Genre

The best Non-Fiction books

Science, business, deep reporting, investigative narrative. True stories, treated like stories.

50 reviews in this genre.

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 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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