Genre
The best Non-Fiction books
Science, business, deep reporting, investigative narrative. True stories, treated like stories.
50 reviews in this genre.
Editor's picks
Highest-rated non-fiction on the shelf
Atomic Habits
by James Clear
The single best book on building good habits. Clear breaks down the science into a practical system anyone can follow - and actually stick with.
Deep Work
by Cal Newport
A wake-up call for knowledge workers everywhere. Newport makes a compelling case that the ability to focus deeply is the superpower of the 21st century.
The Demon of Unrest
by Erik Larson
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson 2024 review. The five months between Lincoln's November 1860 election and Fort Sumter. Larson's follow-up to The Splendid and the Vile and one of the canonical narrative non-fiction books of the year.
I Am, I Am, I Am
by Maggie O'Farrell
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell 2018 review. A memoir told through seventeen brushes with death. O'Farrell's structural pre-Hamnet memoir and one of the canonical contemporary British memoirs.
The Lost City of Z
by David Grann
The Lost City of Z by David Grann 2009 review. The 1925 disappearance of British explorer Percy Fawcett in the Amazon. Grann's debut narrative non-fiction and the basis for the James Gray film.
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 review. A book-length letter to his fifteen-year-old son about race in America. National Book Award winner.
Just Mercy
by Bryan Stevenson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson 2014 review. The Equal Justice Initiative founder's memoir of his Alabama capital-case work. Carnegie Medal winner and the basis for the 2019 film.
Moneyball
by Michael Lewis
Moneyball by Michael Lewis 2003 review. Billy Beane's data-driven 2002 Oakland A's season. The Brad Pitt film source and the canonical contemporary book on sabermetrics.
The Big Short
by Michael Lewis
The Big Short by Michael Lewis 2010 review. The four investor groups who saw the 2008 mortgage collapse coming and made fortunes shorting it. The basis for the Adam McKay film.
The Choice
by Edith Eger
The Choice by Edith Eger 2017 review. A Hungarian ballerina survives Auschwitz at sixteen and becomes a California clinical psychologist. Canonical contemporary American Holocaust memoir.
The Return
by Hisham Matar
The Return by Hisham Matar 2016 review. Matar returns to Libya in 2012 to investigate the 1990 disappearance of his father, the opposition leader Jaballa Matar. Pulitzer Prize.
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
A Promised Land by Barack Obama 2020 review. The first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his early political life through the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The most thoroughly written contemporary presidential memoir in modern American letters.
Becoming
by Michelle Obama
Becoming by Michelle Obama 2018 review. Michelle Obama's memoir, from her South Side Chicago childhood through the Obama White House. The political memoir that sold seventeen million copies, and the one that genuinely earns its bestseller status.
Educated
by Tara Westover
Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.
The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson 2003 review. The 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer H. H. Holmes, whose hotel operated three blocks from the fairgrounds. The narrative-nonfiction bestseller that defined the contemporary popular-history register.
The Wager
by David Grann
The Wager by David Grann 2023 review. The 1741 shipwreck of HMS Wager off Patagonia and the two contradictory mutiny narratives that returned to England. Grann's third major narrative non-fiction book and the canonical contemporary maritime-disaster story.
An Immense World
by Ed Yong
An Immense World by Ed Yong 2022 review. How animals sense the world: bat echolocation, electric eels, the magnetic compass of birds, the chemical world of moths. The most-cited contemporary popular science book on animal perception.
Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.
Solito
by Javier Zamora
Solito by Javier Zamora 2022 review. The 1999 migration of a nine-year-old Salvadoran boy on foot and by sea across two months. The canonical contemporary memoir of unaccompanied minor migration to the United States.
Empire of Pain
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe 2021 review. The Sackler family and the operational mechanics of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin marketing strategy across three generations. The canonical contemporary investigative non-fiction book on the opioid crisis.
Calypso
by David Sedaris
Calypso by David Sedaris 2018 review. Twenty-one essays organized around Sedaris's Emerald Isle beach house and the death of one sister. Sedaris's most ambitious essay collection and the late-career return to form.
Bad Blood
by John Carreyrou
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou 2018 review. The Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes blood-testing fraud. Carreyrou's investigative account built from his Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporting.
Caste
by Isabel Wilkerson
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson 2020 review. A comparative history of American racial hierarchy, the Indian caste system, and Nazi Germany's racial laws. Wilkerson's second book after The Warmth of Other Suns.
Killers of the Flower Moon
by David Grann
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann 2017 review. The 1920s murders of dozens of Osage people in Oklahoma after the discovery of oil. The Apple TV / Scorsese film source and Grann's narrative non-fiction breakthrough.
