New Nonfiction To Read in 2025

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. John Green, a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

A beautifully designed, profoundly insightful exploration of life’s 20 Questions, featuring original writing by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle and the wisest, most life-changing answers shared with the beloved podcast hosts over hundreds of intimate conversations.

The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age. In Source Code Bill Gates tells his own story, for the first time: Wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: A determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. A glorious chronicle of a life like none other — enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering — and a testament to the world-changing power of Black motherhood.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.

In hilarious and tender essays, #1 New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Handler shares her unforgettable story of becoming the woman she always wanted to be. Surprisingly vulnerable and always outrageous, Chelsea Handler captures the antic-filled, exhilarating, and joyful life she’s built — a life that makes the rest of us think, I’ll have what she’s having.

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.

The definitive biography of Lorne Michaels, the man behind America’s most beloved comedy show. Drawn from hundreds of interviews — with Michaels, his friends, and SNL’s iconic stars and writers, from Will Ferrell to Tina Fey to John Mulaney to Chris Rock to Dan Aykroyd — Lorne is a deeply reported, wildly entertaining account of a man singularly obsessed with the show that would define his life and have a profound impact on American culture.

Through the unforgettable stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend — the dramatic rise of the “working homeless” in cities across America. By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness — and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.

Yung Pueblo offers a blueprint for deepening your compassion, kindness, and gratitude so you can truly grow in harmony with another person and build stronger connections in all your relationships.

From a renowned National Book Award-winning scholar, an extraordinary new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how a poor young man inspired a religion that reshaped the world. In Miracles and Wonder, Pagels sheds light on Jesus’s enduring power to inspire and attract.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

From New Yorker Executive Editor and writer Michael Luo, an urgent, deeply felt history of the Chinese in America and their more than century-long struggle to belong. Strangers in the Land is an epic history of exclusion, belonging, and the complications of America’s multiracial democracy.

Washington Post technology reporter Eva Dou pieces together a remarkable portrait of Huawei’s reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, and how he built a sprawling corporate empire — one whose rise Western policymakers have become increasingly obsessed with halting. Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, House of Huawei dissects the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed, and national glory that Huawei helped to build — and that has also ensnared it.

The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Everything you want to say, and how you want to say it, can be found in The Next Conversation.

One of our most prominent spiritual voices offers a wholehearted and hope-filled model for the world today, grounded in the timeless wisdom of the Hebrew prophets. The Tears of Things breathes new life into ancient wisdom. It paves a path of enlightenment for anyone seeking a compassionate way of living in a hurting world.

From one of our foremost psychologists, a trailblazing book that turns the idea of a good life on its head and urges us to embrace the transformative power of variety and experience.

From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of print magazines when they were at the vanguard of American culture.

An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies — from an award-winning investigative journalist. Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.

This graphic novel follows Craig Thompson and his siblings, who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour. In his trademark breathtaking pen-and-ink work, Craig interweaves this lost youth with the 300-year-old history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together.

From the beloved TODAY show host Sheinelle Jones comes an inspiring collection of heartfelt life-lessons from hard working moms who raised some of our favorite celebrities. By combining behind-the-scenes insights from top celebrity mothers with her own tales from the trenches of modern parenting, Sheinelle reveals how to make it through the hard parts of motherhood and still tap into the joys of it with empathy, generosity, and solidarity.

An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy — and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions — resonates with the international crises we see today.

From the 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 reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.

This profoundly human and moving narrative offers a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. Hope Dies Last is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core resolve of our species against the most precarious odds we have ever faced.

The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down. Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.

A myth-busting, science-based guide that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess. Filled with actionable advice, cutting-edge research, and riveting stories, Shift puts the power back into our hands, so we can control our emotions without them controlling us — and help others do the same.

A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author’s family to show how the implementation of integration decimated Black school systems and did much of the Black community a disservice. Rooks’s deft hand turns the story of integration’s past and future on its head, and shows how we may better understand and support generations of students to come.

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. This book is for all people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: To maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture.

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQ+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach. For those chasing the American Dream and those jaded by it, Gomez’s unforgettable story is a testament to finding love, purpose, and community on your own terms, smiling with all your fake teeth.

Pico Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, periods spent in silence, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship.