and successful champion of self-acceptance.  5 March, Fourth Estate

• Amazon: £19.99, Amazon.co.uk

The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain by Kazuo Ishiguro

Fans of the  Never Let Me Go  author know that Kazuo Ishiguro originally dreamed of becoming a songwriter, inspired by Bob Dylan. And he did fulfil that dream, in fact – this publication collects the lyrics he wrote for American singer Stacey Kent, with illustrations by Italian artist Bianca Bagnarelli.  7 March, Faber

• Amazon: £16.55, Amazon.co.uk

The Chain by Chimene Suleyman

Chimene Suleyman’s memoir begins with her trip to an abortion clinic in 2017. She’s accompanied by her boyfriend, but she soon finds out he isn’t who she thinks he is. Soon a community of women, all affected by him, begins to form, exposing a pattern of harm and manipulation.  28 March, W&N

• Amazon: £17.47, Amazon.co.uk

No Judgement by Lauren Oyler

Apparently, Lauren Oyler ’s literary hot takes (including a skewering of media darling Jia Tolentino’s essay collection  Trick Mirror ) have caused the London Review of Books website to crash – twice. It’s quite fun to read someone who really doesn’t care about winding people up, and Oyler’s first essay collection has one piece on Goodreads and critical timidity that’s really worth paying attention to.  7 March, Virago

• Amazon: £18.40, Amazon.co.uk

Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers

In her 80th year, the  Blue  singer continues to provide inspiration. After Amy Key’s gorgeous meditation on a life alone,  Arrangements in Blue , which riffed on Joni Mitchell’s seminal album, music writer Ann Powers now goes looking for the story of one of the most beguiling and enigmatic stars in music.  14 March, Harper NonFiction

• Amazon: £23, Amazon.co.uk

Easy Wins by Anna Jones

If you don’t have an Anna Jones cookbook on your shelf, all I can ask is: why? Over the last decade, she’s made a name for herself as the vegetarian answer to Nigella, offering recipes for meals that are the holy trinity of easy, healthy and delicious. Her latest is based around 12 “hero ingredients”, from garlic to lemons to olive oil.  14 March, Fourth Estate

• Amazon: £25.76, Amazon.co.uk

A Very Private School by Charles Spencer

He has written a number of history books, but this time, Charles Spencer – Princess Diana’s younger brother – is writing something more personal.  A Very Private School  is his account of being sent to Maidwell Hall, a boarding school in Northampton, when he was eight years old. It’s been described as “a clear-eyed account of a culture of cruelty” and Spencer’s “candid reckoning with his past” by the publisher – who is also the publisher behind Britney Spears’  The Woman in Me  in the UK. There could be marmalade-droppers.  24 March, Gallery Books

The Lasting Harm by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s 2019 book  I Choose Elena  was a moving account of how literature helped her to overcome the trauma of an assault she experienced as a teenager. So she has a first-hand understanding of the legacy of abuse – or, to steal a phrase from the prosecutors of Ghislaine Maxwell in the trial that saw the wealthy socialite sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking , the “lasting harm”. Her latest book is the behind-the-scenes story of that trial, and Osborne-Crowley its apt storyteller. 14 March, Fourth Estate

• Amazon: £20.24, Amazon.co.uk

Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner

Barbara Comyns was a poodle breeder, antique dealer, painter, and the wife of a spy, and is also the best novelist you’ve never heard of. That may be about to change, though, with the publication of the first Comyns biography, featuring a number of unpublished letters.  19 March, Manchester University Press

• Amazon: £30, Amazon.co.uk

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler

Judith Butler’s unreadably long academic-speak sentences didn’t stop her ideas about gender from becoming some of the most influential in modern culture.  Gender Trouble  popularised the notion that gender is largely performative and something that can be subverted. In what could be one of the most divisive books of the year, Butler – who now identifies as they/them – has written about how gender is now being weaponised by the far right.  19 March, Allen Lane

Rebel Rising by Rebel Wilson

The Australian actor Rebel Wilson is apparently revealing her “deepest, darkest secrets” in a new memoir. The  Bridesmaids  star is set to discuss everything from weight loss to sexuality to fertility. She also teased that there would be “at least one story about Brad Pitt”.  2 April, Harper NonFiction

By the River: Essays from the Water’s Edge

Essay collections from Daunt Books have previously brought together wonderful writers to talk about the joy of gardens or the pleasures of the kitchen, in beautifully packaged editions with gorgeously illustrated covers. This time round, writers from Jo Hamya to Amy Key to Caleb Azumah Nelson reflect on rivers. 11 April, Daunt Books Originals

• Amazon: £9.99, Amazon.co.uk

It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism by Azeem Rafiq

Azeem Rafiq’s testimony of the racism he said he endured at Yorkshire County Cricket Club was one of the most shocking reckonings in the recent history of British sport. He has now written about his experiences, which resulted in a £400k fine for the club , as well as the dangers that come with denying racism.  25 April, Trapeze

• Amazon: £12.99, Amazon.co.uk

Knife by Salman Rushdie

The world watched in horror when Salman Rushdie was violently attacked on stage at an event in New York. He now writes his account of the incident, which left him without sight in one eye or the use of one hand, 30 years after he was first placed under the threat of a fatwa.  16 April, Jonathan Cape

• Amazon: £17.99, Amazon.co.uk

Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton

Not another year of  Of Mice and Men , surely? It’s the same book but different, argues English teacher Carol Atherton. She writes about how the books we study at school may not change that much, but their meanings do, from her first-hand experience of teaching everything from Jane Eyre to Jeanette Winterson.  4 April, Fig Tree

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

Olivia Laing has walked Suffolk’s River Ouse in search of its stories, journeyed around America trying to understand alcoholic writers, and wandered through New York looking for an antidote to loneliness. In her latest book, she picks up her hand trowel and heads into her own garden, planting bulbs as she looks at gardens’ historic associations with paradise and utopia.  2 May, Picador

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna

She’s the first lady of riot grrl-dom, and now Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna has written her memoir. Hanna will discuss life with Lyme disease, the affliction that stopped her from performing for several years, as well as her friendship with Kurt Cobain and her marriage to Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz.  14 May, William Collins

On Green Pitches by David Kitson

After the shocking 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people died, a community of survivors began to look for ways to come together and help one another with the raw grief. Within weeks, Grenfell Athletic Football Club had been formed. This book, by former professional footballer David Kitson – who would go on to coach the team – tells their story. 23 May, Harper NonFiction

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

• Entertainment

The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

A good nonfiction book doesn’t just tell you something new about the world, it pulls you out of your place in it and dares you to reconsider what you thought you knew, maybe even who you are. The best nonfiction books that arrived this year vary in scope—some are highly specific, some broad and searching—but they all ask giant questions about loss, strength, and survival. In The Escape Artist , Jonathan Freedland underlines the power of the truth through the journey of one of the first Jews to escape Auschwitz . In How Far the Light Reaches , Sabrina Imbler reveals the ways marine biology can teach us about the deepest, most human parts of ourselves. From Stacy Schiff’s brilliant chronicle of Samuel Adams’ role in the American Revolution to Imani Perry’s illuminating tour of the American South, here are the 10 best nonfiction books of 2022.

10. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff

Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff revisits the American Revolution in her engrossing biography of founding father Samuel Adams. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams centers on the years leading up to 1776 when Adams helped fan the earliest flames of the independence movement. Though he drove the anti-British rebellion in Massachusetts and had an outsized role in the Revolution, Adams’ story has been told far less than those of other founders like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton . Schiff details his clandestine work and his growing radicalization to show how vital he was to American independence, crafting an intricate portrait of a man long overshadowed by his contemporaries.

Buy Now : The Revolutionary on Bookshop | Amazon

9. The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O’Rourke

Beginning in the late 1990s, Meghan O’Rourke was tormented by mysterious symptoms that would consume her life for years to follow. She describes her wrenching experience searching for a diagnosis in The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness , a 2022 National Book Award finalist. O’Rourke’s reported memoir is an indictment of the U.S. health care system and its approach—or lack thereof—to identifying and treating chronic illnesses, which take a grave toll on millions of Americans. Moving between her own medical journey, the history of illness in the U.S., and the crisis faced by millions currently suffering from long COVID , O’Rourke writes with an empathetic hand to argue why and how we need to change our systems to better support patients. The book is a bold and brave exploration into a much-overlooked topic, one that she punctuates with candor and urgency.

Buy Now : The Invisible Kingdom on Bookshop | Amazon

8. How Far the Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler

Sabrina Imbler thoughtfully examines connections between science and humanity, tying together what should be very loose threads in 10 dazzling essays, each a study of a different sea creature. In one piece from their debut collection, Imbler explores their mother’s tumultuous relationship with eating while simultaneously looking at how female octopi starve themselves to death to protect their young. In another, they relate the morphing nature of cuttlefish with their own experiences navigating their gender identity. Throughout, Imbler reveals the surprising ways that sea creatures can teach us about family, sexuality, and survival.

Buy Now : How Far the Light Reaches on Bookshop | Amazon

7. His Name Is George Floyd, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

In their engaging book, Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnpia expand on their reporting of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice centers on the life Floyd led before he was killed, captured through hundreds of interviews and richly textured research. The biography explores how Floyd’s experiences were shaped by systemic racism, from the over-policed communities where he was raised to the segregated schools he attended. Samuels and Olorunnipa illustrate, in compassionate terms, the father and friend who wanted more for his life, and how his death became a global symbol for change .

Buy Now : His Name Is George Floyd on Bookshop | Amazon

6. Constructing a Nervous System, Margo Jefferson

In her second memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson brilliantly interrogates and expands the form. Constructing a Nervous System finds the author reflecting on her life, the lives of her family, and those of her literary and artistic heroes. Jefferson oscillates between criticism and personal narrative, engaging with ideas about performance, artistry, and the act of writing through a plethora of lively threads. She considers everything: her parents, Bing Crosby and Ike Turner, the way a ballerina moves on stage. What emerges is a carefully woven tapestry of American life, brought together by Jefferson’s lyrical and electric prose.

Buy Now : Constructing a Nervous System on Bookshop | Amazon

5. An Immense World, Ed Yong

Journalist Ed Yong reminds readers that the world is very large and full of incredible things. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the unique ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong’s absorbing book is a joyful blend of scientific study and elegant prose that transforms textbook fodder into something much more exciting and accessible. From dissecting why dogs love to sniff around so much to detailing how fish move in rivers, Yong underlines why it’s so important to take the time to stop and appreciate the perspectives of all the living things that surround us.

Buy Now : An Immense World on Bookshop | Amazon

4. The Escape Artist, Jonathan Freedland

When he was just 19 years old, Rudolf Vrba became one of the first Jews to break out of Auschwitz. It was April 1944, and Vrba had spent the last two years enduring horror after horror at the concentration camp, determined to make it out alive. As Jonathan Freedland captures in his harrowing biography, Vrba was fixated on remembering every atrocity because he knew that one day his story could save lives. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World is heavy reading that spares no detail of the brutalities perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust . It’s also a crucial, skillfully rendered look inside the journey of a teenager who risked his life to warn Jews, and the rest of the world, about what was happening in Auschwitz.

Buy Now : The Escape Artist on Bookshop | Amazon

3. Ducks, Kate Beaton

In 2005, Kate Beaton had just graduated from college and was yearning to start her career as an artist. But she had student loans to pay off and the oil boom meant that it was easy to get a job out in the sands, so she did. In her first full-length graphic memoir, Beaton reflects on her time working with a primarily male labor force in harsh conditions where trauma lingered and loneliness prevailed. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is a bruising and intimate account of survival and exploitation—of both the land and the people who worked on it—and is brought to life by Beaton’s immersive illustrations. In unveiling her plight, Beaton makes stunning observations about the intersections of class, gender, and capitalism.

Buy Now : Ducks on Bookshop | Amazon

2. South to America, Imani Perry

For her striking work of nonfiction, Imani Perry takes a tour of the American South , visiting more than 10 states, including her native Alabama. Perry argues that the associations and assumptions made about the South—with racism at their core—are essential to understanding the United States as a whole. While there is plenty of history embedded throughout South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation , the winner of the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction, it is no history book. Instead, it’s an impressive mix of deftly compiled research and memoir, with Perry making poignant reflections on the lives of her own ancestors. The result is a revelatory account of the South’s ugly past—the Civil War, slavery, and Jim Crow Laws—and how that history still reverberates today.

Buy Now : South to America on Bookshop | Amazon

1. In Love, Amy Bloom

After Amy Bloom’s husband Brian was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she supported him through the impossibly difficult decision to end his life, on his terms, with the aid of an organization based in Switzerland. Bloom’s memoir begins with their last flight together—on the way to Zurich—as she reflects on the reality that she will be flying home alone. But in these moments of despair, and the enormous grief that follows their trip, she finds tenderness and hope in remembering all that came before it. In writing about their marriage, Bloom unveils a powerful truth about the slippery nature of time. The book is a beautiful, heartfelt tribute to her husband, and a crucial reminder that what drives grief is often the most profound kind of love.

Buy Now : In Love on Bookshop | Amazon

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year
• The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• A Battle Over Fertility Law in China
• The 1 Heart-Health Habit You Should Start When You’re Young
• Cuddling Might Help You Get Better Sleep
• The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now

Write to Annabel Gutterman at [email protected]

Try AI-powered search

Six non-fiction books you can read in a day

Resolved to read more there may be no more rewarding genre than the short book.

T HE SHORT book, long underestimated, has a lot going for it. To start with the prosaic: if you want to get through more volumes, short is shrewd. Slender books can be slipped into a bag or coat pocket and plucked out again in an idle moment, so you’ll be more likely to finish them. For adventurous readers the format allows for casual experimentation with new styles, topics and authors. For indecisive ones it can make a bookshop’s universe of possibilities feel less daunting: just scour the shelves for slim spines. Most of all, there is a rare satisfaction in reaching the final pages of a book while still holding the full sweep of its story in your mind. Taut prose is intense and immersive, like a distilled fragrance. These books offer that, too. They must; they don’t have long to make their point. In an era of many distractions, that is a great virtue.

These six non-fiction books include memoir, journalism, essays and pictorial essays. They take you into the bedroom of a grieving husband in imperial China; into the courtroom where a sensational murder trial split New York’s Bukharan Jewish community in the late 2000s; and, classically, into a room of one’s own. In short, they get plenty done in just 150 pages.

Six Records of a Floating Life. By Shen Fu. Translated by Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-Hui. Penguin Classics; 144 pages; $16 and £9.99

A meditation on extraordinary love and an ordinary life, this memoir was written at the beginning of the 19th century in Qing-dynasty China by a widowed scholar. Despite the lapse of time, Shen Fu’s joys and sorrows feel comfortingly familiar. He was a civil servant who, though highly educated for his time, did not manage to rise up the ranks. He quarrelled with his parents, played drinking games and went on picnics. He also married the love of his life (they had known each other since they were 13 years old) and, as Shen’s memoir reveals, he treated Chen Yun like an equal, admiring her practicality and sparring with her in ad lib poetry competitions. The book has long been cherished in China as a true account of deep love. For modern readers the records may hold some surprises, too. Shen loved flower arranging. And although he and Yun adored each other, she matter-of-factly sought out a concubine for him—with whom, the text implies, she also had sex (lesbian relationships were not especially frowned upon at the time). The translators’ judicious footnotes make the reading all the more pleasurable.

Oranges. By John McPhee. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 149 pages; $16. Daunt; £9.99

Are there 150 sparkling pages to be written about the everyday orange? John McPhee proves there are. “Oranges”, which evolved from an essay published in the New Yorker in 1966, established a new form of journalism: one that marries whimsy with forensic explanatory reporting. Mr McPhee examines the rise of frozen orange-juice concentrate after the second world war—already then a $700m industry and “the boomiest boom since the Brazilian rubber boom”. He interviews Florida’s orange barons, pickers, packers and pomologists. His essay flows from the fantastic sex life of oranges to the Sanskrit origins of the word ( naranga ) to oranges’ role in the Norman invasion of Sicily. It is sweet to read about Botticelli and Degrees Brix (the standard measure of sugar) in a single sitting. This is also dissection at its sharpest, and eating an orange will never be the same again.

A Room of One’s Own. By Virginia Woolf. Mariner; 128 pages; $16.99. Penguin Modern Classics; £5.99

Among the most influential essays of the 20th century, “A Room of One’s Own” was based on a lecture that Virginia Woolf gave at Newnham College and Girton College, the first two for women at Cambridge University. Woolf lands her best-known line by the second page: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” That sends her down new routes of inquiry. As she relays the train of thought she has while walking around “Oxbridge” (a barely fictitious composite) and London, her wry humour develops a fierceness that builds to anger. “Why are women poor?” she asks. “What effect has poverty on fiction?” And “What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?” She summons the work of women over the centuries, from Aphra Behn to the Brontë sisters, to find the answers. The lot of women in Britain has improved dramatically in the century since Woolf wrote her essay. Yet it still feels like essential reading, in particular as a manifesto on the right to form one’s own opinion and express it.

Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial. By Janet Malcolm. Yale University Press; 155 pages; $13.95 and £9.99

If the aim of journalistic inquiry is to provide answers, Janet Malcolm shows, with devastating rigour, that observation can be enough. “Iphigenia in Forest Hills” tells the story of a murder trial in New York in 2009. Mazoltuv Borukhova, a 35-year-old doctor, is accused of paying an acquaintance to kill her husband. Malcolm lays out the facts of the case, then raises the question at the heart of most true-crime stories: “She couldn’t have done it, and she must have done it.” Yet the title, a reference to the Greek myth of Iphigenia, sacrificed daughter of Agamemnon, says it all. This too is a tragedy; its end certain. Malcolm does not offer suspense. Instead, from many small procedural details at the Queens Supreme Court she coaxes bigger, more unsettling questions. Such as, is bias inevitable? “Borukhova’s otherness was her defining characteristic,” notes Malcolm. Observe, her text urges, how decisive the opinion of an expert witness can be. Notice the seduction of certainty—how courtrooms revel in it. See what small tyrannies the judge permits himself. Unshowily, Malcolm makes her point: a trial is perhaps nothing more than “a contest between competing narratives”.