Say Nothing
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe 2018 review. The 1972 disappearance of Belfast mother Jean McConville and the broader IRA history of the Troubles. Keefe's first major book and the basis for the 2024 FX Hulu limited series.
The Body Keeps the Score
by Bessel van der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk 2014 review. A trauma psychiatrist's three-decade synthesis of how chronic psychological trauma is stored in the body. The canonical contemporary popular-medicine book on trauma.
Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 2016 review. Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race in late-apartheid and early-post-apartheid South Africa. The canonical contemporary South African memoir.
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth
by Camille Bacon-Smith
Camille Bacon-Smith's 1992 ethnographic study of media fandom. Foundational academic work on fan communities and serious nonfiction worth reading on its own terms.
Apollo 12: The Nasa Mission Reports, Volume 2
by Robert Godwin
Apollo 12: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2 edited by Robert Godwin 2000 review. The primary-source NASA documentation volume on the second crewed lunar landing.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
by Katie Hafner
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner 1996 review. The first serious history of ARPANET and the team at BBN that built it, written by reporters who actually talked to the engineers.
Digital Minimalism
by Cal Newport
Newport is at his most quietly persuasive here. Not a screed against phones, but a framework for getting your attention back.
Spare
by Prince Harry
Spare by Prince Harry 2023 review. The Duke of Sussex's memoir of his life from Diana's death through the 2020 California relocation. The fastest-selling non-fiction book in English-language publishing history.
Going Infinite
by Michael Lewis
Going Infinite by Michael Lewis 2023 review. The Sam Bankman-Fried embedded account of the FTX and Alameda collapse. Lewis's most-contested book.
Postmortem
by Patricia Cornwell
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell 1990 review. The debut Kay Scarpetta novel that invented the modern forensic-pathologist thriller. A Richmond, Virginia serial killer is targeting women, and the chief medical examiner is the one who can stop him.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 2014 review. A single-volume history of Homo sapiens from cognitive revolution to the present. The popular-history bestseller that defined the 2010s book-club shelf, with the trade-offs that ambition requires.
The Anxious Generation
by Jonathan Haidt
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt 2024 review. The smartphone-and-social-media-driven youth mental-health crisis and a four-point reform proposal. The most-cited contemporary book on adolescent psychology.
Outlive
by Peter Attia
Outlive by Peter Attia 2023 review. A medical strategy for extending healthspan by directly addressing cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and Type 2 diabetes. The bestselling popular medicine book of 2023.
Atlas of the Heart
by Brene Brown
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown 2021 review. An illustrated mapping of eighty-seven distinct human emotions organized into thirteen emotional landscapes. Brown's most ambitious popular-psychology book.
Science Fiction Culture
by Camille Bacon-Smith
Science Fiction Culture by Camille Bacon-Smith review. A 2000 ethnographic study of SF fandom and convention culture. The Enterprising Women follow-up with serious participant-observation rigor.
How to Write a Mystery
by Larry Beinhart
How to Write a Mystery by Larry Beinhart review. A serious craft guide to crime fiction from the American Hero author. Sharp, practical, recommended for working writers.
Anthony Van Dyke
by Robin Blake
Anthony Van Dyke by Robin Blake 1999 review. A Yale University Press art-historical biography of the seventeenth-century Flemish portrait painter and his English court career.
The Book of End Times
by John Clute
A John Clute essay collection on the millennial moment in genre fiction. The encyclopedia editor in long-form critical mode. Difficult and rewarding.
Land's End : A Walk In Provincetown
by Michael Cunningham
Land's End by Michael Cunningham review. A 2002 walking guide and meditation on Provincetown, written by The Hours novelist. Short, lyrical, deeply Cape Cod.
Common Carnage
by Stephen Dobyns
Common Carnage by Stephen Dobyns review. A 1996 Saratoga mystery. Charlie Bradshaw works a Saratoga horse-racing case in his usual quietly observed register.
The Robert B. Parker Companion
by Elizabeth Foxwell
The Robert B. Parker Companion by Elizabeth Foxwell review. A 2005 reference book on the Spenser novelist. Sharp critical-and-biographical assembly of the long career.
CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised
by Katie Hafner
Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier by Katie Hafner and John Markoff 1991 review. The 1991 nonfiction account of three early hackers (Kevin Mitnick, Pengo, Robert Morris) that helped define the public understanding of the hacker mythology.
Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson
by Keith Ablow
Keith Ablow doing tabloid true crime. His forensic psychiatry credentials used in the service of a media cycle. Predictably uneven.
Career Ideas For Kids Who Like Adventure
by Nancy Bond
Career Ideas For Kids Who Like Adventure by Nancy Bond review. A career-exploration book for middle-grade readers. Practical, well-researched.
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