The Nonfiction Books That Shaped 2025
- - The Nonfiction Books That Shaped 2025
Adrienne Gaffney, With Contributions by Samuel Maude and Lauren Puckett-PopeDecember 19, 2025 at 10:36 PM
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The Best Nonfiction Books of 2025 Courtesy + Design by Leah Romero
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It was an incredible year for nonfiction that explored—and, in many ways, revealed—the world around us. Some of these books gave us the tools with which to confront the litany of issues facing us; others, mercifully, gave us the chance to put the existential angst aside for a few hours. Whether you prefer more of the former or the latter, ELLE editors’ picks for the best nonfiction books of 2025 run the gamut from immersive (Sophie Elmhirst’s A Marriage at Sea and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night) to heartbreaking (Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me and Omar El Akkad’s One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This) to informative (Karen Hao’s Empire of AI and Brian Goldstone’s There Is No Place For Us) to revealing (Michelle Obama’s The Look and Susan Morrison’s Lorne). It would be impossible to mention all the wonderful nonfiction that this year gave us, but below are some of ELLE’s favorites.
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case
“In The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, singer-songwriter Neko Case recounts how she was ‘raised by two dogs and a space heater’ during her childhood in rural Washington. Neglect and loneliness were familiar sensations for her, and she eventually left home at a young age. Case’s depictions of her youth are fascinating, though depressing—but it’s when readers get more insight into her adulthood (and her years as part of the New Pornographers, as well as a solo artist) that The Harder I Fight the More I Love You really soars.”—Adrienne Gaffney, features editor
$13.25 at amazon.com
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
“This is a gorgeous and original meditation on Blackness through the lens of another color: blue. The National Book Award-winning author Imani Perry’s Black in Blues is a slim but profound volume of essays, tracing the interwoven history of Black identity with 16th-century indigo dye; blues music; bluestone; blue flowers; the ‘retaliatory response’ of ‘Black Lives Matter’ with ‘Blue Lives Matter’; the blue oceans over which her people have traveled; and even the bright blue of her grandmother’s bedroom. ‘We people who created a sound for the world’s favorite color—the blues—offer a testimony,’ Perry writes. She continues, later, ‘I didn’t want to write an exegesis on blue. I realized I wanted to write toward the mystery of blue and its alchemy in the lives of Black folk.’ The connections Perry makes are both sweeping and intimate, covering a remarkable range of topics with insight and precise prose. The result is a gem of a book, one worth multiple re-reads.”—Lauren Puckett-Pope, senior culture editor
Ecco
$15.92 at amazon.com
Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing
“If you care about education in America—which, ideally, should be every single American—then this book is an absolute must-read. Original Sins by the scholar, cultural organizer, and author Eve Ewing is an incisive portrait of how the country’s school system has, over centuries, perpetuated the ‘original sins’ wrought by chattel slavery and the genocide and displacement of Indigenous populations. With dozens and dozens of pages of harrowing citations backing her, Ewing argues that ‘the way Black and Native children have been treated in schools, from the earliest days of this country to the present, is an integral part of the way racial hierarchy is constructed and maintained…Original sin is inherited and fundamental. It doesn’t go away.’ This is a book for educators and parents, yes, but it is also a book for any and every average citizen who wants to see our school systems clearly—and help shape them into institutions more like the beacons they purport to be.”—LPP
One World
$20.26 at amazon.com
Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison
“As the creator of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels has been shaping American culture for 50 years. But while many know his name, few know much more about the taciturn Canadian. In Lorne, Susan Morrison, a long-time New Yorker editor, gives us the full story of the man who touched the careers of so many of the world’s funniest people.”—AG
$18.01 at amazon.com
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
