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BOOKS SPRING PREVIEW: NONFICTION

17 New Nonfiction Books to Read This Season

Two journalists dive into George Floyd’s life and family; Viola Davis reflects on her career; a historian explores the brutal underpinnings of the British Empire; and more.

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By John Williams ,  Tina Jordan and Joumana Khatib

Whether you want to read about current events, memoirs or history, this season brings plenty of new titles.

Memoirs & Biographies | Current Affairs | History, Revisited | Other

MEMOIRS & BIOGRAPHIES

‘ Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir, ’ by Bob Odenkirk

Odenkirk’s memoir might have also been titled “Obscurity Obscurity Obscurity Fame.” He was a cult favorite of comedy fans in the late 1990s for his work on the sketch-comedy series “Mr. Show,” but his supporting role in “Breaking Bad” and his starring turn in the show’s prequel, “Better Call Saul,” made him a household name. His memoir charts his dogged and unlikely path from Chicago comedy clubs to leading man.

Random House, out now

‘ Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand ,’ by John Markoff

Brand might be best known for his countercultural magazine Whole Earth Catalog, which first published in 1968. In that same decade, Brand was a participant in the exploits of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Now 83, he went on to a long and varied life of thought and activism in the realms of environmentalism, Native American rights and personal computing. Markoff, a former technology reporter for The New York Times, wraps his arms around the whole story in this new biography.

Penguin Press, out now

‘ Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation ,’ by Maud Newton

In her first book, Newton, a critic and essayist, digs deep into her family’s past, from Depression-era Texas to witch-hunting Massachusetts, not flinching at what she sees. Closer to the present day, she wrestles with her father’s racism and her family’s religious extremism. Rooted in the personal, Newton’s book opens out to an examination of a culture besotted with Ancestry.com and 23andme.com , and asks what we’re really looking for in the past.

Random House, March 29

‘ Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph ,’ by Lucasta Miller

The poet Keats died at 25 in 1821, and his short life and brilliant work have inspired a vast amount of literature. In her new book, Miller says that literature often overlooks how rowdy and subversive Keats really was. She wants to shine light on aspects of his life and work “that haven’t always made it into the popular imagination, which still tends to make him appear rather more ethereal than he actually was.”

Knopf, April 19

‘ Finding Me: A Memoir ,’ by Viola Davis

Davis, a fixture on television and movie screens, the winner of an Oscar (for “Fences”) and an Emmy (for “How to Get Away With Murder”), found steady work and then stardom as an actor after growing up in incredibly difficult circumstances. In her memoir, she writes of the poverty and food insecurity her family suffered in Rhode Island when she was a child, and of how acting changed her life, leading to a college scholarship, Juilliard and the theater and Hollywood success that followed.

HarperOne, April 26

‘ This Body I Wore: A Memoir ,’ by Diana Goetsch

In 2013, at 50, Goetsch’s life started to collapse. Her success as a writer and public-school teacher masked a decades-long depression. In a blog for The American Scholar in 2015 , Goetsch wrote about how she “longed daily to be a woman,” a longing she had suppressed since childhood. Her new memoir is about her own transition and the story of the trans community over the course of her lifetime.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 24

CURRENT AFFAIRS

‘ The Trayvon Generation ,’ by Elizabeth Alexander

Less than a month after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Alexander published an essay in The New Yorker titled “The Trayvon Generation,” in which she wrote about the young people who had grown up in the past 25 years, repeatedly watching stories that “instructed them that anti-Black hatred and violence were never far.” Her worry for that generation, including for her own sons, was braided with a consideration of the “creative emergences” in Black communities. This book expands on that widely shared essay.

Grand Central Publishing, April 5

‘ Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy ,’ by Amy Gajda

Amy Gajda, a law professor at Tulane, examines the history of privacy in America, from the concerns of the Founding Fathers to the concerns of those who carry an ever-larger trove of personal data around in our pockets every day. In recounting the long history of debates over privacy, Gajda differentiates between everyday citizens and the press, and explains the hazards of both too little privacy and too much privacy.

Viking, April 12

‘ A Brief History of Equality ,’ by Thomas Piketty. Translated by Steven Rendall

Piketty, an economist and the author of perhaps the most surprising best seller in recent memory (the 800-plus page “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”), here synthesizes his ideas about the persistence of economic inequality in a shorter form. But as the “equality” in the title suggests, he also emphasizes the ways in which progress has been made. “In the long term, the march toward equality is very clear,” he recently said . “I really want to insist on that.”