Ways of Seeing. By John Berger. Penguin Modern Classics; 155 pages; $11 and £9.99

Adapted from a four-part BBC television series of the same name that aired in 1972, John Berger’s book will probably change how you think about art. Four essays consider the reproduction of art; the female form and the male gaze; how ownership influences art; and publicity and the illusion of authority. These are delightfully complemented by three wordless pictorial essays, bold visual arguments for Berger’s incantatory opening—which purposely appears right on the cover of this edition—that “seeing comes before words”. He shows how the meaning of art is always influenced by how and where it is viewed. Berger’s book is naturally a product of its time, too: Marxist, radical and preoccupied with the ruling class. But it made complex ideas about a closed world accessible and engaging. Its influence is lasting: read the review we wrote for its 50th anniversary .

A Man’s Place. By Annie Ernaux. Translated by Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories Press; 96 pages; $13.95. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £7.99

Annie Ernaux made her mark with autobiographical fiction in which, as we wrote when she received the Nobel prize in literature in 2022, she remakes “the private and the ordinary into something profound”. But to write a radically short biography of her father the French author had to strip away all pretence; she abandoned a first attempt at a novel with “feelings of disgust”. “If I wish to tell the story of a life governed by necessity,” she writes, “I have no right to adopt an artistic approach.” The result is a spare, starkly beautiful memoir. Its studied restraint, almost ethnographic, is the work of a daughter at pains to do justice to the life of a father whom she felt she could no longer truly know: “Although it had something to do with class, it was different, indefinable. Like fractured love.” Like many others of his era, he first laboured on a farm, then entered a factory and finally worked for himself, as a shopkeeper in rural Normandy. Ms Ernaux strove, she writes, to convey both his happiness and “the humiliating limitations” of his class. It is the story of a generation, but also firmly her father’s own.

Ms Ernaux wrote a short biography of her mother, “A Woman’s Story”. It is as accomplished as that about her father, and secured her reputation with French readers . If you enjoyed Janet Malcolm’s “Iphigenia in Forest Hills”, try “Still Pictures”, a short book published posthumously that is also perhaps her most personal. We reviewed it last year . New to John McPhee’s writing? He has written more than 30 books. After “Oranges”, why not try his most recent, “Tabula Rasa”—it comes in at under 200 pages. We offered our appraisal . If you’re looking for novels you can read in a day, here are six to get you started.

From the June 8th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

More from The Economist reads

Six novels about India, perhaps the world’s most interesting place

Works of fiction about a country whose global clout, already large, is growing

Six novels you can read in a day

Reluctant to start on a big masterpiece? Try these small gems instead

The romance and reality of Paris, the Olympics’ host

Five non-fiction books about a city that is both gilded and gritty

Novels set on holiday

Some of these fictional holidays aren’t fun, but they might enhance yours

Five books on the glories and flaws of the Olympics

The games fall short of their ideals, but they’re still worth watching

The best and worst memoirs by British prime ministers

There are plenty of duds, but a few gems

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years

Slate’s books team selects the definitive works of reporting, memoir, and argument of the past quarter-century..

“As a writer, I prefer to get bossed around by my notebook and the facts therein,” David Carr wrote in his reported memoir The Night of the Gun , one of Slate’s 50 best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Carr was mulling over the difference between fiction and nonfiction, the novelist’s art and the reporter’s craft. “They may not lead to a perfect, seamless arc, but they lead to a story that coheres in another way, because it is mostly true.”

In the work of canon-building , nonfiction tends to get short shrift . While memoir has gained a foothold in the literary conversation, narrative and reported nonfiction tend to be ignored. It can be easy to dismiss these forms as the worthwhile but fundamentally unliterary assemblage of facts into paragraphs. Yet what reader hasn’t had her mind expanded, her heart plucked, her conscience stirred by a nonfiction book? The responsibility the writers of such books take on, to arrange the facts of the world into a form that makes sense of its tumult, can produce in the reader a kind of clarity of thought that no other genre can match.

Slate’s list of the definitive nonfiction books written in English in the past quarter-century includes beautifully written memoirs but also books of reportage, collections of essays, travelogues, works of cultural criticism, passionate arguments, even a compendium of household tips. What they all share is a commitment to “mostly truth” and the belief that digging deep to find a real story—whether it’s located in your memory, on dusty archive shelves, in Russian literature, in a slum in Mumbai—is a task worth undertaking.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology  by Lawrence Weschler (Pantheon, 1995)

“What kind of place  is  this exactly?” Lawrence Weschler asks the proprietor of the oddball Los Angeles storefront museum he stumbles into one day, where the exhibits are surprising, whimsical, and in fact often (but not always!) entirely made up. In Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Weschler spins the story of the Museum of Jurassic Technology’s unlikely creation into an entirely winning meditation on human ingenuity and creativity, a thought experiment about how the mind responds to being  amazed . The result is   a deceptively simple book that—like the 16 th -century “wonder cabinets” that, Weschler explains, served as the very first museums—opens to reveal astonishments untold.

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder

By Lawrence Weschler

Into the Wild  by Jon Krakauer (Villard, 1996)

In April 1992, Christopher McCandless, a young man in search of wild, untrammeled experience, hiked into the Alaskan wilderness. Four months later, his body was found by a moose hunter. Krakauer sets out to unravel the mystery of how this adventure ended in tragedy, and the tiny mistakes that cost McCandless his life, by reading McCandless’ journals, talking to his friends, and traveling to the abandoned bus where McCandless spent his last months. Through his reporting of McCandless’ passionate and foolhardy journey into transcendence—and writing about his own, similar youthful experiences—Krakauer explores our modern relationship to the wilderness and the deep desire many young people feel to seek out unthinkable danger.

Into the Wild

By Jon Krakauer

Madeleine’s World: A Biography of a Three-Year-Old  by Brian Hall (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

Hall’s quixotic premise—to write a detailed biography of his own daughter, Madeleine, from infancy through toddlerhood to small-kidness—works only because Hall is such a curious observer and imaginative interpreter of his subject. That subject is, of course, Madeleine but also childhood , the period of almost incomprehensible development between zero and 3, the simultaneous flowerings of action, reason, and self-awareness. Even nonparents will be fascinated by  Madeleine’s World  for the ways it delves deep into the thought patterns and imaginative leaps readers half-remember from their own childhoods; for parents, the book—in its insistence that to  pay attention  is to love—can be almost unbearably moving.

Madeleine’s World

By Brian Hall

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997)

This deeply researched, profoundly empathetic story of cultural miscommunication in medicine focuses on the case of Lia Lee, the doted-on youngest daughter in a family of Hmong refugees in rural Northern California. Lia had an unusual and severe form of epilepsy. Doctors at the American hospital where her family sought treatment prescribed an elaborate drug regimen to control her seizures. Her family, on the other hand, believed the doctors’ recommendations made the child sicker and failed to address what they saw as the cause of her illness: spirits that had kidnapped her soul and needed to be placated with animal sacrifices. Fadiman shows great respect for the Hmongs and their culture, devoting alternate chapters to their beliefs and history, without ever pretending that their folk cures did Lia any good. It’s Fadiman’s commitment to sympathetically depicting both sides without ceding all judgment entirely that makes this case study so impressive. Both sides were united in their devotion to the little girl’s welfare, and Fadiman ultimately argues that if the physicians had been more willing to better understand the Hmong people and engage with Lia’s parents and their beliefs, they might have saved Lia from her sad fate.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

By Anne Fadiman

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown, 1997)

Although he’s now best known for his 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, Wallace made his reputation, particularly among younger readers in the late ’90s, as an essayist and a very particular sort of journalist. His editors at Harper’s sent him to a state fair and on a holiday cruise, pastimes whose reputations for carefree, middle American fun seemed hopelessly alien to Wallace himself, a hyperactive observational machine desperate to shed his own self-consciousness but incapable of doing so. The results, included in this collection of essays, were hilarious and revelatory; who knew it was even possible to write that way, to acknowledge how difficult it is for a certain kind of media-soaked mind to stop making associations and references, to forget itself? In these pieces, Wallace makes himself—and his doomed attempts to fit in and have a kind of fun he doesn’t really believe in—the butt of the joke, and a very funny joke it is (although less so in light of his suicide in 2008). This collection also includes some top-notch writing on tennis, and Wallace’s still-relevant essay on television and fiction, “E Unibus Pluram,” but the cruise ship and state fair pieces still shine the brightest.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

By David Foster Wallace

Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer (North Point Press, 1998)

Surely the funniest book ever written about writer’s block, this “study” of D.H. Lawrence, a favorite author of Dyer’s, is more travelogue and memoir than the “sober, academic” work the author originally set out to pen. Pinging from Paris to Rome to Greece to Taos, New Mexico, Dyer makes literary pilgrimages that result in no epiphanies. One place is too hot to get anything done; another is too beautiful. One is too cacophonous; another is too tranquil. He comically works on a novel to avoid his Lawrence book when he’s not working on the Lawrence book to avoid his novel. (“At first I’d had an overwhelming urge to write both books but these two desires had worn each other down to the point where I had no urge to write either.”) His ennui is operatic and ridiculous. And yet, through the cracks between Dyer’s torpor and his dissatisfaction, a tribute to Lawrence—that great proponent of passionate living—finally emerges. Lawrence knew well the paradox at the center of a writer’s life, which is that life is the subject of writing and yet writing is not living; the two cancel each other out. The only sensible response to this absurd dilemma is laughter, and Dyer’s readers will enjoy plenty of that.

Out of Sheer Rage

By Geoff Dyer

The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss  by Abraham Verghese (HarperCollins, 1998)

Abraham Verghese was a doctor at a teaching hospital in El Paso, Texas, when he met medical student David Smith, a burned-out ex–tennis pro from Australia.  The Tennis Partner  is, in part, the story of the friendship that grew between the two men as they interact at work and on the tennis court, with Verghese encouraging Smith to rekindle his love of the game and Smith counseling Verghese through the difficult end of his marriage. If it were only a closely observed, intimate portrait of a close and meaningful friendship, the book would already be an enormous success. But Smith, an addict in recovery, falls back into drug use, and the final third of the book is both a suspenseful portrait of a doctor trying to save a life and a moving meditation on the limits of what friends can do when facing the monster of addiction. Carrying us through it all is Verghese’s voice: empathetic, rueful, honest to a fault, and always kind.

The Tennis Partner

By Abraham Verghese

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)

Media reports during the genocidal 1994 massacres in Rwanda were spotty and confusing. Gourevitch, a journalist, was determined to understand how a country united by a single language and religion could become so divided that one part of its population would suddenly turn on the other, killing a million of their fellow citizens, including their own neighbors. He traveled in the African nation for nine months, visiting sites of slaughter, interviewing war criminals in prison camps, gathering the stories of those who escaped by the skin of their teeth. But We Wish to Inform You is more than a masterpiece of war reportage. Gourevitch digs down to the roots of the genocide, locating them in the leftover resentments fostered by colonialism and a civil war. Above all, he blames the schemes of the ruling Hutu elite, who deliberately engineered the massacre by using radio, Rwanda’s primary means of mass communication, to foment murderous hatred among Hutus toward the Tutsi minority. This plan went unhampered by international intervention, even after Western leaders became aware of the atrocities being perpetrated. Although beautifully written, this book is not easy to read, but the insights Gourevitch arrives at are more essential than ever.

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

By Philip Gourevitch

Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House  by Cheryl Mendelson (Scribner, 1999)

Beautifully written and nearly deranged in its comprehensiveness,  Home Comforts  holds what seems an entire culture’s collected wisdom on fabric selection, lighting design, clothes folding, waste disposal, dishwashing, food storage, table setting, closet organization, and piano tuning. Mendelson’s irreplaceable guide to stain removal spans four pages, from  adhesive tape to crayon to mustard all the way to  urine . But this isn’t just a handbook; above all,  Home Comforts  is animated by Mendelson’s respect and affection for the duties and pleasures of housekeeping. Every one of its 884 pages is an absolute joy to read, and no book is more deeply comforting to neat freaks—or inspirational to slobs.

Home Comforts

By Cheryl Mendelson

The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong (Knopf, 2000)

After 9/11, Armstrong, a former nun turned popular historian of religion, seemed like some kind of prophet: She had published her history of fundamentalism, The Battle for God, the preceding year. Readers turned to her in droves, trying to understand what felt like a sudden, unanticipated, overwhelming menace. As a result, Armstrong’s take on fundamentalism has shaped our understanding of the phenomenon more than perhaps any other thinker’s. Fortunately, hers is an insightful analysis, identifying the similarities among fundamentalists of all three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Most importantly, she recognizes that all forms of fundamentalism are reactions to the dislocation and confusion of modernity even as fundamentalists embrace modern tools like mass and social media. Lucid, wide-ranging, and persuasive, The Battle for God provides a framework for understanding more than the three religions it focuses on. It only becomes more relevant with every year.

The Battle for God

By Karen Armstrong

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (Simon & Schuster, 2000)

If you were a semifeckless, amply flawed but eminently clever twentysomething Gen Xer at the turn of the 21 st century, and you were writing a memoir about how your parents died within five months of each other when you were a senior in college, leaving you to care for your 8-year-old brother, you faced a choice. You could present your story with purported sincerity (as pretty much anyone in their late 20s would do today). Or, if you were painfully aware that so much of what fronts as sincere is in fact ungenuine or calculating sentimentality and otherwise bogus, you could come up with a new style. It would need to be a style that insisted on scrutinizing and mocking and apologizing for itself, that veered vertiginously between the playful and the stark. Eggers, of course, chose the latter, producing a book that was hugely influential—that still is hugely influential, to judge by, among other things, the prevalence of a certain exclamation mark–bedazzled school of journalism. Eggers himself was inspired by David Foster Wallace, but unlike Wallace, Eggers was able to hack his way out of the thickets of self-consciousness, or maybe it was even further into them, and arrive at a rock, a kernel of reality, which was his love for, and commitment to, his brother Toph. He left a pretty good path behind him, too.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

By Dave Eggers

Borrowed Finery : A Memoir by Paula Fox (Henry Holt, 2001)

It’s true that Fox’s memoir of the first 20 or so years of her life was published during a boom in autobiographies about awful childhoods, and Fox’s Jazz Age–style bohemian parents were …  difficult. They abandoned her to assorted relatives, friends, and strangers for years at a time, bouncing her from an elderly minister’s house in upstate New York to a Floridian resort, a Los Angeles apartment, a Cuban sugar plantation, and a fancy Montréal boarding school. Her charming, mercurial father drank too much and broke promises, while her mother simply rejected her. But Fox clearly has no interest in crafting a tale of woe. Instead,  Borrowed Finery  is a kind of transcription of memory in its strange spottiness. It comes in pieces, a recording of those incidents, big and small, that are for whatever reason lit up as if by spotlights when we cast our minds back over the great, dark stretches of the past. This memoir is less a narrative than a collage of mysteriously potent moments: a favorite teacher’s kitchen, a dead puppy, a new dress. Best of all is Fox’s prose style—unostentatiously simple, lucid, distilled down to quintessential detail—as close to perfection as the English language gets.

Borrowed Finery

By Paula Fox

American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center  by William Langewiesche (North Point Press, 2002)

“The buildings were not buildings anymore, and the place where they fell had become a blank slate,” William Langewiesche writes of ground zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers’ destruction on Sept. 11. “Among the ruins now, an unscripted experiment in American life had gotten underway.” Langewiesche had nine months of unfettered access to every meeting, decision, and subterranean hellhole at ground zero, which resulted in this astonishingly detailed and deeply emotional look at the labor of thousands of city employees, engineers, and construction workers as they cleaned up the burning, toxic, dangerous wreckage of Lower Manhattan. American Ground is an inspiring portrait of American ingenuity when faced with an impossible task and a gripping exploration of the American psyche in the aftermath of a great shift in the world order.

American Ground

By William Langewiesche

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx  by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner, 2003)

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent 10 years reporting on a group of young men and women in the west Bronx as they paired off, grew up, escaped, returned, and tried to raise children of their own. Written with a moment-to-moment emotional intensity that drops the reader into the hearts of Jessica, Coco, Lourdes, Mercedes, and Foxy,  Random Family  crackles with immediacy. Brilliantly observant of the social codes and structures that rule the communities it portrays, the book reads like a Jane Austen novel, its heroines constricted by circumstance as well as their own personalities. The most moving moments of this work of deep reportage come when its women find brief moments of peace in good relationships, in family, in jobs they enjoy; but always trouble waits around the corner, to “break open like a burst of billiard balls.”

Random Family

By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation  by Jeff Chang (St. Martin’s Press, 2005)

A sweeping cultural history of the dominant American art form of the past 50 years,  Can’t Stop Won’t Stop  traces hip-hop back to its birth in the South Bronx and then back even further, to the Jamaican toasters whose style inspired New York’s first rappers. Chang fills his book with the names and stories of the kind of small-time heroes whose creativity and inspiration get overlooked in so many cultural narratives: the party promoters whose DIY bashes in dingy apartments drew crowds and DJs, the dance crews who drove the community’s passion for this new music, the graffiti artists who brought street style downtown. But he also highlights the stars, from Kool Herc to Rakim to Ice Cube, who innovated and popularized the form for an audience beyond those DIY parties. And in his propulsive, idiosyncratic style, Chang situates the revolution in the political and social context of 20 th -century New York (and America): deeply racist, economically cruel, and ready to explode.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

By Jeff Chang

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic   by Alison Bechdel ( Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

In this moving memoir-as-investigation of her own father’s hidden life, Alison Bechdel combines the skills of an experienced cartoonist—expressive drawing, concise storytelling, mordant humor—with the ingenuity and curiosity of a reporter. Starting with her own journals, Bechdel uncovers dark treasures of her childhood and adolescence as the daughter of a closeted funeral home director in small town Pennsylvania; her clever narrative structure returns to crucial moments again and again, polishing them and holding them up to the light to reveal new facets of meaning. Young Alison and her dandyish father were inversions of each other: “While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him,” she writes, “he was attempting to express something feminine through me.” This understated yet beautiful book, an attempt to puzzle out his life and death, thrillingly animates and embodies their relationship.

