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
Paper Book
"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
Paper Book
A riveting and stylish saga set in Paris during World War II, THE ART SPY uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the cultural legacy of the West. On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position...
Between two rivers : ancient Mesopotamia and the birth of history
Al-Rashid, Moudhy N.
Paper Book
Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time. What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a...
Careless people : a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism
Wynn-Williams, Sarah
#1 New York Times Bestseller A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, THE NEW YORKER, AP, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, AND MORE! "Careless People is darkly...
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...
The Golden Road : how ancient India transformed the world
Dalrymple, William
Paper Book
The internationally bestselling author of The Anarchy returns with a sparkling, soaring history of ideas, tracing South Asia's under-recognized role in producing the world as we know it. For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse...
Here comes the sun : a last chance for the climate and a fresh chance for civilization
McKibben, Bill
Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down. But Bill McKibben, one of the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, insists the moment is also full of possibility. Energy from the sun and wind is suddenly the cheapest power on the planet and growing faster than any energy source in...
How to share an egg : a true story of hunger, love, and plenty
Reichert, Bonny
Paper Book
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...
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: a Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Anderson, Scott
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER * From the author of the landmark bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern...
Nobody's girl : a memoir of surviving abuse and fighting for justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell "Make no mistake: this is a book about power, corruption, industrial-scale sex abuse and the way in which...
The serviceberry : abundance and reciprocity in the natural world
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Paper Book
An Instant New York Times Bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world....
The sirens' call : how attention became the world's most endangered resource
Hayes, Christopher
Paper Book
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
Paper Book
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...

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