“A work of startling moral lucidity, Egyptian Canadian journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad’s memoir-meets-polemic One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is nearly impossible to stop thinking about once you’ve dug deep enough into its pages. Mixing personal narrative with larger global examples of war and empire, rooting his account in the present-day horrors taking place in Gaza, El Akkad rejects the ideals he once held about the West. With One Day, he offers an agonized outcry for those lost to state-sanctioned violence—and calls upon readers to confront the hypocrisy, apathy, and complicity that perpetuate it.”—LPP
Knopf
$18.05 at amazon.com
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
As featured in ELLE’s best books of spring 2025: “I’ll be honest: I did not anticipate that a book about a hare would land at the top of my TBR list this year. I can understand if you feel the same way. (There’s so much else going on.) But, of course, that’s exactly the appeal of Chloe Dalton’s memoir, Raising Hare, the reading of which feels like stepping through a cottage doorway into a slower, more meaningful way of existing with the world. (Another way to put it: Reading this memoir feels a lot like touching grass.) As she relays her experience raising an injured hare from infant to adult, returning the leveret to the wild only to find the animal willingly returning to her doorstep, Dalton follows a time-honored tradition of man-and-beast nature writing. But she also provides us with a refreshing gift: a taste of fragility, grace, and trust in a world otherwise drunk on corruption and haste. If you’re in desperate need of a deep breath, this is the first book I’d recommend.”—LPP
Pantheon
$22.48 at amazon.com
Firstborn Girls by Bernice L. McFadden
As featured in ELLE’s best books of spring 2025: “Bernice L. McFadden, known for her celebrated novels including Praise Song for the Butterflies and The Book of Harlan, takes an inward approach with her latest book, the memoir Firstborn Girls. Recounting her own history (from her second birthday to the publication of her novel Sugar) as well as her ancestors’ (starting with her enslaved great-grandmother in the mid-1800s), McFadden traces the patterns that have cycled through each generation of her family’s firstborn women, and in doing so, draws parallels to the larger historical context around them. She accomplishes this seemingly straightforward task with a sharp instinct for narrative—and a profound appreciation for Black lives and Black art. McFadden’s voice is sincere and moving, both on the page and in the audiobook, which the author narrates herself. This memoir is a treasure.”—LPP
Dutton
$12.61 at amazon.com
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
“Sarah Wynn-Williams’s experience working as a Facebook executive illustrates how—and why—America has become so divided. Corporate greed, recklessness, and cruel indifference turned a company supposedly intended to foster connection into a hotbed of election interference, hateful rhetoric, and sexual harassment. Careless People offers some genuinely scandalous revelations, but what Wynn-Williams really delivers is an account of what tech companies like Facebook have cost us as a society.”—AG
$16.44 at amazon.com
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
“John Green’s decision, in 2021, to focus on nonfiction might have come as a surprise to fans of the ultra-popular YA author. But when you read Everything Is Tuberculosis, you see that it has all the drama, emotion, and compassion of The Fault in Our Stars or Paper Towns. Tying the book together is the story of Henry, a 17-year-old whom Green met in a Sierra Leone hospital. Green follows Henry and his mother, Isatu, for years as Henry struggles with tuberculosis, a disease that is both avoidable and treatable. Green rails against this injustice while also telling the history of a disease that shaped much of the way we live today.”—AG
$21.99 at amazon.com
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone
“A person making minimum wage would need to work 141 hours a week to afford a standard two-bedroom apartment in Boston. The number is higher in San Francisco. It’s a devastating reality that even full-time workers are vulnerable to losing housing, as Brian Goldstone explores in There Is No Place for Us. Goldstone follows five Atlanta families over years of housing insecurity, telling their stories while examining the larger factors (gentrification that caused rapidly rising rents; property flipping, which created a more limited supply of homes; and predatory real estate practices among them) that have made stable, affordable housing so unattainable. Goldstone’s remarkable reporting is both heartbreaking and illuminating.”—AG