By Alison Bechdel

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007)

We are a culture intoxicated by apocalypse and ruin, forever telling one another stories about what we’d do to survive should civilization as we know it collapse. But what if humanity itself went poof and left behind the entire apparatus of our existence without a single soul remaining to start over? That is the irresistible premise of Weisman’s book, a thought experiment substantiated by deep research into what it takes to keep the built world functioning and what has happened in the few places (Chernobyl, the Korean Demilitarized Zone) where there has been no one around to prop it up. Weisman, a science journalist, projects a week-by-week progression of flooding subway tunnels, farms reclaimed by grassland, toppling skyscrapers, domestic animals reverting to their feral state, and, less romantically, nuclear reactors melting down, chemical plants exploding into poisonous bonfires, and a vast mass of discarded plastics drifting around the world’s oceans for ages to come. The planet would eventually recover, he assures his readers—if “assure” is even the right word: The air would clear, the waters sweeten, and the animals, birds, and insects would take up residence in our old haunts. It’s a scenario both beautiful and terrifying, the original definition of the sublime, and executed with a methodical bravado that’s breathtaking.

The World Without Us

By Alan Weisman

The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.  by David Carr (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

In 2008, David Carr had been a respected New York Timesman for years, the paper’s media reporter and a beloved mentor of countless young journalists. But two decades before that, Carr was a junkie—a crack addict who washed out of journalism jobs, who was rung up by the Minneapolis cops nine times, and whose twin daughters were born 2½ months premature to a mother who’d smoked crack the night before their delivery. For  The Night of the Gun , Carr applied his reporter’s eye to his own story, digging into those lost years and uncovering painful and frightening truths about the man he was while in the throes of addiction. Released into a post–James Frey, post–JT LeRoy era when skeptics found memoir increasingly unreliable, Carr’s live-wire combination of autobiography and journalism explores not only the secrets of his own life but also the ways in which the stories we all tell ourselves evolve into the versions we can live with.  The Night of the Gun  makes plain how hard, and how necessary, it is to face the past with diligence and humility.

The Night of the Gun

By David Carr

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (Pantheon, 2009)

Holmes is our greatest living biographer. Whether he’s recounting Percy Shelley’s rebelliousness, Samuel Coleridge’s descent into opium addiction (Holmes specializes in the Romantic poets), or his own penchant for walking along the paths and roads his subjects once tread, everything he writes is a positive delight to read—charming, unostentatiously erudite, moving. In this unusual work, he considers several British scientists and explorers as the 18 th century gave way to the 19 th . Far from soberly rational, these thinkers were as galvanized by the exhilarating spirit of their times as the poets Holmes usually writes about. William Herschel, who identified the first new planet in centuries; Humphry Davy, who invented electrochemistry and experimented with nitrous oxide; Mungo Park, who searched for Timbuktu; and others were as much adventurers of the imagination as any artist, Holmes insists. Coleridge (the subject of a two-volume Holmes biography and a friend of Davy’s) declared science to be driven by “the passion of Hope” and a vision of transforming the world for the better. Holmes urges his readers to understand that at one time poetry and science stood with linked arms upon the peak of discovery and looked at each other with “a wild surmise” like Cortez and his men in Keats’ sonnet . Here is a book capable of flooding a reader with the same sense of astonishment.

The Age of Wonder

By Richard Holmes

Columbine by Dave Cullen (Twelve, 2009)

The 1999 slaying of 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado was, as Cullen notes in this definitive account of the tragedy, “the first major hostage standoff of the cellphone age.” As Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, heavily armed, still roamed the hallways of the building, the media, desperate for any information, began to spin a tale of the Trenchcoat Mafia and disaffected goths lashing out at the jocks who’d bullied them. Students hiding from the shooters saw these reports on classroom TVs and echoed them back via their mobile phones. A mythos grew up around the school shooting, the deadliest up to that point, almost entirely fictional, and much of it difficult to dispel. Harris, Cullen concludes, was merely an angry psychopath, and Klebold, his suicidal apostle, but in the aftermath, everyone from onetime adolescent misfits to evangelicals with martyr complexes twisted this bald reality into a story that confirmed their views of the world. Cullen, who was on the scene himself within 15 hours of the crime, spent 10 years teasing out the legends from the truth. The result is an extraordinary work of reportage, a revelation, not just of the shootings themselves but of the myriad misbegotten attempts to find meaning in them.

By Dave Cullen

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon  by David Grann (Doubleday, 2009)

Percy Fawcett was the last of the great white explorers, a dashing Brit who, in the first decades of the 20 th  century, became obsessed with a fabled ancient civilization deep within the Amazon jungle. For years, Fawcett hunted for his “lost city of Z,” even as he was betrayed by collaborators, weakened by hunger, and attacked by poisonous ants and carnivorous fish. Z finally cost Fawcett his life, along with that of his son, when they both disappeared on a 1925 search. Grann—“nearly 40 years old, with a blossoming waistline”—resolves to tell Fawcett’s story and soon finds himself stuck in the jungle himself, captured, absurdly, by the same lust for discovery that killed his subject. A signal work of narrative nonfiction that both celebrates and satirizes the time-honored tale of the adventurer attacking the wilderness with “little more than a machete, a compass and an almost divine sense of purpose.”

The Lost City of Z

By David Grann

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981)  and  Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011)  by Stephen Sondheim (Knopf, 2010–11)

Plenty of writers have collected their life’s work into two volumes and assessed it, but no one has done so with as much wit, ruthless honesty, and good humor as Stephen Sondheim, which makes sense, because few writers’ work matches Sondheim’s in those exact qualities. Crucially, these collected lyrics aren’t an exercise in self-gratification; Sondheim is insightful and unsparing about his own mistakes, even the ones that only he is smart enough to see. Take, for example, his notes on the perfectly lovely  Company  song “The Little Things You Do Together”: He bemoans the song’s glibness, calls its tight rhyme schemes “as tiresome as they are elaborate,” and mourns a quatrain he replaced with one he now sees as worse. The result is a pocket history of the past half-century of musical theater, a crash course in the collaborative creative process, and a bottomless craft lecture for anyone who aspires to make something beautiful.

Finishing the Hat

By Stephen Sondheim

Look, I Made a Hat

The immortal life of henrietta lacks  by rebecca skloot (crown, 2010).

In 1951, a 30-year-old black woman was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The cells biopsied from Henrietta Lacks’ tumor, dubbed HeLa cells, soon became the basis for decades of crucial medical research: The polio vaccine, IVF techniques, and advancements in gene mapping all owe their success to the HeLa cells taken from Lacks’ body. Skloot’s impeccably reported book tells a remarkable story of scientific development but also makes an impassioned argument about the way medicine has always used black and poor bodies. In the process of reporting the book, Skloot befriended Lacks’ descendants. Rather than harming the author’s “objectivity,” these friendships transform what was already a very good science book into a deeply humane and crucial interrogation of how technological progress churns along, indifferent to the lives fueling its course.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu (Knopf, 2010)

It seems obvious today that the internet would trend toward the consolidation of power in the hands of a few major players, but nearly 10 years ago, Wu raised hackles when he argued that all information industries move from openness to concentration unless outside forces intervene. In this book, he follows the histories of telephony, radio, movies, and television, observing that early periods of innovation and access for small, nimble players (such as local telephone companies) always yielded to centralized control. Hollywood tycoons in particular sought to bring every aspect of moviemaking, from the talent to the theaters, under their sway, and only government action succeeded in breaking their stranglehold. The fantasy that the internet’s distributed structure (it has no “master switch”) would keep it forever free of monopolies was a point of faith among the medium’s early adopters, and the intervening years have only underlined how prophetic Wu was in identifying their mistake. He did get some things wrong—social media was a fledgling force at the time, and Google then seemed an admirably open gateway to content compared with Apple—but the stories of those other industries remain a potent warning about the fate of any crucial communications medium in a society that fails to protect itself.

The Master Switch

The new jim crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness by michelle alexander (the new press, 2010).

Alexander was an academic specializing in civil rights when, in the early 2000s, she walked past a protest sign condemning the War on Drugs as the “new Jim Crow.” Her first impulse was to shrug off this claim as conspiracy theory and to go back to what most of her middle-class black friends and colleagues considered their top priority: protecting affirmative action. But over the years, Alexander’s work as a lawyer for the ACLU ultimately led her to agree with the sign’s author. Far from being “just another institution infected with racial bias,” she argues, the criminal justice system, and particularly its drug laws, has replicated the effect of Jim Crow laws, reinforcing a racial caste system in which large numbers of poor black men have been barred from anything better than the most menial employment and from equal participation in civic life. Riveting to read, The New Jim Crow became a surprise bestseller, and it transformed forever the way thinkers and activists view the phenomenon of mass incarceration.

The New Jim Crow

By Michelle Alexander

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

What Batuman, a staff writer for the New Yorker , loves most about Russian literature, and about Russianness itself, are what she calls its “mystifications,” specifically, “the feeling of only half understanding.” In this delectable collection of essays, she describes her travels to such perplexing locales as Tolstoy’s former estate, Uzbekistan, a monastery on an Adriatic island, and graduate school. Hers is a lifelong quest for the grandiose, the melancholic, and—crucially—the absurd. Batuman seems to attract Borgesian peculiarity like a magnet. She journeys to Samarkand to study a language of dubious authenticity, in which one of the few remaining written texts takes the form of love letters between the colors red and green. When Aeroflot loses her luggage, the clerk asks her, “Are you familiar with our Russian phrase, resignation of the soul?” She gets talked into judging a boys’ “leg contest” at a Hungarian summer camp. And while most academic conferences are pretty dull, she attends one in which an old lady turned to another guest and demanded, “I would like to know if it is TRUE THAT YOU DESPISE ME.” When it comes to eccentricity, Batuman holds up her end—her Ph.D. dissertation compared novels to double-entry bookkeeping, and she talked her way into a Tolstoy conference by proposing a paper arguing that the novelist was murdered. While The Possessed is unlikely to enhance readers’ understanding of Dostoevsky, by the end they’ll be having so much fun they won’t care.

The Possessed

By Elif Batuman

Travels in Siberia   by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

A kind of capstone to a career spent visiting seemingly empty landscapes and finding the warm hearts that beat inside them,  Travels in Siberia  exhibits all of Ian Frazier’s remarkable travel-writing talents. He is deeply curious about everything and everyone he meets. He is patient and observant. He is a well-read, brilliant contextualizer. He effortlessly brings the past to the present and makes connections between person and place, history and destiny. And he’s funny as hell, one of the funniest writers alive. ’Til the day that you die you will remember with squirming laughter Frazier’s descriptions of the nightmarish mosquitoes of Western Siberia, which “came at us as if shot from a fire hose”: “There are the majority, of course, who just bite you anywhere. Those are your general practitioner mosquitoes, or GPs. Then you have your specialists—your eye, ear, nose, and throat mosquitoes.”

Travels in Siberia

By Ian Frazier

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2010)

At once intimate and sweeping, Wilkerson’s history offers a landmark account of one of the epochal changes in American society: The movement, over six decades, of approximately 6 million black citizens from the South to the Midwest, West, and Northeast. Many of these transplants behaved, as Wilkerson notes, more like refugees than anything else, fleeing Jim Crow laws to form enclaves united by their ties to the towns they’d left behind. (Detaching from the South, one of her sources told her, was like “getting unstuck from a magnet.”) Wilkerson pulls in the book’s focus by following the lives of three individuals: a sharecropper’s wife, a labor organizer, and a doctor who would go on to count Ray Charles among his patients. Although each migrated at a different time for different reasons, their stories share the common thread of flight from Southern society’s pervasive, cruel, and dehumanizing racism. What these hopeful travelers found once they left was often exploitative, but the slight advantages they discovered under those other suns became the springboards for that most American of dreams: a better life.

The Warmth of Other Suns

By Isabel Wilkerson

Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America  by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (Little, Brown, 2011)

Dreamy, meandering, and ravishing, Rhodes-Pitts’ ode to Harlem summons up the ghosts of the “Mecca of Black America.” As a Texas-born pilgrim to this vexed promised land, she found herself drawn not to the obvious inspirational sites, such as Langston Hughes’ house, but to the remnants of Harlemites past who have been overlooked or half-forgotten: a literary scrapbooker named Alexander Gumby, a photographer specializing in portraits of the dead, the operator of a wax museum. A neighborhood is defined by its eccentrics, and Rhodes-Pitts seeks them out, chatting with old ladies, searching for the author of inspirational messages chalked on the sidewalks, subjecting herself to the lectures of one of the last members of a nearly extinct black nationalist movement. She matches up archival photos of vacant lots and storefronts with the new, gentrifying constructions erupting in their place. Harlem Is Nowhere is a work less of history than of mood, a delicate phantasm, evocative of the aspirations and losses of a remarkable place and all the people who have made it their sanctuary and their home.

Harlem Is Nowhere 

By Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick (Pantheon, 2011)

To say Gleick’s history of information and communication is wide-ranging is a bit of an understatement. According to Gleick, we are all “creatures of the information,” from the words that make up most of our interactions with one another to the code embedded in our DNA. This book constellates around Claude Shannon, a Bell Labs mathematician and cryptographer who founded information theory with a 1948 paper considering how to measure what it takes to transmit a message from a sender to a recipient—even if that recipient is just a subatomic particle on the other side of the universe wondering which way to spin. Human beings are some of the universe’s most energetic signal transmitters, and when Gleick isn’t explaining information’s relevance to Brownian motion and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem , he’s deep in the more engaging stories of African talking drums, Ada Lovelace’s nascent computer programs , and how the telegram changed the world. Information is not the same thing as knowledge, however, and it is knowledge that this book imparts in great, glorious fistfuls, as it loops through time and space, shedding brilliant light on first one corner of experience, then another. Its breadth and grasp are dazzling.

The Information

By James Gleick

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity  by Katherine Boo (Random House, 2012)

The product of more than three years of in-depth reporting in a slum near Mumbai airport called Annawadi, Katherine Boo’s masterpiece is a Kafka story for our times, the tale of determined strivers so hemmed in by circumstance, official disregard, and rampant corruption that even those who succeed are punished for their accomplishments. In its portrait of the garbage-sorter Abdul, who winds up in court after a false accusation from a neighbor,  Behind the Beautiful Forevers  depicts a young man who loses everything he’s earned and comes out on the other side declaring that “something had happened to his heart.” His painful moral decision-making reflects a book in which Boo is always careful to portray the ways her subjects exert agency within their own lives, even at the cost of their health and safety. A propulsive, dramatic, heartbreaking book.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

By Katherine Boo

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (Scribner, 2012)

Having interviewed more than 300 people over the course of 10 years, Solomon explores the experience of parenting a child fundamentally different from oneself. The children of these parents are, as Solomon recounts, “deaf or dwarfs; they have Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia or multiple severe disabilities; they are prodigies; they are people conceived in rape or who commit crimes; they are transgender.” Far From the Tree is mammoth, but its oceanic scope is essential to convey the infinite variety in humanity’s ability to cope with the differences among us. As the collator of all this material, Solomon makes his own emotional and intellectual growth one of the book’s themes, as he describes how his subjects helped him shed the blinders he once wore. At the heart of this extraordinary project is the mystery of what makes a group of people a family. Blood, it turns out, is not always enough, but neither are many other commonalities in identity. Building true kinship starts as a choice and then often comes to seem inevitable, an act of will in the face of daunting odds that ends up feeling like a miracle.

Far From the Tree

By Andrew Solomon

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane (Viking, 2012)

Macfarlane cares passionately about two things: landscape and language. This vividly sensuous account of several walking tours, plus a respectable bout of sailing, describes his experiences with ancient routes, most created by peoples whose names have been lost to time, but whose imprint on Earth lives on thanks to the countless feet that have followed them. He argues that similar age-old paths crisscross the sea, remembered by sailors even if they leave no visual trace. Macfarlane’s desire to more fully experience the places he visits—mostly in Britain but also in Spain and Tibet—is so keen he takes off his shoes to feel the rock, grass, heather, and (in one painful incident) gorse under his feet. His travels aren’t without human interest, either; they always seem to include meetings with fascinating poets and artists, like a man who plans to suspend a life-size figure made of human bones and calf skin inside a boulder whose location only a handful of people will ever know. Like all of Macfarlane’s work, this book is a charm against the streamlined, the global, the generically virtual. It is a paean to the irreducible reality of stone and leaf and wave.

The Old Ways

By Robert Macfarlane

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012)

The secret of a great true crime book is not how the author writes about the crime, but how skillfully he articulates the effect it has on the survivors and the secrets it betrays about the society that let it happen. Parry, Tokyo bureau chief for the Times of London, covered the story of the murder of Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old former flight attendant who disappeared while working as a hostess in the city’s Roppongi district. Her body was found in a cave seven months later. Parry offers a devastating portrait of the inadequacies of Japan’s criminal justice system, as it struggled to comprehend that a serial killer was responsible. Eventually, the son of a Korean-Japanese businessman was convicted, absurdly, of abducting and dismembering Blackman but not of killing her. Blackman’s warring divorced parents play major roles in Parry’s account, from the father who kept the search for Lucie going to the embittered mother, who could not resist the opportunity to strike back at her ex. The killer himself is an impenetrable cipher, but Parry portrays the people whose lives he devastated in all their complexity: heroic, flawed, stricken, and ultimately sympathetic.

People Who Eat Darkness

By Richard Lloyd Parry

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright (Knopf, 2013)

This book might just be the perfect exposé: a consummate journalist writing about an outrageously malfeasant subject and raising urgent themes. Wright fell down this particular rabbit hole after writing for the New Yorker about the Church of Scientology’s wooing of celebrities, and he came in for some tweaking over the extremely measured tone he employs while recounting the shenanigans of the religion’s founder, science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, and the even-worse behavior of his successor, David Miscavige. But Wright’s refusal to rant and rave—even when presented with countless examples of church skullduggery, mendacity, and brutality, not to mention the sheer, flagrant kookiness—turns out to be his secret weapon. Making every effort to be fair, allowing for the bad press and outright repression that often greets new religions, Wright assembles a wall of proof, brick by damning, implacable brick. It doesn’t hurt that Scientology’s story is both utterly bizarre—including a prison camp in Southern California, a seagoing headquarters designed to evade the IRS and other authorities, and campaigns to induce mental illness in church critics—and a case study in American self-help hucksterism.

