New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers

The preeminent list of best selling nonfiction in the United States.
Updated October 20, 2025
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt
Ebook
THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2024 * A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book * One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 * A TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2024 * Named a Best Book of 2024 by the...
The body keeps the score : brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma
Van der Kolk, Bessel A.
Paper Book
A pioneering researcher and one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for healing   Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four...
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
Michael Harriot
Audiobook
Greenlights
McConaughey, Matthew
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 6 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE! Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award-winning actor's unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater...
Thinking, fast and slow
Kahneman, Daniel
Paper Book
*Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential...
Chaos : Charles Manson, the CIA, and the secret history of the sixties
O'Neill, Tom
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NOW A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times)...
Assata : an autobiography
Shakur, Assata
Paper Book
On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a...
On tyranny : twenty lessons from the twentieth century
Snyder, Timothy
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A "bracing" (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America's turn towards authoritarianism, from "a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present" (The New York Times)<...
Born a crime : stories from a South African childhood
Noah, Trevor
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * More than one million copies sold! A "brilliant" (Lupita Nyong'o, Time), "poignant" (Entertainment Weekly), "soul-nourishing" (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid  
How to stand up to a dictator : the fight for our future
Ressa, Maria
Paper Book
"In this impassioned warning and inspirational call to arms, Ressa identifies and illuminates her core values of empathy, honesty, and faith in humanity to illustrate how a strong commitment to such foundational beliefs can provide the key to democracy's survival. . . . Searing and electrifying."...
The color of law : a forgotten history of how our government segregated America
Rothstein, Richard
Paper Book
Widely heralded as a "masterful" (Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.