2025 Round Up: Favourite Nonfiction

Ideas, people, places. Here are the top titles that resonated with us in 2025.

Updated January 9, 2026
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Apple in China : the capture of the world's greatest company
McGee, Patrick
"Phenomenal...a jaw-dropping book." --Jon Stewart, The Daily Show Named by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Prospect magazine as a best book of the year, this "scrupulously reported" (The New Yorker) and...
The art spy : the extraordinary untold tale of WWII resistance hero Rose Valland
Young, Michelle
Careless people : a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism
Wynn-Williams, Sarah
The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
Febos, Melissa
From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge. "Only Melissa Febos could...
Empire of AI : dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Hao, Karen
A New York Times Notable Book * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award * An Instant New York Times Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian and Scientific American "A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in...
Enshittification : why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it
Doctorow, Cory
Enshittification: it''s not just you--the internet sucks now. Here''s why, and here''s how we can disenshittify it. We''re living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of...
Everything is tuberculosis : the history and persistence of our deadliest infection
Green, John
#1 New York Times bestseller * #1 Washington Post bestseller * #1 Indie Bestseller * USA Today Bestseller John Green, award-winning author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world's...
A flower traveled in my blood : the incredible true story of the grandmothers who fought to find a stolen generation of children
Cohen Gilliland, Haley
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 * THE WASHINGTON POST'S 5 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2025 * THE ATLANTIC'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 * THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 * TIME MAGAZINE'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 * NPR'S BEST BOOKS...
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
Gilbert, Sophie
A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book * Named one of the Best Books of the Year by TIME, NPR, Elle, and The Boston Globe "Searing... rigorously researched but never stuffy... Gilbert has compiled perhaps the first comprehensive...
The haves and have-yachts : dispatches on the ultrarich
Osnos, Evan
How to share an egg : a true story of hunger, love, and plenty
Reichert, Bonny
An "absolutely transformative" (People) culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family--sustenance and survival--from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. "Beautifully written, heartbreaking and hopeful."--Ruth Reichl, New...
Is a river alive?
Macfarlane, Robert
A New York Times Bestseller A #1 Sunday Times (UK) Bestseller Finalist for the 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition in Environmental Literature Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
A marriage at sea : a true story of love, obsession, and shipwreck
Elmhirst, Sophie
THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025 ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE "This is nonfiction that...
The mission : the CIA in the 21st century
Weiner, Tim
New York Times Bestseller * A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 * A New York Times Editors' Choice * A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year "No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second...
Nobody's girl : a memoir of surviving abuse and fighting for justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
No more tears : the dark secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Harris, Gardiner
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America's oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies--from an award-winning investigative journalist "A damning portrait."--Associated Press "A page-turning...
One day, everyone will have always been against this
El Akkad, Omar
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER * LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM * From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful...
The serviceberry : abundance and reciprocity in the natural world
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Audiobook
The sirens' call : how attention became the world's most endangered resource
Hayes, Christopher
Ebook
The #1 New York Times Bestseller * One of Barack Obama's Summer Reading List Picks From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has...
There is no place for us : working and homeless in America
Goldstone, Brian
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR * Through the "revelatory and gut-wrenching" (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling...
We Survived the Night : An Indigenous Reckoning
NoiseCat, Julian Brave.
A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work today, and the director of the Oscar®-nominated documentary, Sugarcane, We Survived the Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing...

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