Going Clear

By Lawrence Wright

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (Harper, 2013)

At least four and possibly as many as 14 murders have been attributed to a still-unknown individual who dumped his victims’ remains along a desolate beachside highway on Long Island. For most true-crime writers, the lack of an identified killer would make this book a nonstarter, but Kolker, who has covered the investigation for New York magazine for several years, turns that liability into a strength. As Kolker tells the story of how more than a dozen young women drifted to the margins of society and became vulnerable to one or more predators, he does justice to the painful complexity of these women’s family lives, their talents and dreams, their battles with substance abuse and sexual violence, and their fraught relationships with their mothers, as well as the friends and relatives who fought to keep their memories alive and the search for their killer going. The unifying features of all their stories are class, poverty, and the economic temptations of sex work. Another is that the authorities did not take their disappearances seriously until four of them were found buried in the same place. Kolker, who has an uncanny ability to play fly on the wall, catches members of the police and the media dismissing the victims; it was only the possibility of a serial killer that made them count. Kolker refuses to let their murderer define them.

By Robert Kolker

The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing ( Picador, 2013)

Not all great American writers have been big drinkers, but there are enough souses among them for Laing, a British woman intoxicated by the wide-open promises of our national literature, to engineer a road trip around their boozy misadventures. Although not an alcoholic herself, Laing grew up in a family warped by her mother’s partner’s drinking, and that story weaves through her account of her travels to the places where six men—John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver, and John Berryman—wrote, got hammered, and dried out. Laing’s readings of their work are extraordinarily sharp and sensitive, and her description of the places she visited and what happened to her there may be even better. (A bald eagle in flight looks like “a coat thrown into the air, ragged and enormous.”) But the true subject of this gorgeously sorrowful book is the drive toward self-destruction, and what it means to live close to a person who can’t resist its siren call.

The Trip to Echo Spring

By Olivia Laing

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)

This choral account of American life over the past 35 years is told from the points of view of famous individuals (Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Warren, Colin Powell, Alice Waters) and unknowns (a black labor organizer, a would-be entrepreneur high on self-help nostrums, an Ohio woman who lost her retirement savings to a Ponzi scheme, and in one bravura chapter, the city of Tampa as it underwent a cascade of mortgage foreclosures following the 2008 recession). Packer strives to transmit each subject’s narrative without editorializing or moralizing, an approach that feels radical a mere six years after the book’s publication, since today the imperative to opine never seems to let up. As a result, The Unwinding is almost disorienting, like coming inside after a day spent walking into a stiff wind. But once you get used to it, Packer’s approach opens up the space to contemplate how these different people experience and respond to their sense that America is coming apart. The few exceptions practically glow with significance, from the tightknit family of poor Floridians who struggled with one setback after another but always had one another’s backs to the owner of a handful of empty motels, who chose to fight the automated foreclosure system with the help of her community and clan. “Usha Patel was not a native-born American,” Packer writes in a typically astute (if atypically subjective) sentence, “which is to say, she wasn’t alone.”

The Unwinding

By George Packer

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (Knopf, 2013)

Deraniyagala, an economist at the University of London and Columbia University, was vacationing with her family in Sri Lanka in 2004, when she looked out the window and saw the ocean rise up and rush toward the balcony of their holiday rental. By the end of the day, Deraniyagala had lost her parents, her husband, and their two young sons to the Boxing Day Tsunami. It is the kind of devastation that might seem beyond words, and yet Deraniyagala finds them; she is, it turns out, a very gifted writer. Most of Wave describes the aftermath of the tragedy. It is an account of grief that refuses to turn away from ugliness or wallow in sentiment, and yet it is acutely beautiful because of Deraniyagala’s devotion to the truth. There are weeks of sleeping, then drinking, then a demented campaign to eject the couple that moved into her parents’ old house. Finally, two years after the tsunami, Deraniyagala returned to the London home she once shared with her husband and sons, a place where a dirty old baby bowl repurposed as a garden toy becomes a precious talisman of the lost. Slowly, her pain clears enough for her to fill in portraits of those boys, that man, vivid enough to pierce the reader with a sliver of her own mourning. Deraniyagala’s story alone would have made this book unusual, but it is her artistry that makes it indelible.

By Sonali Deraniyagala

Citizen: An American Lyric  by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press, 2014)

Part poetry collection, part memoir, part book-length critical essay,  Citizen  takes risks other books wouldn’t dare, and it reads like no other title on this list. A dazzling meditation on invisibility, blackness, and America,  Citizen  grapples with the double-take moments in daily life: “Hold up, did you just hear, did you just say, did you just see, did you just do that?” And it asks other, more pointed questions: What was rising up in Serena Williams’ throat her entire career? What did the water in New Orleans want? Whose arm is that, flailing from the sea behind J.M.W. Turner’s slave ship? Midway through this wrenching and mordantly funny book, written entirely to an unnamed “you,” Rankine addresses the  first  person, the point of view of the traditional memoir. The first person, she writes, is “a symbol for something”: “The pronoun barely holding the person together.”

By Claudia Rankine

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History  by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt, 2014)

The Sixth Extinction  is a moving elegy to the species lost over the centuries to catastrophes both natural and man-made. But it’s also a warning about what awaits the animals of Earth in the Anthropocene, the climate-changed and human-shaped era in which we now find ourselves. The result is a chilling, fascinating history of mass extinction, those once-every-hundred-million-years-or-so events in which the Earth’s population of species crashes. “During mass extinction events,” Kolbert writes, “the usual rules of survival are suspended.” Once-dominant species are wiped out in the geologic snap of a finger. No book has made the reality of how humans are endangering the future not only of their planet but of their species more clear to readers than this beautifully written, perfectly reported, passionately argued model of explanatory science journalism.

The Sixth Extinction

By Elizabeth Kolbert

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Talk about low concept: Stuff Matters is about, among other things, concrete, glass, porcelain, paper, graphite, stainless steel, and plastic. This is the man-made stuff all around us and so mundane we barely give it a second thought. Miodownik, a materials scientist with the soul of a poet, sings of the magic hidden within these ordinary substances. Stuff Matters describes how our stuff (bricks, coffee mugs) gets made and what it may someday be able to do for us (invisibility cloaks, bionic human limbs, exploding billiard balls, an elevator to outer space, concrete that can be rolled up like fabric or purify air). He also celebrates the remarkable properties of everyday stuff we take for granted, like paper, the stuff of love letters and old photographs, and glass—a substance once so rare that a lump of desert sand that had been struck and melted by lightning was one of the most valuable “gems” in King Tut’s tomb at the time of his burial. To read Stuff Matters is to see the humble objects around us afresh and to grasp the wonders they represent for the first time.

Stuff Matters

By Mark Miodownik

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life  by William Finnegan (Penguin Press, 2015)

You may think you don’t care about a life spent chasing waves all over the world, but William Finnegan’s memoir so precisely distills the “brief, sharp glimpse of eternity” the surfer gets from riding a board through a crystal-blue tube on a perfect run that a hundred pages into  Barbarian Days  you, too, will have stepped through the looking glass. It’s clear from Finnegan’s rueful retelling of his younger days all that he endured due to the life he chose: He experiences terror and pain on the waves; he punishes his body with scrapes, a broken nose, torn ankle cartilage, sun-caused cataracts; relationships with friends and family pale next to the life of a “latter-day barbarian” who rejects the values of duty. But years of hunting surf also create unlikely friendships, from the Hawaiian kids of Finnegan’s Oahu childhood to the “goofyfoot dancer” who helps Finnegan find waves in the cold waters off Long Island, a quick subway ride from the longtime New Yorker journalist’s apartment.  Barbarian Days  is a masterpiece of sports writing, focusing its lens on the smallest unit of both athletic and artistic achievement: the single human body, attempting to do something difficult and beautiful.

Barbarian Days

By William Finnegan

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones ( Bloomsbury Press, 2015)

The opioid epidemic snuck up on a lot of urban middle-class Americans, but not Quinones, who quit his job at the Los Angeles Times to write Dreamland, the first and still the best book-length examination of the crisis. He approached the story from two widely disparate perspectives: from the small towns and cities where doctors’ belief in Big Pharma’s lies about the nonaddictive properties of new drugs like OxyContin led to overprescription and pill mills, and from the obscure Mexican state of Nayarit, where local clans mounted a fully vertically integrated heroin trade, controlling every aspect from growing the poppies to delivering dope to customers’ doors. He reports fully and deeply on both. Quinones’ depiction of the contrast between the strangely healthy and robust communities in Nayarit and the economically and socially disintegrating American towns where the dealers preferred to operate (avoiding clashes with the established drug dealers in metropolitan centers) is both surprising and enlightening.

By Sam Quinones

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Grove Press, 2015)

Everyone mourns in her own way, and for Macdonald, after her beloved father’s death, that way was by taming a goshawk, a process described in this scratched, muddy, glorious memoir. A practiced falconer, Macdonald understands how ill-advised her project is; the species is famously hard to train, stubborn in its wildness. But she falls in love with the bird, “a reptile. A fallen angel. A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water.” Macdonald’s writing is similarly gilded and faintly antiquarian as she pursues the medieval task of training the hawk, named Mabel, to fly to her leather-gloved hand on command. Mabel can’t be cuddled and won’t look up at her with liquid, adoring eyes—this isn’t that kind of sappy, an-animal-saved-me memoir. But the reader gradually realizes that Mabel, with all her difficulty and alien, nonmammalian ways, is exactly what Macdonald needs. The writer is reconciling herself not to loss but to life, a thing as beautiful and terrible, as merciless and vital, as the goshawk.

H Is for Hawk

By Helen Macdonald

Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon, 2015)

Born just after the end of World War II to a Chicago pediatrician and his “socialite” wife, Margo Jefferson grew up in “Negroland,” the name she gives to the black American elite—a class defined by profession, affluence, pedigree, and to her dismay, skin color and comportment. The appeal of her memoir lies in Jefferson’s beautifully articulated ambivalence about most everything—including memoir itself, a form that, she observes, offers the perpetual temptation to “bask in your own innocence” and “revere your grief.” Jefferson refuses to do either, or to discard the problematic word in her title. “I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonder, glorious and terrible,” she writes. “A word for runaway slave posters and civil rights proclamations.” Jefferson’s social class fostered her exquisite sense of taste (she became a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic for the New York Times), but its members, as she would grow to understand during the upheaval of the 1960s, also “settled for a desiccated white facsimile, and abandoned a vital black culture.” Jefferson’s memoir of growing up in this milieu, with its strenuous gentility and complex relationship to the American racial caste system, is both loving and darkly ironic, as rich and seasoned as the life it recounts.

By Margo Jefferson

The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir by Vivian Gornick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)

One of her generation’s greatest memoirists ( Fierce Attachments )   and essayists, Gornick devotes this book to puzzling out how she became an “odd woman,” a single and childless urbanite, intoxicated by the street life of Manhattan. A red diaper baby, she fantasized during her Bronx childhood about leading the revolution and finding true love, but as she looks back, she decides that she, like her mother and several of her literary heroines, “was born to find the wrong man,” to seek “the unholy dissatisfaction that will keep life permanently at bay.” In exchange, she got New York, which (almost) never fails to satisfy her with its parade of characters and “the variety and inventiveness of survival technique.” In supple, searching prose, Gornick meditates on the riches of friendship—particularly her bond with Leonard, a gay man who shares her saturnine take on just about everything—and the life of the mind, as well as the self-knowledge that comes with age. For a woman who claims to have “a penchant for the negative,” she has produced a remarkably inspiring book.

The Odd Woman and the City

By Vivian Gornick

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS  by David France (Knopf, 2016)

For decades, the story of the fight against AIDS seemed one of nothing but frustration, shame, and a body count in the hundreds of thousands. Except that it wasn’t: Even at the height of the epidemic, scientists worked feverishly to understand the virus and its effects—and just as importantly, activists battled to increase those scientists’ funding, to focus and target their research, and to erase the stigma of those who suffered from it. In his monumental history of that battle, from the first cases in the 1970s to the mid-’90s advent of the “triple cocktail” that made AIDS a manageable condition for many economically advantaged Americans, David France notes that many of those activists’ work was extensively documented, because the activists themselves feared they’d never live to see the results of their work. Many of them didn’t. France tells their stories with clear-eyed compassion, leaning not only on his dogged research skills but also on his history as both activist and reporter for the New York Native. This is the crucial book for understanding how one of the great social transformations of our era was not the result of the arc of history bending naturally toward justice but the arc of history bending thanks to the tireless, agonizing work of those who put their lives on the line.

How to Survive a Plague

By David France

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (Knopf, 2016)

Jahren’s memoir is a paean to her life in science, specifically the kind of science that involves getting your hands dirty and reaching for a specimen vial. She is a professor of geobiology specializing in the life cycle of plants, and while this involves a certain amount of travel and mucking about, she feels most at home in her lab, “a place where I move. I stand, walk, sit, fetch, carry, climb, and crawl. My lab is a place where it’s just as well that I can’t sleep, because there are so many things to do in the world besides that.” As inspiring as it is to read someone writing so well about a line of work whose pleasures often go unsung, the greatest treat in Lab Girl is Jahren’s account of her friendship with Bill, her scientific partner of more than 20 years. A deep and entirely platonic bond between the kind of people who celebrate receiving their advanced degrees by blowing glass tubes full of carbon dioxide into the wee hours is really not the sort of thing you often get to read about. This friendship, as fiercely committed and abiding as any blood tie, is built on junk food, scavenged equipment, wisecracks, and a shared hunger for both knowledge and the task of getting it. When the normally taciturn Bill confesses to feeling alone after his father’s death, Jahren thinks, “no matter what our future held, my first task would always be to kick a hole in the world and make a space for him where he could safely be his eccentric self.” She doesn’t know how to tell him this, so she shows him, and us, instead.

By Hope Jahren

One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America  by Gene Weingarten (Blue Rider Press, 2019)

Weingarten, a longtime, Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post writer, begins his book with a gimmick: He and his editor choose a random day—Sunday, Dec. 28, 1986—and Weingarten sets out to report every single interesting thing that happened. The result is funny, heart-wrenching, chilling, and absurd, as Weingarten chronicles a serial killer, a heart transplant, a tragic fire, an  unlikely romance , a political miscalculation, a Grateful Dead concert—all of them expert portraits of American life in miniature. The book is a stunt, a dare, but it’s also proof of the belief that animates all the books on this list: There are stories everywhere. The nonfiction writer’s job is to look long and hard enough to find them, and to tell them with enough empathy and care to bring them to life.

By Gene Weingarten

Most Read in 2021

Year-End Lists!

We don’t publish a lot of lists. But this year, having launched this new website with nearly complete access to 30 years of magazine archives, we thought it seemed like a good time to look back at the stories that resonated with our readers. 

In that spirit, we’ve compiled the most-read pieces published on our website in 2021, as well as the most-read work from our archives. 

And for good measure, we’ve pulled together a few pieces worth an honorable mention; our favorite Sunday Short Reads ; CNF content that was republished elsewhere; and the best advice, inspiration, and think pieces from some of our favorite publications.

Finally, if you enjoy what follows, please know there’s plenty more! We have a soft paywall on our site, which allows for three free reads a month. To get unlimited access for as little as $4/month, simply subscribe today.

Top 10 Published in 2021

• Almost Behind Us A dental emergency interrupts a meaningful anniversary // JENNIFER BOWERING DELISLE
• El Valle, 1991 An early lesson in strength and fragility // AURELIA KESSLER
• Stay at Home All those hours alone with a new baby can be rough // JARED HANKS
• The Desert Was His Home There are many things we don’t know about Mr. Otomatsu Wada, and a few things we do // ERIC L. MULLER
• Just a Big Cat The dramatic boredom of jury duty // ERICA GOSS
• What Will We Do for Fun Now? Her parents survived World War II and the Blitz just fine … didn’t they? // JANE RATCLIFFE
• Harriet Two brothers and a turtle // TYLER McANDREW
• Rango Getting existential at a funeral for a lizard   // JARRETT G. ZIEMER
• Mouse Lessons from a hamster emergency // BEVERLY PETRAVICIUS
• Roxy & the Worm Box Trying to recapture a childhood love of dirt // ANJOLI ROY

Top 5 from the Archive

• Picturing the Personal Essay A visual guide // TIM BASCOM
• The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction The essayist at work   // LEE GUTKIND
• The Line Between Fact & Fiction Do not add, and do not deceive // ROY PETER CLARK
• The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action The braided essay may be the most effective form for our times // NICOLE WALKER
• On Fame, Success, and Writing Like a Mother#^@%*& An interview with Cheryl Strayed   // ELISSA BASSIST

Honorable Mention ( ICYMI Essays)

• Latinx Heritage Month Who do you complain to when it’s HR you have a problem with? // MELISSA LUJAN MESKU
• Women’s Work Sometimes, freedom means choosing your obligations // EILEEN GARVIN
• Bloodlines and Bitter Syrup Avoiding prison in Huntsville, Texas, is nearly impossible // WILL BRIDGES
• Stealth A nontraditional couple struggles with keeping part of their life together private while undertaking the public act of filing for marriage // HEATHER OSTERMAN-DAVIS
• Something Like Vertigo An environmental writer sees parallels between her father’s declining equilibrium and a world turned upside down   // ELIZABETH RUSH

Our favorite Sunday Short Reads from our partners 

from BREVITY

• What Joy Looks Like SSR #128  // DORIAN FOX
• How to Do Nothing SSR #156 // ABIGAIL THOMAS

from DIAGRAM

• At 86, My Grandmother Regrets Two Things SSR #134 // DIANA XIN
• The Seedy Corner SSR #140 // KIMBERLY GARZA

from RIVER TEETH

• Waste Not SSR #131 // DESIREE COOPER
• This Is Orange SSR #141 // JILL KOLONGOWSKI

from SWEET LITERARY

• The Pilgrim’s Prescription SSR #122  // CAROLYN ALESSIO
• Leaves in the Hall SSR #160 // ANNE GUDGER

Our favorite stories from around the internet. 

Advice & Inspiration

• In Praise of the Meander Rebecca Solnit on letting nonfiction narrative find its own way (via Lit Hub )
• What’s Missing Here? A Fragmentary, Lyric Essay About Fragmentary, Lyric Essays Julie Marie Wade on the mode that never quite feels finished (via Lit Hub )
• Getting Honest about Om A brief essay on audience (via Brevity )
• Using the Personal to Write the Global Intimate details, personal exploration and respect for facts (via Nieman Storyboard )
• Fix Your Scene Shapes And quickly improve your manuscript (via Jane Friedman’s blog)

The State of Nonfiction

• What the NYT ‘Guest Essay’ Means for the Future of Creative Nonfiction Description (via Brevity )
• How the Role of Personal Expression and Experience Is Changing Journalism On the future of the newsroom (via Poynter )
• 50 Shades of Nuance in a Polarized World An essayist ponders when to write black-and-white polemics that attract clicks, and when to be more considered (via Nieman Storyboard )
• These Literary Memoirs Take a Different Tack Description (via NY Times )
• The Politics of Gatekeeping On reconsidering the ethics of blind submissions (via Poets & Writers )

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2024, So Far

Here’s what memoirs, histories, and essay collections we’re indulging in this spring.

Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Truth-swallowing can too often taste of forced medicine. Where the most successful nonfiction triumphs is in its ability to instruct, encourage, and demand without spoon-feeding. Getting to read and reward this year’s best nonfiction, then, is as much a treat as a lesson. I can’t pretend to be as intelligent, empathetic, self-knowledgeable, or even as well-read as many of the authors on this list. But appreciating the results of their labors is a more-than-sufficient consolation.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka

There’s a lot to ponder in the latest project from New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, who elegantly argues that algorithms have eroded—if not erased—the essential development of personal taste. As Chayka puts forth in Filterworld , the age of flawed-but-fulfilling human cultural curation has given way to the sanitization of Spotify’s so-called “Discover” playlists, or of Netflix’s Emily in Paris, or of subway tile and shiplap . There’s perhaps an old-school sanctimony to this criticism that some readers might chafe against. But there’s also a very real and alarming truth to Chayka’s insights, assembled alongside interviews and examples that span decades, mediums, and genres under the giant umbrella we call “culture.” Filterworld is the kind of book worth wrestling with, critiquing, and absorbing deeply—the antithesis of mindless consumption.

American Girls: One Woman's Journey Into the Islamic State and Her Sister's Fight to Bring Her Home by Jessica Roy

In 2019, former ELLE digital director Jessica Roy published a story about the Sally sisters , two American women who grew up in the same Jehovah’s Witness family and married a pair of brothers—but only one of those sisters ended up in Syria, her husband fighting on behalf of ISIS. American Girls , Roy’s nonfiction debut, expands upon that story of sibling love, sibling rivalry, abuse and extremism, adding reams of reporting to create a riveting tale that treats its subjects with true empathy while never flinching from the reality of their choices.

Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood by Paula Delgado-Kling

In this small but gutting work of memoir-meets-biography, Colombian journalist Paula Delgado-King chronicles two lives that intersect in violence: hers, and that of Leonor, a Colombian child solider who was beckoned into the guerilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) only to endure years of death and abuse. Over the course of 19 years, Delgago-King followed Leonor through her recruitment into FARC; her sexual slavery to a man decades her senior; her eventual escape; and her rehabilitation. The author’s resulting account is visceral, a clear-eyed account of the utterly human impact wrought by war.

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton

A meticulous work of research and commitment, Antonia Hylton’s Madness takes readers deep inside the nearly century-old history of Maryland’s Crownsville State Hospital, one of the only segregated mental asylums with records—and a campus—that remain to this day. Featuring interviews with both former Crownsville staff and family members of those who lived there, Madness is a radically complex work of historical study, etching the intersections of race, mental health, criminal justice, public health, memory, and the essential quest for human dignity.

Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections by Emily Nagoski

Out January 30.

Emily Nagoski’s bestselling Come As You Are opened up a generations-wide conversation about women and their relationship with sex: why some love it, why some hate it, and why it can feel so impossible to find help or answers in either camp. In Come Together , Nagoski returns to the subject with a renewed focus on pleasure—and why it is ultimately so much more pivotal for long-term sexual relationships than spontaneity or frequency. This is not only an accessible, gentle-hearted guide to a still-taboo topic; it’s a fascinating exploration of how our most intimate connections can not just endure but thrive.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

A remarkable volume—its 500-page length itself underscoring the author’s commitment to the complexity of the problem—Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tracks the history of the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border through the intimate accounts of those who’ve lived it. In painstaking detail, Blitzer compiles the history of the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, and illustrates how foreign and immigration policies have irrevocably altered human lives—as well as tying them to one another. “Immigrants have a way of changing two places at once: their new homes and their old ones,” Blitzer writes. “Rather than cleaving apart the worlds of the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the Americans were irrevocably binding them together.”

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson

Out February 6.

“I used to say taking a trip was just a coping mechanism,” writes Shayla Lawson in their travel-memoir-in-essays How to Live Free in a Dangerous World . “I know better now; it’s my way of mapping the Earth, so I know there’s something to come back to.” In stream-of-consciousness prose, the This Is Major author guides the reader through an enthralling journey across Zimbabwe, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Bermuda, and beyond, using each location as the touchstone for their essays exploring how (and why) race, gender, grief, sexuality, beauty, and autonomy impact their experience of a land and its people. There’s a real courage and generosity to Lawson’s work; readers will find much here to embolden their own self-exploration.

Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker

There’s no end to the arguments for “why art matters,” but in our era of ephemeral imagery and mass-produced decor, there is enormous wisdom to be gleaned from Get the Picture , Bianca Bosker’s insider account of art-world infatuation. In this new work of nonfiction, readers have the pleasure of following the Cork Dork author as she embeds herself amongst the gallerists, collectors, painters, critics, and performers who fill today’s contemporary scene. There, they teach her (and us) what makes art art— and why that question’s worth asking in an increasingly fractured world.

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

A profoundly unusual, experimental, yet engrossing work of not-quite-memoir, Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries is exactly what its title promises: The book comprises a decade of the author’s personal diaries, the sentences copied and pasted into alphabetical order. Each chapter begins with a new letter, all the accumulated sentences starting with “A”, then “B,” and so forth. The resulting effect is all but certain to repel some readers who crave a more linear storyline, but for those who can understand her ambition beyond the form, settling into the rhythm of Heti’s poetic observations gives way to a rich narrative reward.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon

Out February 20.

“Even now, I can taste my own history,” writes Chantha Nguon in her gorgeous Slow Noodles . “One occupying force tried to erase it all.” In this deeply personal memoir, Nguon guides us through her life as a Cambodian refugee from the Khmer Rouge; her escapes to Vietnam and Thailand; the loss of all those she loved and held dear; and the foods that kept her heritage—and her story—ultimately intact. Interwoven with recipes and lists of ingredients, Nguon’s heart-rending writing reinforces the joy and agony of her core thesis: “The past never goes away.”

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

The first time I stumbled upon a Leslie Jamison essay on (the platform formerly known as) Twitter, I was transfixed; I stayed in bed late into the morning as I clicked through her work, swallowing paragraphs like Skittles. But, of course, Jamison’s work is so much more satisfying than candy, and her new memoir, Splinters , is Jamison operating at the height of her talents. A tale of Jamison’s early motherhood and the end of her marriage, the book is unshrinking, nuanced, radiant, and so wondrously honest—a referendum on the splintered identities that complicate and comprise the artist, the wife, the mother, the woman.

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider by Michiko Kakutani

The former chief book critic of the New York Times , Michiko Kakutani is not only an invaluable literary denizen, but also a brilliant observer of how politics and culture disrupt the mechanics of power and influence. In The Great Wave , she turns our attention toward global instability as epitomized by figures such as Donald Trump and watershed moments such as the creation of AI. In the midst of these numerous case studies, she argues for how our deeply interconnected world might better weather the competing crises that threaten to submerge us, should we not choose to better understand them.

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg

From the author of the now-ubiquitous The Power of Habit arrives Supercommunicators , a head-first study of the tools that make conversations actually work . Charles Duhigg makes the case that every chat is really about one of three inquiries (“What’s this about?” “How do we feel?” or “Who are we?”) and knowing one from another is the key to real connection. Executives and professional-speaker types are sure to glom on to this sort of work, but my hope is that other, less business-oriented motives might be satisfied by the logic this volume imbues.

Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa

Out February 27.

“Tell me your favorite childhood memory, and I’ll tell you who you are,” or so writes Deborah Jackson Taffa in Whiskey Tender , her memoir of assimilation and separation as a mixed-tribe Native woman raised in the shadow of a specific portrait of the American Dream. As a descendant of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, Taffa illustrates her childhood in New Mexico while threading through the histories of her parents and grandparents, themselves forever altered by Indian boarding schools, government relocation, prison systems, and the “erasure of [our] own people.” Taffa’s is a story of immense and reverent heart, told with precise and pure skill.

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

With its chapters organized by their position in the infamous five stages of grief, Sloane Crosley’s Grief is For People is at times bracingly funny, then abruptly sober. The effect is less like whiplash than recognition; anyone who has lost or grieved understands the way these emotions crash into each other without warning. Crosley makes excellent use of this reality in Grief is For People , as she weaves between two wrenching losses in her own life: the death of her dear friend Russell Perreault, and the robbery of her apartment. Crosley’s resulting story—short but powerful—is as difficult and precious and singular as grief itself.

American Negra by Natasha S. Alford

In American Negra , theGrio and CNN journalist Natasha S. Alford turns toward her own story, tracing the contours of her childhood in Syracuse, New York, as she came to understand the ways her Afro-Latino background built her—and set her apart. As the memoir follows Alford’s coming-of-age from Syracuse to Harvard University, then abroad and, later, across the U.S., the author highlights how she learned to embrace the cornerstones of intersectionality, in spite of her country’s many efforts to encourage the opposite.

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

Out March 5.

A raw and assured account by one of the most famous queer icons of our era, RuPaul’s memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings , promises readers arms-wide-open access to the drag queen before Drag Race . Detailing his childhood in California, his come-up in the drag scene, his own intimate love story, and his quest for living proudly in the face of unceasing condemnation, The House of Hidden Meanings is easily one of the most intriguing celebrity projects of the year.

Here After by Amy Lin

Here After reads like poetry: Its tiny, mere-sentences-long chapters only serve to strengthen its elegiac, ferocious impact. I was sobbing within minutes of opening this book. But I implore readers not to avoid the heavy subject matter; they will find in Amy Lin’s memoir such a profound and complex gift: the truth of her devotion to her husband, Kurtis, and the reality of her pain when he died suddenly, with neither platitudes nor hyperbole. This book is a little wonder—a clear, utterly courageous act of love.

Thunder Song by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

Red Paint author and poet Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe returns this spring with a rhythmic memoir-in-essays called Thunder Song , following the beats of her upbringing as a queer Coast Salish woman entrenched in communities—the punk and music scenes, in particular—that did not always reflect or respect her. Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe’s writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope.

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse" by Emily Raboteau

Out March 12.

In Emily Raboteau’s Lessons For Survival , the author (and novelist, essayist, professor, and street photographer) tells us her framework for the book is modeled loosely after one of her mother’s quilts: “pieced together out of love by a parent who wants her children to inherit a world where life is sustainable.” The essays that follow are meditations and reports on motherhood in the midst of compounding crises, whether climate change or war or racism or mental health. Through stories and photographs drawn from her own life and her studies abroad, Raboteau grounds the audience in the beauty—and resilience—of nature.

Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE. 

What to Read

Launching a Divorce Book When You’re Married

The AstroTwins’ Best Hack for Your Birth Chart

Meeting the Man Who Panned My Book on Goodreads

Shelf Life: Abi Daré

Casey McQuiston Wants to Teach You About Queer Sex

Shelf Life: Emily Giffin

Taffy Brodesser-Akner on 'Long Island Compromise'

Are You Ready for a Lit Girl Summer?

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Writes the Truth

Shelf Life: Jay Ellis

Katie Kitamura Reveals Her Next Novel, 'Audition'

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Nonfiction Books » Essays

Browse book recommendations:

Nonfiction Books

• Best Nonfiction Books of 2022
• Best Nonfiction Books of 2023
• Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
• Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years
• Graphic Nonfiction
• Literary Nonfiction
• Narrative Nonfiction
• Nonfiction Series
• Short Nonfiction

Last updated: May 06, 2024

“Essays root ideas in personal experience”, the philosopher Alain de Botton tells us in his interview  in which he discussed five books of “illuminating essays”.  He chooses The Crowded Dance of Modern Life by Virginia Woolf, as well as a selection of DW Winnicott , The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer, The Secret Power of Beauty by John Armstrong and Yoga for People Who Can’t be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer, which “is in praise of slacker-dom and not doing very much. It’s not about Yoga at all.”

David Russell, Associate Professor at Oxford University, recommends the best Victorian essays , including selections by Charles Lamb , Matthew Arnold , George Eliot , Walter Pater and (one twentieth-century writer) Marion Milner and discusses the connection between the essay and the development of urban culture in the 19 th century.

Dame Hermione Lee, the writer's biographer, chooses her best books on Virginia Woolf .  She discusses how and why her stature has grown so much since the 1960s and selects a range of her books including diaries and novels, as well as essays, including To the Lighthouse , which she considers Woolf’s greatest novel, her Diaries and her essay " Walter Sickert: A Conversation " , which can be seen as a meditation on the disparities between painting and writing as art forms.

Adam Gopnik , of the New Yorker , chooses Woolf’s The Common Reader as well as collections by Max Beerbohm , EB White , Randall Jarrell and Clive James .

The Best Essays: the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award , recommended by Adam Gopnik

Had i known: collected essays by barbara ehrenreich, unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author’s entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik, writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

David Russell on The Victorian Essay

Selected prose by charles lamb, culture and anarchy and other writings by matthew arnold, selected essays, poems, and other writings by george eliot, studies in the history of the renaissance by walter pater, the hands of the living god: an account of a psychoanalytic treatment by marion milner.

With the advent of the Victorian age, polite maxims of eighteenth-century essays in the  Spectator  were replaced by a new generation of writers who thought deeply—and playfully—about social relationships, moral responsibility, education and culture. Here, Oxford literary critic  David Russell explores the distinct qualities that define the Victorian essay and recommends five of its greatest practitioners.

With the advent of the Victorian age, polite maxims of eighteenth-century essays in the  Spectator  were replaced by a new generation of writers who thought deeply—and playfully—about social relationships, moral responsibility, education and culture. Here, Oxford literary critic David Russell explores the distinct qualities that define the Victorian essay and recommends five of its greatest practitioners.

The Best Virginia Woolf Books , recommended by Hermione Lee

To the lighthouse by virginia woolf, the years by virginia woolf, walter sickert: a conversation by virginia woolf, on being ill by virginia woolf, selected diaries by virginia woolf.

Virginia Woolf was long dismissed as a 'minor modernist' but now stands as one of the giants of 20th century literature. Her biographer, Hermione Lee , talks us through the novels, essays, and diaries of Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf was long dismissed as a ‘minor modernist’ but now stands as one of the giants of 20th century literature. Her biographer, Hermione Lee, talks us through the novels, essays, and diaries of Virginia Woolf.

Adam Gopnik on his Favourite Essay Collections

And even now by max beerbohm, the common reader by virginia woolf, essays of e.b. white by e.b. white, a sad heart at the supermarket by randall jarrell, visions before midnight by clive james.

What makes a great essayist? Who had it, who didn’t? And whose work left the biggest mark on the New Yorker ? Longtime writer for the magazine, Adam Gopnik , picks out five masters of the craft

What makes a great essayist? Who had it, who didn’t? And whose work left the biggest mark on the New Yorker ? Longtime writer for the magazine, Adam Gopnik, picks out five masters of the craft

Illuminating Essays , recommended by Alain de Botton

The crowded dance of modern life by virginia woolf, home is where we start from by d w winnicott, the wisdom of life by arthur schopenhauer, the secret power of beauty by john armstrong, yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it by geoff dyer.

The essay format allows the author to develop ideas but add a personal touch, says the popular philosopher Alain de Botton . Here, he chooses his favourite essay collections

The essay format allows the author to develop ideas but add a personal touch, says the popular philosopher Alain de Botton. Here, he chooses his favourite essay collections

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

TRY OUR FREE APP

Write your book in Reedsy Studio. Try the beloved writing app for free today.

Craft your masterpiece in Reedsy Studio

Plan, write, edit, and format your book in our free app made for authors.

Guides • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Apr 21, 2021

Nonfiction: 24 Genres and Types of Fact-Based Books

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Martin Cavannagh

Head of Content at Reedsy, Martin has spent over eight years helping writers turn their ambitions into reality. As a voice in the indie publishing space, he has written for a number of outlets and spoken at conferences, including the 2024 Writers Summit at the London Book Fair.

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

Many readers think of nonfiction as a genre in itself. But take a look through your local bookstore and you’ll see dozens of sections devoted to fact-based books, while fiction titles are sorted into just a few broadly defined genres like ‘Fantasy/Sci-Fi’ and ‘General Fiction’!

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. 

Expository nonfiction

Expository nonfiction aims to inform the reader about its subject —  providing an explanation for it, be it a historical event, natural phenomenon, fashion trend, or anything else. 

1. History 

History books are not to be mistaken with textbooks. Rather than cherry-picking details to be memorized about a person, an event, or an era, these nonfiction titles are more like cross-sections in time. They provide readers with as much of the social and political contexts of events as possible with the use of rich primary and secondary sources, so as to better understand their causes and their legacies. 

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond Tapping into geological, agricultural, and biological evidence, Diamond challenges perception of genetic differences and contextualizes the history of human development using various external, environmental conditions.

Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid The Eastern Front of WWII is not as well-discussed as the Western one, though it's just as important. To balance the viewpoints out a little, Anna Reid explores life in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) during one of the longest, costliest, and deadliest military blockades in history. 

2. Philosophy 

This is where the big questions get asked. While ‘philosophy’ conjures up the image of impenetrable books written by Nietzche and Confucius for the enjoyment of beard-stroking academics, that isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of this genre! Contemporary authors have taken care to make their writings more accessible without sacrificing depth of analysis.

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn An introduction to life’s grandest topics (ethics, freedom, self — all that jazz) as told through the prism of history’s greatest philosophers. Suitable for curious readers who don’t know their Aristotles from their Kants.

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson The author smuggles in a history of the great philosopher king by presenting it as a self-help guide. By showing his readers how Marcus Aurelius’s beliefs can apply to modern life, Robertson appeals to readers who wouldn’t otherwise pick up a copy of Meditations from the library.

A Grammar of the Multitude by Paolo Virno See how philosophy has evolved in today’s international world through Paolo Virno's perspective. He advocates for the understanding of people as "multitudes" (courtesy of Dutch Enlightenment thinker, Spinoza). It's recommended that readers go into this book with some previous knowledge on classic philosophical paradigms. 

