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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1929 : inside the greatest crash in Wall Street history-- and how it shattered a nation
Sorkin, Andrew Ross
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "It is one of the best narrative histories I've read." --The Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 * One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 * Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by The Washington...
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...
Book of Lives : A Memoir of Sorts
Atwood, Margaret.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD * NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST * How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story? "The most spectacular,...
Capitalism : a global history
Beckert, Sven
A New York Times Notable Book * A Financial Times Best Book of the Year "A learned, formidable and vivid story... Readers around the world will study and ponder this monumental work of history, agreeing and arguing with it, all the while affirming its...
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...
Dead and Alive : Essays
Smith, Zadie.
Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, TIME, Vanity Fair, and Kirkus Reviews * One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 "Smart, somber . . . There's pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity...
Empire of AI : dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Hao, Karen
Paper Book
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, Scientific American, and Elle "A bestselling page-turner that has made waves...
Everything is tuberculosis : the history and persistence of our deadliest infection
Green, John
Paper Book
#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
Paper Book
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...
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...
The haves and have-yachts : dispatches on the ultrarich
Osnos, Evan
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Times (London) From National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos comes a "sharp...charming...regrettably timely" (The Washington Post)...
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...
Is a river alive?
Macfarlane, Robert
Paper Book
Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an...
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...
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 mind electric : a neurologist on the strangeness and wonder of our brains
Anand, Pria
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of Summer 2025 by The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Publishers Weekly, and Book Riot The Observer (London)'s Summer Reads Select In this collection of medical tales "reminiscent of Oliver Sacks...the best of medical...
The mission : the CIA in the 21st century
Weiner, Tim
Paper Book
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...
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Roy, Arundhati
Named One of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Books of 2025 Finalist for the Kirkus Prize A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces her...
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...
No more tears : the dark secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Harris, Gardiner
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . An explosive, deeply reported expose 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
Paper Book
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
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...
The tragedy of true crime : four guilty men and the stories that define us
Lennon, John J.
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 * An NPR Best Book of the Year * A Kirkus Best of 2025 In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he's a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all. The Tragedy of True...
A Truce That Is Not Peace
Toews, Miriam
Paper Book
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS, NPR, LIT HUB, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, AND BOOKPAGE "Revelatory." --New York Times Book Review ...

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