$21.66 at amazon.com
Matriarch: A Memoir by Tina Knowles
“Matriarch is a rare look into the Knowles family. Over the years, fans have treasured snippets of their lives, from the briefest footage of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s 2008 wedding shown in the video for ‘All Night’ to her memorable pregnancy reveal during the MTV Music Video Awards in 2011. But with her first book, matriarch Tina Knowles gives us a full picture of her Southern childhood, witnessing her daughters’ blooming talents, and her rocky marriage.”—AG
$16.51 at amazon.com
The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza
As featured in ELLE’s best books of spring 2025: “In the beginning of The Hollow Half, Sarah Aziza offers readers a jarring snapshot of self-assessment. She scrolls through photos of herself on her iPhone, the device repeatedly asking, ‘Is this you?’ She understands the confusion: The images vary wildly, depicting her at different points in her worsening eating disorder. Eventually, she is hospitalized for anorexia and narrowly revived from the brink of death. In this superb debut memoir, Aziza recounts how her difficult recovery tore down the curtain between her present and her past—particularly a past that took place long before she was born. The daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, she knits together a history of violent displacement that casts a shadow well into her modern-day life in Brooklyn. With painstaking devotion, Aziza assembles memories to reconnect with the resilience of her people—and to imagine a better future for herself and her loved ones. The Hollow Half is a powerhouse of a memoir.”—LPP
Catapult
$27.03 at amazon.com
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
As featured in ELLE’s best books of spring 2025: “Sophie Gilbert, an Atlantic writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, looks back on the culture of a recent generation and illuminates its ugly consequences. As much as we readers might claim to understand the damage wrought by early-aughts diet culture or the media’s invasive approach to young women of the era, Gilbert’s recollections provide a renewed sense of shock. Mixing in her own memories of being a teen and young adult in the 2000s, Gilbert expertly examines how feminism got to this point—and where it might go from here.”—AG
$14.92 at amazon.com
The Mother Code: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us by Ruthie Ackerman
“There will, perhaps, never be enough ways to interpret or consider motherhood. Ruthie Ackerman has experienced it from so many angles: As a child and young woman, she saw her mentally ill mother grapple with the role and was told stories about women in her family who had walked away from their kids. As a newlywed, she told herself she wanted to be childless. And as a woman rethinking that decision, she threw herself into the world of modern fertility—and all the thorny questions it raises. In Mother Code, Ackerman captures the many experiences and personas a mother can have. Her personal story is engaging, but perhaps the biggest takeaway from Mother Code is the reminder that nothing about being (or having) a mother is simple.”—AG
Random House
$17.37 at amazon.com
Hollywood High: A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies by Bruce Handy
“Bruce Handy asks us to take teen movies seriously. Hollywood High traces the genre from Rebel Without a Cause to The Hunger Games, studying films that have often been dismissed. The book tells the behind-the-scenes stories of how the greatest examples were created, while looking at how deeply each film reflects the time in which it was created.”—AG
$20.22 at amazon.com
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao
“The proliferation of artificial intelligence is not merely a hypothetical threat; it’s the reality we now live in. But it’s not a reality we must complacently accept. In this clear-eyed, thoroughly researched account, journalist Karen Hao draws on her years of AI-focused reporting for publications including The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic to tell ‘the inside story of Open AI,’ the company behind Chat GPT, and of its CEO Sam Altman, whom she calls ‘Silicon Valley’s golden boy’ and an ‘avatar of the generative AI revolution.’ For Empire of AI, Hao conducted more than 300 interviews—including with 90-plus current and former employees of OpenAI itself—and the resulting book makes the depth of her knowledge apparent. An engaging, often urgent read, Empire of AI offers essential insight not only into Altman’s company, but into the wider world its aforementioned ‘generative AI revolution’ is shaping.”—LPP
Penguin Press