FREE RESOURCE

Book Proposal Template

Craft a professional pitch for your nonfiction book with our handy template.

3. Religion and Spirituality

Books about religion and spirituality can take many forms. Some are theory-based, some are written from personal experience, and some are structured like a self-help book, with the end goal of helping readers find their spiritual home. Oftentimes, each book focuses on a particular belief system — there are even Christian publishers who are solely dedicated to publishing books about their religion. 

📚 Examples 

Waking the Buddha by Clark Strand An interesting cross between a historical research and a personal spiritual exploration, this book details the rise and continued influence of the Soka Gakkai, an international Buddhist organization that works towards egalitarianism and social justice.

The Power of Now by Ekchert Tolle This self-help-style book brings readers closer to spiritual enlightenment by acknowledging how our mind focuses on the past and the future rather than the present. It's the first step on the path toward mindful connection with the joys of the moment. 

Find the right genre fit for your book

Professional editors and marketers on Reedsy are here to help!

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

Science books, or  “Science & Maths” books — as Amazon would categorize them — can get quite technical. Most of the time, they’re reporting on scientists’ academic research. And so, science books tend to be well-organized and follow academic conventions like referencing and indexing . But while they sound dry, the intriguing questions that they address can always be presented in ways that keep readers coming. In any case, readers can always choose to scan over the complex mathematical proofs, or authors can put all that into the appendix.  

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking See the concept of time through the logical and characteristically witty eyes of this world-renowned scientist. It doesn’t make for the breeziest read, but it will give readers a very in-depth understanding of this arbitrary but ever-present concept. 

Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith Neil deGrasse Tyson takes readers on a tour of the universe's transformations through the years, introducing concepts of moons’ orbits and expanding stars along they way. All of this is a sturdy stepping stone to the complex realm of cosmology. 

5. Popular Science 

Is this type of nonfiction just academic science books but repackaged for laypeople? Why yes indeed. Popular science books take complex research and processes and get rid of most of the jargon, so that your average Joe can pick them up and learn something new about our universe. They’re almost like Vox videos, but that you read instead of watch. 

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson Bill Bryson isn’t a scientist or an anthropologist, but he’s brought together knowledge from various disciplines to create this digestible, comprehensive exploration of the universe and the human race. 

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson Tyson’s expertise as a science communicator shines through with this armchair-expert version of astrophysics, which he claims can be read on noisy buses and trains without much headache. 

6. Politics and Social Sciences 

With the ongoing social and political tumult across the world, there has been a rise in both the reading and writing of this kind of book. Some political and social science books are based more on anecdotal evidence, others are on par with academic papers in terms of depth of research. Either way, they usually pick out a specific feature or structure in society to analyze with a critical eye. 

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson Discover why some nations are stuck in poverty traps with these economists. Using empirical data, they compellingly demonstrate the importance of inclusive institutions in fostering growth. Their writing continues to inspire development theories and strategies worldwide.  

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge It started with a blog post which the author wrote to express her frustration toward the domination of white people in discussions about racism. It became a tour-de-force work on the experiences and realities of deep-rooted racial discrimination in society. 

A book of essays is a collection of themed pieces of writing written by an author, or multiple authors, who often has some sort of authority on or personal experience with the subject matter. While they sound incredibly serious, they don’t require as much research as the types of nonfiction we’ve mentioned above. They’re often quite introspective and personal, like op-ed pieces or magazine articles. In fact, many essay books are made up of articles that were previously published in newspapers or magazines.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin A collection of articles published in Harper’s Magazine , Partisan Review , and The New Leader , in which Baldwin discusses representations of Black people in the media, as well as his experiences as a Black man in Europe. 

The Good Immigrant , edited by Nikesh Shukla 21 writers of color come together to talk about their lives in the UK, and how they're sometimes made to question their sense of belonging despite being born and raised there. 

8. Self-Help 

Out of all the non-fiction genres out there, this is probably the most popular one. The name itself is explanatory: a self-help book provides you with some guidance and actions through which you can solve personal problems. Self-help books can be research-based, or they can be reflective — like an extended blog post. Note, though, that while the latter kind may read somewhat like a memoir in style, if you choose to write a self-help book , you must explicitly advise the reader. 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell What makes a person successful? Gladwell argues that it’s hardly just luck — even prodigies aren’t guaranteed recognition. Pulling from various examples and sociological studies, he identifies several factors, beyond genetics, that anyone can optimize to boost their chances. 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Sometimes what you need is for someone to give it to you straight. That’s when conversational, hilarious, blog-style books like this become handy. Mark Manson’s self-help book is all about accepting what you’re given and not allowing expectations ruin your happiness. 

9. Business and Economics 

While this a broad category that may include volumes with a journalistic flavor, business books tend to be guides to entrepreneurship and management. It’s a medium for those who've had experience in the workplace or the market to share their tips and tricks (and also a good tool for authors to bag guest-speaking events). In this sense, this kind of book is like self-help, but specifically for entrepreneurs and business managers. 

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz Master the art of financial management through real-life case studies and a four-principle system with which can be applied to any business. It's straightfoward and has enough examples to demonstrate its success. 

The Big Short by Michael Lewis Lewis makes the mess of the financial crisis of 2008 that little bit easier to wrap your head around in this darkly humorous book. He follows the stories of ordinary people who fell victim to the American financial sector, revealing the precariousness of this ever-expanding industry. 

10. Health and Wellness

There's no shortage of health and wellness books out there — what do we care about if not a long and healthy life, right? These books cover many different topics, from diets to sleeping habits, from stress management to dealing with anxiety. Most are written by researchers and doctors, who have the technical knowhow to offer sound insight and advice. 

Lifespan by David Sinclair Drawing from his knowledge as a geneticist, Sinclair gives readers the scoop on the ever-popular topic of aging. He assures us that for a long, healthy, and happy life, we should enjoy our chocolate and wine (in moderation, of course).

This Is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo Food provides more than just nutrients for sustenance and growth — what you eat also impacts your mood and mental health. Dr. Uma Naidoo is a psychiatrist, nutritionist, and a professional chef, so you can trust she knows what she’s talking about. 

11. Crafts and Hobbies 

Once upon a time, before Google became the omniscient engine that held the answer to all our questions, people relied on craft books to teach them how to pick up a new hobby. Origami, crochet, calligraphy, gardening — you name it, there’s a book about it. Nowadays, books like these appeal to the audience not solely because of the skills but also the author. Authors are usually someone with an online presence and authority when it comes to the craft, and their book's tone and interior design usually reflect a bit of their personality. 

By Hand by Nicole Miyuki Santo Beautifully designed with plenty of samples with which readers could practice their own calligraphy, Santo’s guide is a meditative exercise book. It’s also a great avenue for her followers on Instagram to come closer to her art by practicing it themselves.  

Alterknit Stitch by Andrea Rangel For knitters who have already nailed down the basics and want to experiment with new patterns, this is the book to get. It demonstrates ways to have fun with this cozy hobby by defying the conventions of knitting. 

12. Travel Guides

Again, the internet seems to have taken over from books when it comes to helping travelers and tourists discover new places. Still, travel guides are a lot more comprehensive, keeping everything you might need to know about budgeting, languages, places to visit (or avoid), and much more, in one place. Ebooks are the perfect format for these guides — they’re easy for travelers to refer to on the go, and they’re not as costly to update to include the latest information. 

The Lonely Planet series This collection has been growing since the 1970s, and it now holds plenty of books with various focuses. There are guides solely on helpful phrases in foreign languages, and then there are regional, country-level, and city guides, all made with contributions from locals. 

The Time Out series While also written by locals, these books focus only on cities (mainly in Europe and the US). As with the magazine of the same name, the content of the books is all about local haunts and hidden shops that tourists may not be aware of. 

13. Cookbooks

Cookbooks make up another type of nonfiction that’s evermore popular, and not just because we’re cooking more and more at home nowadays. They’re increasingly beautiful, and to write a cookbook is to have a vision in mind about what kind of mouth-watering photos (or illustrations!) it would offer alongside easy-to-follow instructions. They also tend to have cohesive themes, i.e. desserts for vegans, at-home experimental fine-dining, or worldly culinary adventures from your kitchen.

In Bibi’s Kitchen by Hawa Hassan and Julia Turshen Grandmothers from eight different Eastern African countries show readers both hearth and heart through the familial stories associated with their food. Beyond the loving taste of traditional homecooked dishes, readers will also get to learn about life in the villages of Africa. 

Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi Israeli-English chef Yotam Ottolenghi is the owner of several branches of restaurants, bakeries and food shops in London, but you can get a taste of his cuisine with this collection of 130 Middle Eastern recipes that can be made within 30 minutes. Who says simple cooking couldn't be adventurous?

Midnight Chicken: & Other Recipes Worth Living For by Ella Risbridger A slightly different take on cookbooks, Midnight Chicken is a manifesto for an joyful life, built on homemade food. Her recipes are simple and homely, just like the illustrations of her book, so that anyone can make them even after a long and tiring day.

14. Parenting and Family 

Parenting is anything but easy, and since Supernanny is not always on air, a little help from experts and those who've had experience dealing with children is the next best thing. From understanding with the psychology of young minds to finding the best environments and ways to nurture them, parenting books with sound academic backing provide useful insights and advice to help readers become better guardians and caregivers. 

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Laura Markham Based on the latest research on brain development and clinical tests, Markham emphasizes the importance of the emotional connection between parent and child in development. When parents understand their own emotions, they can raise their children with empathy, set healthy boundaries, and communicate with clarity. 

Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau Beyond the home, there's a complex world which parents don’t have control of. Annette Lareau sociologically examines the social and political contexts in which children would be exposed to (if they live in America) and how childrearing can be affected by it.

15. Children’s Nonfiction 

 Explaining the world to children, even on a limited scale, can be incredibly difficult, as it’s hard to keep their attention. Luckily, a bit of assistance from an illustrator can do wonders. As a result, many children’s nonfiction books are in the style of picture books and chapter books. Topics covered include short historical accounts and biographies, or stories that explain scientific phenomena and how they are studied. For a more detailed breakdown of children’s nonfiction, check out editor Melissa Stewart’s system of classification .

The Little Leaders series by Vashti Harrison Read about exceptional men and women of various ethnic backgrounds throughout history, and enjoy their adorable portraits in this series. There’s hardly a better way to help children embrace differences than through nonfiction books about diversity such as this.

There Are Bugs Everywhere by Britta Teckentrup Open young minds up to the natural world through this colorful elementary guide to the insect world. Answering questions about where insects live or how they find and store food with engaging drawings, it’s a great educational tool for parents and teachers. 

16. Educational Guides 

Many educational guides as the YA version of nonfiction books. These are targeted at final-year high-schoolers and young college students, with the aim providing them some guidance as they reach that strange age where independence is desperately craved but also a bit scary. Unlike popular YA fiction , this is still definitely a niche, yet, as rising study-with-me YouTubers would show you, there is potential for growth. Other than that, there are also learning guides for older audiences as well. 

The Uni-Verse by Jack Edwards Sharing his experience in preparing for and being at university, Edwards hopes to ensure readers that they, too, could emerge from univeristy happy and successful. From how to take lecture notes to how to get along with your roommates, this guide is full of helpful advice for anyone who’s feeling a bit overwhelmed. 

Beginners by Tom Vanderbilt Education doesn’t have to be limited to the classroom, as Tom Vanderbilt shows us in this call-to-action for life-long learning. As testament to the value of learning as an adult, he tells the stories behind his journey with five skills: playing chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and juggling. 

17. Textbooks 

We’ve all had our fair share of poring over these books: each comprehensively puts together information about a specific subject (and sometimes even the subject of teaching itself). The content of textbooks also include questions that stimulate learners, encouraging them to reflect on certain matters. As they are meant to accompany a curriculum, textbooks have to be written with a good overarching grasp of the subject and solid understanding of pedagogy. Given all this work, textbook writers deserve more appreciation than they get!

Oxford’s Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press This popular series offers a short and concise introduction to just about every topic out there. Breaking big concepts and lesson outcomes into bitesize definitions, they make great overviews or quick refreshers before an exam.

Letting Go of Literary Whiteness by Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides This textbook is made not for students but for teachers. Based on experiences and examples from their own classrooms, the authors supply advice, and real-life scenarios in which they apply, on how to be anti-racist in schools. 

18. Language Books 

Language books can be general guides as to how to learn any language, or they can go into the nitty-gritty of a particular language. Some of them aren’t even about learning to use and communicate in a language; instead, they take a dive into the origins and inner workings of these complex systems. Regardless, because of the complexity of the subject, these nonfiction titles require expert knowledge from the part of the author. 

Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher Linguist Guy Deutscher (a perfect name for the profession) makes the case for the connection between language and culture in this volume, opening up a whole new perspective on language learning beyond the practicalities. 

How to Speak Any Language Fluently by Alex Rawlings This book does what it says on the tin: it gives you the tools to pick up any language you want. Rawling's advice is as fun as it is helpful, so everyone can learn their language of choice with extra enjoyment! 

Many of them are memoirs of comedians and talk show hosts, others are written by celebrated essayists and journalists. The celebrity profiles of authors in the genre explains humorous nonfiction's popularity. While form may vary, most of these titles are penned as social commentaries that candidly talk about issues that are often overlooked.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell A witty exploration of the legacies of presidential assassinations in America, which notes how they’ve been used for political and commercial purposes that ridiculously undermine their historical importance. It’s history and politics, but with a healthy dose of sharp humor. 

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh Bill Gates says it’s “funny as hell” , and that’s all the advertising it needs. Taking the unconventional form of meme-worthy comic strips accompanied by texts to provide context, Brosh’s memoir is a candid reflection on both hilarious and bleak moments she's been through. 

20. Arts Books

The arts section is a fun mix — to name a few, there are photography collections, art catalogues, books on theory and critique, and volumes that teach artistic endeavors. With nuggets of wisdom from industry experts and often great attention paid to design details these books really are like pieces of artwork themselves. 

The World of Art series by Thames & Hudson This collection offers a variety of art styles and their hallmark pieces from across time and space. You could pick any one of them and feast your eyes on not only the art itself, but the wonderful interior design — courtesy of Adam Hay .

Women Artists by Flavia Frigeri In a now seminal feminist art history text written in the 70s, Linda Nochlin raised a provocative question: “Why have there been no great women artists?” Well, this addition to the Art Essentials series answers the question by showcasing 50 women artists throughout history, proving that the problem lies not in the lack of female artists, but in the failure to give them the recognition they deserve. 

Narrative nonfiction 

While narrative nonfiction books are still factual, they're written in the style of a story. As such a book's chapters have a flow — a story structure , if you will — rather than being systematically organized by topic. 

21. Memoirs and autobiographies

Memoirs and autobiographies are books about the writer’s life. The former covers a shorter time period, focusing on a particularly noteworthy moment, such as experience in a certain industry, or an unconventional childhood. It’s thus often written by younger authors. The latter follows a longer timeline, going through a whole life, like a personal history. As such, while anyone, with or without a public presence, can put together a memoir , autobiographies are always penned by well-known figures. Autobiographies are also often used by politicians and activists to share their journey and views.

Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym Prodigal violinist Min Kym was the youngest pupil at the Purcell School of Music, though her life wasn't a bed of roses. While struggling with the theft of a 17th-century Stradivarius in her possession (which made national headlines in the UK in 2010), she came to realize with incredible clarity that she had lost much more on the journey to meet the expectations of her teachers, her parents, and the world. And all of it was beautifully recorded in this memoir. 

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa Masaji Ishikawa's life in Japan is just like any ordinary person’s life, but to have gotten there, he’d undergone the challenges of escaping the totalitarian state of North Korea. His experience with this totalitarian state and his subsequent escape makes for a memoir readers can't put down. 

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela The man at the heart of one of the biggest, most publicised international movement against racial discrimination and for political freedom shares his journey from being an activist to his 27 years in prison in this autobiography. 

22. Biographies

Take note, biographies are different from auto biographies in a very crucial way, even though both are basically life stories. While autobiographies are written by authors about themselves , biographies are written by an author about somebody else . If the subject is alive, their consent should be acquired for ethical purposes (though this isn’t always done). A biography could also be penned long after its subject’s death, presented as a history book that’s focused solely on the life and circumstances of one person. Many of these have gone on to inspire award-winning movies and musicals.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow Ron Chernow is truly the master of biographies, and any of his titles would be a great example of his brilliance as a writer and researcher. This Pulitzer Prize winner on America’s founding father is recommended for its nuanced portrait of a legendary figure. Chernow took four years to research and an additional two to complete the manuscript — it was no easy project!

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar Perhaps more famous for its movie adaptation starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, Sylvia Nasar’s biography provides a window into the turbulent life of schizophrenic mathematician and economist John Nash. While it challenged ethical practices by not consulting with Nash even though he was alive, the book was still very well-received. 

23. Travel Literature 

Some call them travelogues, others call them travel memoirs — either way, travel literature books straddle the line between informing on the many cultures of the world and self-reflection. Books that fall into this genre are usually quite poetic and insightful (unlike practical travel guides). They’re all about personal journeys that are meditative and eye-opening, and can be about a specific place or a series of places. 

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bike by Dervla Murphy In 1963, Dervla Murphy kept a daily diary of her trek “across frozen Europe and through Persia and Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India.” After the trip, she published the diary and invited readers to join her on this remarkable feat, whether from their couch or as they start their own journey.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson Focusing on the place and not the journey, Bill Bryson documents his “farewell tour” of the UK as he prepared to return to America after almost two decades of living across the pond. Mixing cultural insights with a healthy dose of humor, he wraps his travel notes in social commentary to both satirize and praise the idiosyncrasies of the British. 

24. Journalism

Follow investigative journalists as they uncover ugly truths. Other than doing justice by in-depth and sometimes even dangerous investigations, this type of nonfiction also enthralls readers with the twists and turns of real events and details of actual underground operations, conspiracies, and court dramas, to name a few. 

All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Journalists Woodward and Bernstein's reports in The Washington Post won them a Pulitzer Prize and led to President Nixon’s impeachment. In this book, they recollect the process behind their famous exposé on Watergate.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow On his trail to investigate Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults, Farrow discovered a systematic mechanism which favors offenders with big pockets and silences the voice of victims. His book is thus an exposé on the journalism industry itself.