Belknap Press, April 19

‘ His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice ,’ by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Floyd’s name and face traveled around the world soon after he was killed on May 25, 2020 . This book by two Washington Post reporters — building upon a six-part series in The Post — fills in the life behind the tragedy. It traces the roots of Floyd’s family to slavery and sharecropping, recounts his segregated childhood education in Houston and draws the connections between his adult life and crises in American housing, criminal justice and policing.

Viking, May 17

HISTORY, REVISITED

‘ Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire ,’ by Caroline Elkins

“Empire was not just a few threads in Britain’s national cloth,” writes Elkins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. “It was the fabric from which the modern British nation was made.” She explores how brutality was inextricably bound up in Britain’s colonial project — and was in fact a central part of its “civilizing” mission — focusing on a few historical episodes, including the Morant Bay Rebellion, the Irish War of Independence, the Second Boer War and others.

Knopf, March 29

‘ The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich ,’ by Nancy Dougherty

Heydrich, the powerful SS chief, was the principal architect of the Holocaust, nicknamed the “hangman of the Gestapo” and “the butcher of Prague.” Dougherty died in 2013, before she finished this book, so Christopher Lehmann-Haupt — a longtime literary critic for The Times — completed it. Lehmann-Haupt died in 2018.

Knopf, May 24

‘ Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor ,’ by Kim Kelly

In this wide-ranging survey, Kelly unearths the stories of the people — farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees — behind some of the labor movement’s biggest successes.

Atria/One Signal, April 26

‘ River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile , by Candice Millard

In the 19th century, the British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke set out to trace the Nile River, a yearslong process that led Speke to what he eventually called Lake Victoria. But Millard shows that the men did not “discover” anything — local populations knew very well where the headwaters of the Nile were — and their journey was greatly helped along by Sidi Mubarak Bombay, an East African man who was sold into slavery and sent to India before finding his way back to the continent.

Doubleday, May 17

‘ Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist ,’ by Frans de Waal

De Waal — whose sprightly, intelligent, utterly compelling studies of bonobos and chimpanzees have taken on such topics as empathy, grief and compassion — here turns to gender and sex. “Whereas it is true that gender goes beyond biology, it’s not created out of thin air,” he writes. “There is every reason, therefore, to see what we can learn about ourselves from comparisons with other primates.”

Norton, April 5

‘ Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong ,’ by Louisa Lim

“The act of writing about Hong Kong has become an exercise in subtraction,” says Lim, a journalist and author who was raised there. She refers to her efforts to protect her sources, by removing identifying details that could endanger them, but the point has a bigger resonance in the story of a place whose history has often been overtaken by a colonial point of view. With this book, Lim set out to to put Hong Kongers at the center of the story, weaving together portraits of citizens with major historical moments — the British takeover in 1842, the transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997, the pro-democracy protests in recent years.

Riverhead, April 19

‘ The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold ,’ by Sam Knight

What are those foreboding visions that people sometimes have? Are they, in fact, real? This is the fascinating story of the psychiatrist John Barker, who invited fellow Britons to share their premonitions with him after becoming convinced that the 1966 Aberfan disaster — in which an avalanche of coal slurry buried a Wales school and other buildings — had been foretold by supernatural signs.

Penguin Press, May 3

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

“Real Americans,” a new novel by Rachel Khong , follows three generations of Chinese Americans as they all fight for self-determination in their own way .

“The Chocolate War,” published 50 years ago, became one of the most challenged books in the United States. Its author, Robert Cormier, spent years fighting attempts to ban it .

Joan Didion’s distinctive prose and sharp eye were tuned to an outsider’s frequency, telling us about ourselves in essays that are almost reflexively skeptical. Here are her essential works .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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The New York Times’ Notable Nonfiction Books of 2023

Congratulations to all of our nonfiction books that made the 100 notable books of 2023 list by the editors of the new york times book review find our notable fiction books here and their complete list here ..

by Rachel L. Swarns

Hardcover $28.00, buy from other retailers:.

Battle of Ink and Ice

By darrell hartman, hardcover $30.00.

The Best Minds

By jonathan rosen, paperback $20.00.

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

By kerry howley.

Built from the Fire

By victor luckerson, paperback $25.00, preorder from:.

Easily Slip into Another World

By henry threadgill and brent hayes edwards, hardcover $32.50.

Fire Weather

By john vaillant.

The Half Known Life

By pico iyer, hardcover $26.00.

Humanly Possible

By sarah bakewell.

Judgment at Tokyo

By gary j. bass, hardcover $46.00.

The Land of Hope and Fear

By isabel kershner.

Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

By cristina rivera garza, paperback $18.00.

by Claire Dederer

Paperback $17.00.

My Name Is Barbra

By barbra streisand, hardcover $47.00.