$18.81 at amazon.com
Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh by Robin Givhan
“Virgil Abloh reached a new level of fashion stardom when his unexpected death in 2021 shocked the world. Trained as an architect, Abloh rose through the ranks in a way that had never been done before. The path took him to Louis Vuitton, where he became the company’s first Black artistic director and one of the few Black people leading major fashion houses. Abloh’s gift came from being able to look at standard objects and see them in all new ways. In Make It Ours, Robin Givhan renders a vivid and compassionate portrait of the young artist. As my colleague Véronique Hyland put it, the book chronicles ‘the intersection of a man and a moment, a time of disruptive change in the fashion industry, and a figure who was uniquely primed to seize that opportunity.’”—AG
$20.45 at amazon.com
I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman
As featured in ELLE’s best books of summer 2025: “I’m a long-time reader of Maris Kreizman’s work at Literary Hub and beyond, so it was a pleasure to get her takes on issues that have less to do with publishing in particular and more to do with America writ large. I zipped through I Want to Burn This Place Down, her new book of essays, impressed by how much ground Kreizman manages to cover in such a slim volume. Although these pieces are far from comprehensive—nor do they claim to be—they effectively critique many of the liberal beliefs she once accepted without challenge. (These beliefs included, among others, that labor organizing is ‘impractical’ and that cops are uniformly heroic.) Kreizman chronicles her own identity shift from ‘good Democrat’ to a more enlightened one, doing so with humor and a righteous anger that feels present on the page. Charged yet earnest, I Want to Burn This Place Down makes the reader feel Kreizman’s rightful frustrations as their own.”—LPP
Ecco
$17.37 at amazon.com
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
As featured in ELLE’s best books of summer 2025: “A Marriage at Sea was such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? Elmhirst’s incredible account traces the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a 1960s couple who set off from Britain for an around-the-world sail to New Zealand but become stranded after a whale hits their boat. Their harrowing period lost at sea is so brilliantly depicted that it’s almost too painful to read.”—AG
$28.00 at amazon.com
Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell
“It doesn’t take long to realize that actress Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t involved in Amy Odell’s second bombshell biography—and, miraculously, that makes the book itself so much more fascinating. In Gwyneth, old friends, fellow actors, and members of the Goop universe share the good, the bad, and the shocking about one of America’s most polarizing and enduring stars.”—AG
$12.83 at amazon.com
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs
“Who was James Baldwin? Nicholas Boggs gets to the heart of the writer’s life story through those he loved and who loved him. Among them are romantic partners Yoran Cazac, a French artist, and Lucien Happersberger, a Swedish painter; his mentor Beauford Delaney, also a painter; and collaborators like the Turkish actor Engin Cezzar. Each left their touch on Baldwin, and Boggs renders these relationships beautifully.”—AG
$17.20 at amazon.com
Destroy This House by Amanda Uhle
“With Destroy This House, writer and McSweeney’s publisher Amanda Uhle revisits her unorthodox childhood and complicated parents, looking to understand why they lived the way that they did. Her mother dealt with a hoarding disorder, and the family swung from poverty to wealth and back as her father jumped from career to career, chased by debt and moving frequently and without warning. Throughout the book, Uhle writes with unwavering affection, recalling the dark moments of her upbringing—but also, always, the love.”—AG
$22.53 at amazon.com
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
As featured in ELLE’s best books of fall 2025: “With Mother Mary Comes to Me, the God of Small Things author Arundhati Roy has delivered not only one of the better photographic memoir covers in recent memory, but also a deliberate and compelling portrait of a tempestuous mother-daughter relationship. The book is so named for Mary Roy, the author’s mother, whose cruelty did not leave Arundhati herself any less devastated when Mary died in 2022 at 88 years old. Recounting Mary’s work as a teacher and activist alongside an excavation of her abuse, Mother Mary is beautifully written and raw.”—LPP
$25.74 at amazon.com
Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State by Caleb Gayle
“Caleb Gayle’s Black Moses presents itself as ‘a story of hope and what comes after; of brief moments of racial equity, and what comes after; of dreams, big ones, and what comes after we wake up.’ But ‘most of all,’ he argues, ‘this story shows that even the most American of promises was never available to all Americans.’ Gayle’s National Book Award-longlisted history zooms in on a man named Edward Preston McCabe, who, in the late-19th century, sought to turn Oklahoma into ‘an American promised land for Black people.’ Although his movement did not ultimately come to fruition in the manner he envisioned as a politician and organizer, McCabe’s legacy is artfully illustrated by Gayle, who uses McCabe’s story to illustrate the broader sweep of racism and anti-Blackness in America. It’s an important and enthralling read.”—LPP
Riverhead Books
$22.60 at amazon.com
We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat
“From its opening paragraphs, We Survived the Night is an immersive read, its lush, novel-like prose pulling you into Julian Brave NoiseCat’s world. An early standout line: ‘The baby’s scream climbed the lone smokestack looming out of that annex and crawled across the school grounds.’ That baby was the journalist and documentarian NoiseCat’s father, abandoned (and nearly murdered) at a residential school in British Columbia. But that baby survived, making NoiseCat’s own life possible. His debut intermixes personal and cultural history with memoir, reporting, and mythology, crafting a narrative in the style of a traditional ‘Coyote Story’ drawn from NoiseCat’s Secwépemc and St’at’imc heritage. The result is an inventive, bold, and altogether astounding book.”—LPP
Knopf
$17.69 at amazon.com
Joyride by Susan Orlean
As featured in ELLE’s best books of fall 2025: “When she sat down for our ELLE interview earlier this year, celebrated journalist Susan Orlean told me that ‘people often make the mistake of believing that having a process will deflate their creativity. To me, process liberates creativity.’ To that end, her lovely memoir, Joyride, depicts Orlean’s process of creation. The book illustrates how Orlean became the writer she is today; describes the weeks, if not months, of work that went into some of her most famous stories; and encourages readers to adopt an attitude of curiosity in their own creative endeavors (and in their broader lives). Encouraging, quick-witted, and fascinating—much like Orlean herself—this is a memoir that lives up to its title.”—LPP
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
$28.47 at amazon.com
Bread of Angels by Patti Smith
“Patti Smith’s new memoir follows her previous books Just Kids and M Train, but it focuses on less-explored elements of the singer-songwriter and poet’s life. In 1980, Smith left New York and relocated to Michigan with her husband, Fred. They raised their two children there before Fred died in 1994, a period during which Smith was relatively removed from the music industry. It was a beautiful time for the artist—and one she renders tenderly in Bread of Angels, alongside other memories of loss and rebirth.”—AG
$22.06 at amazon.com
The Look by Michelle Obama with Meredith Koop
“Michelle Obama’s The Look, which features a foreword by Farah Jasmine Griffin and was written with Obama’s long-time stylist Meredith Koop, isn’t just a retrospective of the former first lady’s fashion choices—it’s an intimate glimpse inside the White House itself. With thoughtful writing about Obama’s wardrobe from her early days in the spotlight to now, the book examines the intersection between fashion and politics, showing that a blazer, shorts, or simple dress can really make a global statement.”—Samuel Maude, content strategy manager
Crown
$32.50 at amazon.com
Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman
“Journalist and crime-fiction expert Sarah Weinman’s Without Consent opens with the line, ‘Before Greta and John Rideout became the most extraordinary, talked-about couple in America, they were simply Greta Hibbard and John Glesmann, two ordinary young people locked in a cycle of abuse and violence.’ Weinman does an extraordinary job capturing this cycle in the story that follows, centering around the 1978 case of Oregon v. Rideout, for which John was the first man in the United States to be charged with marital rape. (Following a jury trial, John was acquitted.) Weinman’s true-crime history is thoroughly reported, often enraging, and a compelling portrait of how misogyny and abuse have—and continue to—shape America’s legal system.”—LPP
Ecco
$27.94 at amazon.com
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