Voilà! Those are 24 of the most popular types of nonfiction along with some typical exmaples. And keep in mind that as more and more titles get released, the genres will expand beyond this list. It goes to show how expansive this side of the publishing world can be. If you’re writing , publishing, or marketing a nonfiction book , hopefully this list has clarified the purpose, styles, and formats of each genre so that you can find the perfect fit for your own work.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Structure your memoir for maximum impact

Use our free template to plan an unputdownable memoir.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

Get the Reddit app

This is a moderated subreddit. It is our intent and purpose to foster and encourage in-depth discussion about all things related to books, authors, genres, or publishing in a safe, supportive environment. If you're looking for help with a personal book recommendation, consult our Weekly Recommendation Thread, Suggested Reading page, or ask in r/suggestmeabook.

What is your favorite nonfiction book or essay collection mainly because of their mastery of the language and the quality of its prose (its eloquence, rhythms, vocabulary choice)?

Perhaps not the best example but because I have this book nearby, let me give you an example of what I'm talking about: At the end of the first chapter of his book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan writes:

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

I liked this passage, particularly that last sentence.

Some writers can write like this rarely, some occasionally, and some page after page, whether the topic is science, politics, popular culture...whatever. And it is the beauty of the language that draws you in and makes you read a passage again or quote it to your friends.

I'm curious if some of you are also language lovers and have any favorite essay collection or nonfiction book that does this.

Btw another favorite writer is David Foster Wallace. Don't have any of his books handy to quote from but I recommend you having a look at his essays, for examples of more wordy writing and interesting word choices and new vocabulary.

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

Advertisement

Supported by

BOOKS SPRING PREVIEW: NONFICTION

17 New Nonfiction Books to Read This Season

Two journalists dive into George Floyd’s life and family; Viola Davis reflects on her career; a historian explores the brutal underpinnings of the British Empire; and more.

• Share full article

By John Williams Tina Jordan and Joumana Khatib

Whether you want to read about current events, memoirs or history, this season brings plenty of new titles.

Memoirs & Biographies | Current Affairs | History, Revisited | Other

MEMOIRS & BIOGRAPHIES

‘ Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir, ’ by Bob Odenkirk

Odenkirk’s memoir might have also been titled “Obscurity Obscurity Obscurity Fame.” He was a cult favorite of comedy fans in the late 1990s for his work on the sketch-comedy series “Mr. Show,” but his supporting role in “Breaking Bad” and his starring turn in the show’s prequel, “Better Call Saul,” made him a household name. His memoir charts his dogged and unlikely path from Chicago comedy clubs to leading man.

Random House, out now

‘ Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand ,’ by John Markoff

Brand might be best known for his countercultural magazine Whole Earth Catalog, which first published in 1968. In that same decade, Brand was a participant in the exploits of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Now 83, he went on to a long and varied life of thought and activism in the realms of environmentalism, Native American rights and personal computing. Markoff, a former technology reporter for The New York Times, wraps his arms around the whole story in this new biography.

Penguin Press, out now

‘ Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation ,’ by Maud Newton

In her first book, Newton, a critic and essayist, digs deep into her family’s past, from Depression-era Texas to witch-hunting Massachusetts, not flinching at what she sees. Closer to the present day, she wrestles with her father’s racism and her family’s religious extremism. Rooted in the personal, Newton’s book opens out to an examination of a culture besotted with Ancestry.com and 23andme.com , and asks what we’re really looking for in the past.

Random House, March 29

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

The Best Books About the ’80s & ’90s

Jeff O'Neal

Jeff O'Neal is the executive editor of Book Riot and Panels. He also co-hosts The Book Riot Podcast . Follow him on Twitter: @thejeffoneal .

View All posts by Jeff O'Neal

Happy Friday, book-lovers. Unwind with some Book Riot stuff.

The Best Books About the ’80s and ’90s

Those times are long gone, as my eight-year-old loves to remind me, and so if you’re like me, and want some nostalgic reads or an escape from *waves hands* all of this, grab your favorite snack—bonus points if it’s something that was also around in the ’80s or ’90s (does anyone else remember the candy Bonkers?? SO good, right?)—and let’s take a look at some of the best books about the ’80s and ’90s.

Talking Cats, Magical Villainy, and More Dynamite SF/F Recommendations

Calling all SFF fans! It’s time to add more nerdy fun to your TBRs with four exciting SFF recommendations. I have two more of this week’s releases and two upcoming titles I have read and enjoyed

Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use

The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week

The order is shuffled a bit from last week, but to add a more variety, I’ve included the top five most read books on Goodreads last week in three countries around the world. This time: Denmark, Malaysia, and Portugal. Denmark’s and Portugal’s most read titles this week are both not (yet?) available in English.

Nonfiction About Women in History

I’m always looking for more books about women throughout history. There’s just something special in learning about women’s achievements and the incredible impact we’ve had on the world. But where to start? The incredible number of options can feel overwhelming. So here are a couple books that give an overview, an introduction that inspired readers to do their own research and find out more. 

Modern DORIAN GRAY Series Being Made by Netflix

The show is executively produced by Greg Berlanti’s production company, as well as Rina Mimoun (the showrunner), Lee Toland Krieger (the director), Katie Rose Rogers (the writer), Sarah Schechter, and Leigh London Redman. Like the book, it will explore themes surrounding everlasting youth, this time with the beauty industry looming in the background. The show will also have the gothic novel’s Basil and Dorian characters, but this time they will be siblings ( the novel’s Dorian is the show’s Dorian).

A Mindful, Holistic Cookbook for Everyday

In between recipes and gorgeous food photography, Turshen shares these mini essays that help her readers better understand where her love of food comes from. She tells us the stories behind her recipes, shares her happy memories around food, and just her general philosophy of cooking. These peeks behind the curtain take  Simply Julia  from a good cookbook into a great one.

Leave a comment

Become an All Access subscriber to add comments.

Subscribe to comment

You Might Also Like

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

75 Nonfiction Books You Should Read This Summer

History, science, memoir, biography, food, politics, and more.

Must a beach read be a novel? (If you answered yes, head here .) If you answered no please read on for a look at the nonfiction titles we’re most excited about this summer. From the history of food to the inner workings of Silicon Valley, from the politics of gardening to how the brain maps itself, there’s something here for all manner of reading tastes. These recommendations were compiled by Lit Hub editors Jonny Diamond, Jessie Gaynor, Corinne Segal, and Vanessa Willoughby.

___________________________

Jess McHugh, Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books (Dutton, June 1)

We like to think that culture—be it national or regional—is a reflection of the highest echelons of artistic creation, that we are as worthy of our mythologies as they are of us. This is not the case. As Jess McHugh discovers in this deep dive into thirteen of America’s most owned books—from farmer’s almanacs to dictionaries to cookbooks to etiquette guides—a nation’s story is shaped and told from much humbler texts.

Alice Waters, We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto (Penguin Press, June 1)

Since opening Chez Panisse in 1971, Alice Waters has been a kind of living legend in the movement for local food, sustainable agriculture, and seasonal cooking. In her latest work, she recounts scenes from that career that fans of hers will enjoy while championing a “slow food” approach to farming and eating, with an emphasis on regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, and health.

Grace Perry, The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture (St. Martin’s Griffin, June 1)

Like a lot of queer people, Grace Perry spent her adolescence finding queer subtext in stories about straight people, from Gossip Girl to pop songs and other productions of pop culture. She accounts for those experiences in this series of essays, a collection that’s sure to be painfully and hilariously recognizable for queer millennials who grew up before a groundswell of LGBTQ representation in culture.

Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little Brown, June 1)

As local governments around the United States seek with ever intensifying fury to deny American children the right to learn the hard truths at the core of their nation, poet and writer Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed is a book for this moment. At once a deeply researched history of American slavery and a very contemporary look at the grim legacy of its manifold cruelties (and how they are memorialized in plain sight), every high school senior in the country should have a copy of How the Word Is Passed , the better to understand that “yes, this is who we are.”

Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, June 1)

As is the case with so many mythic American “freedoms,” the right to bear arms—enshrined as it is in the Second Amendment—has long been the exclusive privilege of white men. According to renowned scholar Carol Anderson, this is very much by design. Though one needn’t look too far beyond the recent murders of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling to see that so-called legal gun ownership is not a right—at least in practice—extended to Black Americans, Anderson follows this country’s fixation on weaponized liberty back to its founding mythologies, and all the exclusionary rhetoric found therein.

Sinead O’Connor, Rememberings (HMH, June 1)

Sinéad O’Connor has always seemed like a larger-than-life force of nature, from her early incandescence as the brash, shaven-headed genius behind The Lion and The Cobra , to her international pop mega-stardom (and the controversy that seemed to follow her), and on into the harder years of the early 21st century as she navigated the downslope of all that success. Indeed, it has been a complicated life, but as this memoir reveals it’s also been a life fully lived, with all the magnificent intensity of a true rock ‘n’ roll icon.

Emma Goldberg, Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic (Harper Books, June 8)

The coronavirus pandemic hit New York City in full force in the spring of 2020, precisely when the six subjects of this book were graduating from medical school. Emma Goldberg, the journalist who chronicled their experiences for The New York Times , features their stories in more detail here, providing an important account of just some of the doctors who worked under impossible circumstances to save lives and make history.

Philip D’Anieri, The Appalachian Trail: A Biography (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 8)

Millions of people travel some part of the Appalachian Trail every year, from daytrippers to the thru-hikers whose journey becomes a sort of spiritual odyssey. This is the story of the trail itself and the people who built it, from those who literally mapped its path to others whose accounts helped solidify its place in the American psyche (looking at you, Bill Bryson).

David Talbot and Margaret Talbot, By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution (Harper Books, June 8)

The political and social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s is still resonating throughout all corners of American life today. Accomplished journalists David Talbot and Margaret Talbot look at this period through the lives of some of its most important figures, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Bobby Seale, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and others, supported by extensive research and their own analysis.

Kate Zambreno, To Write as if Already Dead (Columbia University Press, June 8)

While attempting to write a study of To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert—a work grounded in Guibert’s experience living with, and eventually dying from, AIDS—Kate Zambreno explores physicality and disappearance through two modes of investigation. The first chronicles the story of a lost online friendship; the rest of the book moves from analyses of Guibert’s work and body to the narrator’s experience of pregnancy and illness. It’s a fascinating, ambitious, unforgettable work.

Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist (Milkweed, June 8)

If planet earth has any chance of surviving the depredations of global capitalism, it rests in the intensity and commitment of the younger generations, teenage climate activists like Greta Thunberg and Dara McAnulty. Is that fair? No. And yet they carry on. In Diary of a Young Naturalist McAnulty gets at some of the reasons why they’re able to maintain faith in the possibility of change as he records his life-giving daily connections to the natural world over the course of a year in Northern Ireland. But not only does McAnulty capture the intimacy of the nature-lover’s perspective, he also conveys what it’s like to be a 16-year-old boy with autism navigating the infinite complexities of teenage life. (Winner of the Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing.)

Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid (Knopf, June 8)

World-altering history is a very hard thing to write about as it’s happening, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s Lawrence Wright. The author of The Looming Tower, Going Cle ar, and much, much more, Wright brings his generous reportorial eye to this last, long year of our collective lives, tracing the Covid pandemic from its early stages in China, through the deeply politicized American responses, to the arrival of vaccines. At once broadly historical and deeply personal, The Plague Year establishes a high bar for how to document a pandemic.

Scott Borchert, Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 15)

Scott Borchert delves into a lesser-known New Deal initiative to create guidebooks to every state of America, which fell under the Federal Writers’ Project and employed Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, among other literary figures. This history tracks the relationship between a suffering nation and its writers as they endeavored to document the best of their country.

Caleb Scharf, The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm (Penguin Press, June 15)

Caleb Scharf advocates for an understanding of data as essential to human existence, with an approach that combines biology, computer science, information theory, and other disciplines. With this lens, he examines the role that data will continue to play in our lives going forward—an essential question in the era of digitization.

George Packer, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 15)

Conversations about America as a “failed state” often take the form of hand-wringing— how did we get here —or excoriating the perceived ignorance of one group of people versus another. George Packer’s Last Best Hope finds another way into the conversation, describing the pervasive injustice and inequality of American life as the result of differences in national narrative. His revealing diagnosis of our national issues is accompanied by suggestions for moving forward that are grounded in the seeking of common values—an important analysis for any time in history, and now in particular.

Rebecca Schwarzlose, Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain–And How They Guide You (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 15)

Have you ever wondered how the brain interprets sensory information? Cognitive neuroscientist Rebecca Schwarzlose provides a well-researched debut that examines how the extraordinary maps of the brain are responsible for memory, imagination, and learning. Brainscapes is a fascinating study of the wonders of human consciousness.

Rosecrans Baldwin, Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles (MCD, June 15)

Conceiving of Los Angeles as a city-state—a sort of world unto itself—Rosencrans Baldwin launches an investigation of its sometimes-surreal world of natural beauty (punctuated by natural disasters), literary luminaries, public personalities, and contradictions of various kinds. The result is a collagistic portrait of one of the most distinct cultural epicenters of the US.

Mike Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything (Melville House, June 22)

It is too soon to tell yet whether QAnon will be a quirky sidebar in the history textbooks of the 22nd  century or an entire chapter. While we all hope for the former, it is nonetheless vitally important to understand the collective fabulisms of this shadowy Trump-era conspiracy cult, and how it somehow floated from the murky backwaters of online message boards to the very top of the Republican Party. To do so, you’d best start with Mike Rothschild’s The Storm is Upon Us (because it kind of is).

____________________________

Jan-Werner Müller, Democracy Rules (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 6)

Political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller previously authored What is Populism?, a look at the ways that populism develops among a population and how contemporary society can navigate its effects. Now, with Democracy Rules , he aims at a deeper understanding of democracy by examining the role uncertainty plays in a democratic society.

Ewa Majewska, Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common (Verso, July 6)

Polish philosopher Ewa Majewska looks at the ways that feminist spaces resist the tide of fascism, in particular through the stories of labor movements and other justice movements in Poland and South America. The book also challenges the Western lens that dominates popular analyses of leftist politics in the US, looking beyond the West for answers to pressing political questions.

Tim Parks, The Hero’s Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna (Norton, July 6)

Alarmingly prolific writer/translator/critic Tim Parks is back at it with an immersive travelogue tracing Giuseppe Garibaldi’s bold (some would say foolhardy) 1849 journey by foot across the Italian Apennines. Not only did the father of Italian nationhood lead his garibaldini in their retreat from the French army, he did so with his pregnant wife Anita. Parks, himself joined by his partner, Eleonora, recreates the historic journey (without the backdrop of war), keeping one eye on resonances of the past and the other on all the rich, local idiosyncrasies of contemporary Italian life. Every travelogue should begin from a conceit like this.

Christopher Cox, The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like It’s the Last Minute—Before the Last Minute (Avid Reader Press)

Among the many things the last year has revealed is how strange the flow of time can be, particularly when formerly discrete parts of our lives—work and home—get blended into one, long stressful continuum. In The Deadline Effect , writer and magazine editor Christopher Cox has set out to better understand the way we respond to deadlines, how they can at once be stressful and clarifying experiences, and if there’s a way to trick ourselves into the latter without any of the former.

Danny Trejo and Donal Logue, Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood (Atria, July 6)

Before he found fame as “Hollywood’s favorite bad guy with a heart of gold” in his forties, Danny Trejo struggled with childhood abuse and heroin addiction, and spent years incarcerated. Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood details his journey through it all. If anyone has earned the right to a Hollywood memoir, it’s Danny Trejo. To quote Bookmarks editor Dan Sheehan , “The man has lived a life.”

Rae Nudson, All Made Up: The Power and Pitfalls of Beauty Culture, from Cleopatra to Kim Kardashian (Beacon Press, July 13)

Makeup has too often been dismissed as frivolous (read: feminine), though of course its political, economic, and cultural impact is enormous. In All Made Up , Rae Nudson considers the multifaceted power of makeup through the stories of Cleopatra, Marsha P. Johnson, and more.

Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay, Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom (Hachette Books, July 13)

Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay, lawyers and advocates for abortion rights, put the experiences of women and health workers at the center of this account of reproductive justice in America. Their observations are presented here alongside their writing on abortion as a human rights issue and legal strategies for protecting people’s ability to obtain it.

Rachel B. Vogelstein and Meighan Stone, Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights (PublicAffairs, July 13)

Several years after the #MeToo movement inspired an outpouring of women’s stories, and a series of collective reckonings in fields long dominated by men, Awakening takes stock of the movement in Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, and Tunisia. Tarana Burke, who founded the movement, authored the foreword for this recent history of the fight for gender equality.

Henry Mance, How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World (Viking, July 13)

In a world where sustainable habits are a necessity and conservation more important than ever, Henry Mance asks how humans can reform their relationship to animals, with input from activists, politicians, and those working in the food industry. Mance investigates how this relationship manifests in a number of human practices, including hunting, the creation of zoos, and our interactions with undeveloped spaces, building a clear call for change in the way we relate to the natural world.  

Sarah Everts, The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration (Norton, July 13)

Despite its ubiquity—and biological utility!—there remains a taboo around sweat. The Joy of Sweat considers sweat not only in a biological context (why is sweat salty?), but in a historical one (how did antiperspirant become a multi-billion dollar industry?). After all, the only way to fight a taboo is with cold (or hot), hard facts.

John Lewis, Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation (Grand Central Publishing, July 13)

Congressman John Lewis, who died in July of 2020, was a proponent of “good, necessary trouble.” In this collection from the late activist and politician, Lewis offers timeless advice for present and future generations. Carry On , the result of conversations with his editor at Grand Central, Gretchen Young, immortalizes the wisdom of a master orator and visionary.

Richard Zenith, Pessoa: A Biography (Liveright, July 13)

How to write a biography of a writer who created multiple personas and sent them out into the world, a cohort of heteronyms refracting attention away from the man himself and his enigmatic, prolific, and truly unique mind? It’s not hard to imagine that biographer Richard Zenith (that name!) is one more of Fernando Pessoa characters sent forward in time to set the poet’s (numerous) life stories against the political upheavals of early 20th-century Europe. Who can say?

Vanessa M. Holden, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community (University of Illinois Press, July 13)

Vanessa M. Holden’s Surviving Southampton aims to shed light on the local community around the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner. This scholarly investigation gives a voice to the women and children of the Southampton community, showcasing how the resistance of the enslaved created a blueprint for resilience and future survival.

Kristen Radtke, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness (Pantheon Graphic Library, July 13)

It has been one of the loneliest years in collective human history. In many ways, the illusions of intimacy provided us by digital convenience have rendered the physical separations of pandemic life that much harder. It’s difficult to think of anyone better suited to investigate this melancholy paradox than Kristen Radtke, whose graphic narratives convey—often with dizzying potency—the full range of how human solitude can manifest. Seek You a “meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society” is the perfect framework for her mode of visual and narrative exploration.

Shirley Jackson, Laurence Jackson Hyman (editor), Bernice M. Murphy (contributions by), The Letters of Shirley Jackson (Random House, July 13)

Shirley Jackson’s son Laurence Jackson Hyman edited this collection of never-before-published letters, written over more than 30 years, which give new details on Jackson’s life and writing (also, it includes some of her drawings!).

Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination (Harper, July 13)

At this point it’s taken for granted that Facebook is both a bad experience for users (who surrender huge amounts of data to a private corporation for the privilege of arguing with their weird libertarian uncle) and a bad experience for the fragile experiment that is western democracy. So how did that happen? Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang dig deep into the last five years of the world’s largest social network to reveal bewildering patterns of toxic factionalism, corporate cynicism, and naïve hubris at the very top. At this point, is anyone really in charge?

Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell, The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion (Crown, July 20)

It’s hard to believe the guy who sublet desks to freelancers once thought he’d become the world’s first trillionaire. But that’s the kind of deep and delusional thinking that blessed the world Adam Neumann, an outsized Silicon Valley villain who seemed part cult leader, part used car salesman—hence the title of this deeply reported inside look at gig economy opportunism run amok.

Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine (MCD, July 20)

Early during the Covid-19 pandemic we were reminded far and wide of the etymology of quarantine (Italian ships held at port for 40 days to be cleared of plague), a grim kind of isolation that many of us would come to know far too well in the year that followed. But as Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley reveal in Until Proven Safe , this kind of segregation is nothing new for the human race, which has always turned to quarantine in the face of new and unknown pestilence. And as the 21st-century brings new, weird threats (labs accidents! space plagues!) we have to be as vigilant as ever about protecting the herd.

Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros, The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Our Coasts and Oceans in the Climate Crisis (New Press, July 20)

This unique atlas project portrays places under threat due to the climate crisis—including New York City, Houston, the Cook Islands, and Shanghai—and maps the ways they will change or disappear, unless the global community acts to stop it. Combining climate science, storytelling, and art, this is an undeniably beautiful approach to an important, and troubling, topic.

Winifred Gallagher, New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story (Penguin Press, July 20)

In the mid to late 19th century, a wave of white settlers established a constellation of cities in the American West where women could play a more important role in public life than ever before. Winifred Gallagher accounts for this era in history and how the women of the West contributed to the suffragist movement, including those who were further disenfranchised due to their race.

Terry Leahy, The Politics of Permaculture (Pluto Press, July 20)

Permaculture is an environmentally conscious way of interacting with the land—somewhere between farming and landscaping—that prioritizes natural processes and the health of endemic flora and fauna. Like many eco-forward movements it has largely been the province of those with the land, time, and money to practice it, a problem that Terry Leahy addresses head on in The Politics of Permaculture , which outlines the ways in which permaculture can benefit both the land and people of the global south. This is what we might call intersectional sustainability.

David Stebenne, Promised Land: How the Rise of the Middle Class Transformed America, 1929-1968 (Scribner, July 20)

David Stebenne looks at the history of the 20th century from the perspective of the middle class, which thrived throughout the mid-century until the political clashes of the late 1960s interrupted its growth. Promised Land is a valuable close look at a revealing period in the history of class in the US.

Giles Tremlett, The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury, July 20)

You could say the International Brigades that formed in 1936 to defend the fledgling Spanish Republic against the fascist Loyalists were the first true manifestation of Antifa… As revealed by Giles Tremlett’s full history of the brigades, all manner of socialists, communists, anarchists, freedom fighters, adventure-seekers, and more came from 61 countries to form one of the largest volunteer armies Europe had ever seen. Were they particularly unified? No. Did they have a common enemy? Yes, fascism. Even though it didn’t work, this manifestation of sacrifice and support to a common cause remains one of the more hopeful moments in an otherwise horrifying few decades of war and destruction.

Ilhan Omar, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman (Dey Street, July 27)

Ilhan Omar’s autobiography follows her path from a childhood in Somalia—and subsequent stay at a Kenyan refugee camp—to adolescence in Arlington, Virginia and growth as an organizer, culminating in her election to Congress. Reading her unique life story is an education in perseverance and the importance, and value, of community in achieving political objectives.

Rodrigo Garcia, A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir by Rodrigo Garcia (HarperVia, July 27)

The imminence of death can create unlikely intimacies both tender and stark, particularly between a grown child and their aging parent. So it was for Rodrigo Garcia, the son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose richly observed account of the last days of his iconic father is itself a work of fine literary merit. It will always be one of life’s cruel paradoxes that we pay closer to attention to that which we are about to lose, but in doing so in this memoir Rodrigo has gifted his father’s millions of readers a close-up view of one of the 20th century’s great writers.

Edith Widder, Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea (Random House, July 27)

Oceanographer and marine biologist Edith Widder has spent her career studying the wonder of oceanic bioluminescence. Below the Edge of Darkness blends the science of her field with stories of the adventure of deep sea exploration, underscored with the urgency of the need for the conservation of a vast and greatly imperiled ecosystem.

Jaime Lowe, Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires (MCD, July 27)

Incarcerated firefighters do some of the most dangerous and underpaid work in America. Here, Jaime Lowe, who covered the stories of incarcerated female firefighters for The New York Times Magazine , looks in detail at the fire camp programs where they earn a dollar an hour doing life-threatening work that grows more dire every year as the climate crisis continues.

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (Belknap Press, August 3)

To be debt free in America in the 21st century is to have a very particular kind of privilege: as of today, 45 million Americans owe approximately 1.5 trillion dollars in college tuition debt (that’s T as in “there’s no way most millennials can afford a home”). Indentured Students traces the very particular policies of the last 60 years that led to this situation, discovering an unsurprising reluctance by those in power to open up college education to a wider group Americans (guess who, and guess why).

Rachel Greenwald Smith, On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal (Graywolf Press, August 3)

What’s the point of compromise? Rachel Greenwald Smith interrogates what has often been an ideal of liberal politics, looking at the role it played in various cultural controversies and in her own personal experiences. In the process, she argues that compromise is a strategy, not a goal unto itself, and to think of it as such is counterproductive to cultural growth.

Courtney E. Martin, Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School (Little, Brown and Company, August 3)

When Courtney Martin enrolled her daughter at a public school in Oakland, California, that other local white families tended to avoid—often in favor of expensive private schools—she soon began to observe the effects of multicultural learning and the complicated dynamics that govern education and race in the area. This is the story of what school segregation, a nationally important issue, looks like through the lens of one family’s experience.

Stephen Kurczy, The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence (Dey Street Books, August 3)

For years, Green Bank, West Virginia, has instituted a ban on digital technology (including consumer electronics) that could interfere with the workings of the Green Bank Observatory, which is used by astronomers and researchers. Stephen Kurczy immerses himself in this unique setting, tracing the history of a town unlike any other in the US and its present-day relationship to digital technology.

Josh Mitchell, The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe (Simon & Schuster, August 3)

Josh Mitchell, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal , uncovers the history of the predation that created the student debt industry, which has created impossible financial barriers for at least one generation of Americans and shows no signs of slowing down—a phenomenon that Mitchell likens to the housing bubble. It is, unsurprisingly, a shocking history, dominated by an attitude of exploitation toward American students and their families.

Michel Foucault, Prisons Information Group, Kevin Thompson, Perry Zurn and Erik Beranek, Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970–1980) (University of Minnesota Press, August 3)

The Prisons Information Group was formed by French intellectuals and activists to interrogate and resist the harsh policies of the French carceral state, and included the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Helene Cixous, and Michel Foucault (the latter would develop and refine his framework of carceral criticism through his work in the group). Though “resistance” in the Trump Era became more of a brand than a battle plan, it is not hard to see the relevance of the Prisons Information Group to the current movement for prison reform and abolition: lessons of past resistance are always important to the future.

Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is the Point: Essays on Trump’s America (One World, August 3)

Adam Serwer, a staff writer for The Atlantic , adds this contribution to the long process of reckoning with the Trump administration, analyzing the dynamics and inequalities that led to his rise and examining Trump as a phenomenon that is consistent with the path of US history. His essays expand on the effects of American history on the present and the possibilities of our political future.

Halimah Marcus (ed.), Horse Girls (Harper Perennial)

This is not your mother’s anthology of equestrian memoir (though she’ll probably like it): just a glance at the line-up of heavy-hitting writers should be enough to tell you that, with contributions from Carmen Maria Machado, Jane Smiley, T Kira Madden, Maggie Shipstead, and many more. In offering a broad array of perspectives across culture, class, and gender Horse Girls upends the rarified stereotypes of privilege and exclusivity so often ascribed to the wealthy, white “horsey set.”

Tom Gatti, Long Players: Writers on the Albums that Shaped Them (Bloomsbury, August 3)

Long Players collects essays from contemporary writers on the albums that have shaped them, and the list is impressive: Marlon James, Patricia Lockwood, Rachel Kushner, Bernardine Evaristo, and many others weigh in. Ben Okri writes on Miles Davis; Daisy Johnson on Lizzo; David Mitchell on Joni Mitchell. (One of these catch your attention yet?) There’s a lot to connect to in this collection of stories on the moments music history meets personal history.

Julie Kavanagh, The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge and the Phoenix Park Murders that Stunned Victorian England (Grove, August 3)

As true crime stories go, this one has it all: clandestine plotting, scandalous affairs, shadowy organizations, brutal murders, far-reaching political implications, and, for good measure, someone known as “the Irish Sherlock Holmes.” The year was 1882 and British Prime Minister William Gladstone had been making progress in backroom negotiations with pro-Irish independence leader Charles Stewart Parnell—until the brutal murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland. The two were cut down in Phoenix Park by a group of American-funded hardline nationalists called The Invincibles, a crime that would become internationally notorious, and effectively ended the possibility of negotiated independence. Kavanagh’s gripping account of the murders is a stark reminder that history is a chaotic jumble of chance, circumstance, and opportunity, as much about what could have been as about what was.

James Tate Hill, Blind Man’s Bluff (WW Norton, August 3)

James Tate Hill—who writes a column for Lit Hub recommending audiobooks each month—recounts his experience with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, which resulted in the legal blindness he tried to cover up for years. His memoir delves into this period of his life along with the way his relationship with vision, and self-acceptance, evolved over time.

Anna Qu, Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor (Catapult, August 3)

Anna Qu reported her mother to child services after being forced to work in a Queens factory as a teenager. Two decades later, accessing her own report from the Office of Children and Family Services, she finds a number of inaccuracies. Her memoir explores her relationship to this history, her family’s immigration story, trauma, and survival through abuse.

Adam Harris, The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How to Set Them Right (Ecco, August 10)

Adam Harris looks at the state of affairs in higher education, which continues to entrench stark racial and class inequalities in the US, examining how we got here—from crucial legal decisions on school segregation to the historical climate that oppressed Black students—and what problems keep us from moving forward. His account indicts a system that should be upholding higher ideals of equality while also offering ideas on what must change.

Elly Fishman, Refugee High: Coming of Age in America (The New Press, August 10)

Elly Fishman captures the 2017-8 academic year at Chicago’s Roger C. Sullivan High School, tracking the highs and lows of the school’s refugee and immigrant student community in this thoroughly reported account. Fishman examines the concept of the American Dream in the context of the American education system with stunning clarity and insight.

Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico (Hachette, August 10)

Jennifer Otter Bickerdike takes a close look at iconic Warhol muse and Velvet Underground collaborator Nico.  You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone  makes a strong case for Nico’s legacy as an influential yet underappreciated singer-songwriter. Bickerdike utilizes the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico’s record labels, various private collections, rarely seen footage, and exclusive new interviews to demythologize—and thereby humanize—the iconic German rock star.

Kyle Beachy, The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life (Grand Central, August 10)

There are a lot of very serious books in this preview—but even though life has been hard for so many people over the last year, it’s ok to have fun. This is perhaps one of the more important lessons from Kyle Beachy’s hybrid work of memoir and cultural criticism, which examines skateboarding as a cultural phenomenon that has grown up alongside the punk-aligned 80s skatekids who now have teenagers of their own. What does it mean to be in one’s early forties and still not quite be able to land more than one in four kickflips? Why does it bring such joy? And where, exactly, is the line between counter- and corporate culture when it comes to a “sport” like skateboarding?

Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire (Crown, August 17)

The climate apocalypse has been here for awhile now, depending on where you choose to look. For San Francisco Chronicle reporter Lizzie Johnson, that was Paradise, California, which was left devastated in the wake of 2018’s Camp Fire, one of the deadliest wildfires in the nation’s history. Assigned to cover the breaking story Johnson had a firsthand view of the town’s destruction (85 people died) and has since put together this important minute-by-minute document of the consequences of climate change, based on frontline reporting, public records, and extensive interviews with survivors.

Eyal Press, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 17)

This nation’s success, such as it is for those at the top of the pyramid, relies on a veritable army of the underpaid and overworked to carry out the very worst kind of labor. As Eyal Press reveals in this engrossing account of terrible jobs—from factory farms to the prison-industrial complex—American capitalism is an unsustainable system that continues to demand a brutal toll from its workers, both physically and morally. If we think so many of them are “essential” why can’t we create better conditions for what they do?

Patrick Nathan, Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist (Counterpoint, August 17)

In Image Control, Patrick Nathan looks for the root of fascism, and humanity’s susceptibility to it, in the aesthetics of the internet. Nathan argues that encountering images at warp speed and in isolation from their context has negatively affected our ability to digest nuance (a dynamic that anyone who’s witnessed an argument online can attest to). Nathan’s unique work of analysis diagnoses a problem underlying many of our online interactions, one with important implications for both personal relationships and national politics.

William deBuys and Rebecca Gaal (illustrated by), The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss (Seven Stories Press, August 17

William deBuys’s The Trail to Kanjiroba is both the story of the author’s journeys to Upper Dolpo, an isolated area in northwestern Nepal, and an analysis of the scientific advances that have helped humans interpret the natural world over the course of centuries. It is a work of close attention to a unique landscape, the kind of story that will only grow more important as landscapes of all kinds fall under the threat of human-caused destruction and climate change.

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Still Mad: American Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination (W.W. Norton, August 17)

Literary critics Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, authors of The Madwoman in the Attic , now look at the legacy of literary second wave feminists in Still Mad , which revisits work by Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others. This is a great chance to revisit some of our most foundational writers and thinkers.

Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption (W.W. Norton, August 17)

The empty language of empowerment and girlbossery by which mainstream (white) feminism is disseminated has been to the detriment of the vast majority of women, and to the very idea of women’s equality. Rafia Zakaria looks at the white supremacy woven throughout the women’s movement and makes the case for the absolute necessity of a new framework.

Simon Kuper, The Barcelona Complex: Lionel Messi and the Making—and Unmaking—of the World’s Greatest Soccer Club (Penguin Press, August 17)

How did FC Barcelona become the biggest, most successful sports franchise on the planet? (Sorry, Americans, it’s true.) Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper was given hitherto unthinkable access to the inner workings of this beloved institution—that’s run more like a global conglomerate than a soccer club—and charts Barca’s rise in parallel to the careers of two of its mega-stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi. But can Barcelona’s status as global sports superpower outlive the incredible career of the latter, whose time as the best player in the world is coming to an end?

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (Beacon Press, August 24)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is not the historian America deserves, but she is definitely the historian America needs. With her customary precision and fearlessness Not a Nation of Immigrants takes aim at a persistent national myth that whitewashes the genocidal settler-colonialism and mass enslavement of Africans upon which America was built. This is exactly the kind of book white supremacists are trying to ban in schools (do don’t let them!).

Geo Maher, A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete (Verso, August 24)

What would law enforcement and public life look like without police? The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, along with the further organizing and conversations that those protests inspired, produced a blueprint for such a society, one that Geo Maher breaks down in A World Without Police as he advocates for police abolition alongside community safety.

Robert Levine, The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Fredrick Douglass, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (W.W. Norton, August 24)

Robert S. Levine, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, provides a well-researched study of the presidency and impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Levine brings the leadership of Frederick Douglass and other African American activists into clear view, providing a detailed deconstruction of post-Civil War America that considers the failed promise of Black equality and its lasting reverberations.

Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (Liveright, August 24)

Erwin Chemerinsky continues his career of groundbreaking research into civil rights with Presumed Guilty, which looks at the foundations of a society that tolerates racist policing.  Chemerinsky finds, in particular, that a series of Supreme Court decisions driven by conservative justices enabled police to take violent, and sometimes deadly, actions, particularly against communities of color.

Sumana Roy, How I Became a Tree (Yale University Press, August 31)

“I was tired of speed,” Sumana Roy writes, “I wanted to live to tree time.” In How I Became a Tree , Roy blends literary criticism, philosophy, and botanical study to contemplate humanity’s engagement with the natural world, and consider what it means to emulate trees themselves.

Matt Siegel, The Secret History of Food: Strange and True Stories About the Origins of What We Eat (Ecco, August 31)

We’re likely all a little conversationally rusty at the moment, so a collection of surprising food histories—collected from ancient and obscure sources—sounds like the perfect thing to liven up your dinner party repertoire. (And if you’re looking for more reasons to love ice cream, The Secret History of Food makes the case that in addition to being the perfect summer treat, it also helped defeat the Nazis.)

Stephon Alexander, Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsider’s Guide to the Future of Physics (Basic Books, August 31)

Stephon Alexander, a professor of physics at Brown University and the 2020 president of the National Society of Black Physicists, dives headfirst into the mysteries of our universe.  Fear of a Black Universe  not only unpacks the poetry of theoretical physics but also critiques the glaring homogeneity of the field. Alexander merges the personal with the scientific in this compelling guide.

Literary Hub

Previous article, next article.

• RSS - Posts

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month