Poverty, by America

By matthew desmond.

The Rigor of Angels

By william egginton, hardcover $32.00.

Some People Need Killing

By patricia evangelista.

Spoken Word

By joshua bennett.

A Thread of Violence

By mark o'connell, hardcover $29.00.

Time’s Echo

By jeremy eichler.

by James B Stewart and Rachel Abrams

by Ruth J. Simmons

Hardcover $27.00.

by David Grann

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

By tahir hamut izgil.

What an Owl Knows

By jennifer ackerman, paperback $19.00.

by Anna Funder

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New York Times Best Nonfiction Books

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50 notable works of nonfiction

These books illuminated complicated subjects, deepened our understanding of history and pulled back the curtain on fascinating lives.

This year’s best nonfiction illuminated complicated subjects, deepened our understanding of history and pulled back the curtain on fascinating lives.

“ The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story ,” by Nikole Hannah-Jones; edited by Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein

An expanded version of the provocative Pulitzer-winning New York Times Magazine issue includes works by novelist Yaa Gyasi, poet Rita Dove and others.

“ All In ,” by Billie Jean King with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers

King’s memoir explores not only her boundary-breaking tennis career but also her off-court battles for equality and, endearingly, little-known stories of incidents that forged her character.

Need more recommendations? Ask the Book World team.

“ The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction ,” by Julie Klam

Klam digs into her ancestry to find the truth behind family lore. Her journey takes readers into that fascinating gray area between what we’d like to believe about our pasts and what really happened.

“ Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire ,” by Brad Stone

The author of “The Everything Store” focuses on a lucrative but lesser known enterprise that generates the revenue to fuel Amazon’s supercharged expansion: cloud computing. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

“ American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption ,” by Gabrielle Glaser

Glaser explores the human side of the adoption industry through the story of one young mother who was forced to give up her son in the 1960s.

“ American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, ” by Alan Taylor

This sweeping narrative about the United States’ expansion across the continent following the revolution shows events from multiple vantages: British, French and Spanish; Canadian, Mexican and Haitian; Seminole, Cherokee and Metis; enslaved people and abolitionists; women’s rights campaigners and Spanish-speaking Tejanos.

“ Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted ,” by Suleika Jaouad

At 22, Jaouad found out she had leukemia. This record of her treatment is a transformative read even for those who haven’t faced a life-changing — and potentially life-ending — diagnosis.

Best graphic novels of the year

“ The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream ,” by Dean Jobb

In short, highly dramatic chapters, a true-crime columnist delves into the life of a Victorian-era serial killer and the Scotland Yard quest to put him behind bars.

“ Children Under Fire: An American Crisis ,” by John Woodrow Cox

A Post reporter explores with tragic clarity the terrible collateral costs children suffer from gun violence.

“ The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race ,” by Walter Isaacson

Isaacson lays out a complicated subject — the first DNA editing tool — in lucid prose that’s brisk, compelling and surprisingly funny.

“ The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History ,” by Margalit Fox

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction: Fox recounts the story of two British officers during World War I who escaped from a Turkish prison camp using a Ouija board.

Best feel-good books of 2021

“ Crying in H Mart ,” by Michelle Zauner

Best known as the musician behind the band Japanese Breakfast, Zauner recalls the grief she experienced while caring for her dying mother, and the solace she found in a supermarket chain.

“ The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain ,” by Annie Murphy Paul

Where does great thinking come from? A biology and social science writer argues that the brain is only part of the answer.

“ Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, ” by Suzanne Simard

A forest ecologist who grew up in a family of tree-cutters describes how her revolutionary findings about the ways trees communicate transformed our understanding of nature itself.

“ Forever Young ,” by Hayley Mills

This affectionate but clear-eyed memoir by the former Disney darling chronicles an unusual career that began at 12 and swelled to global proportions during her adolescence.

“ Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 ,” edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

Dozens of essays by prominent Black writers consider the 400 years since the first African slave ship, the White Lion, arrived in the colony of Virginia in 1619.

Best children's books of 2021

“ The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War ,” by Louis Menand

The Pulitzer-winning author of “The Metaphysical Club” charts the transformations of cultural and intellectual life during the early years of the Cold War.

“ Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law ,” by Mary Roach

From the author of “Stiff,” “Gulp” and “Grunt,” an exploration of the conflicts between humans and animals. As in her previous books, the popular science writer wows with her unflinching fascination with the weird, the gross and the downright improbable.

“ Girlhood ,” by Melissa Febos

Whether examining the etymological roots of the word “slut” or exploring the evolution of consent, these essays illuminate how women are conditioned to be complicit in their own exploitation.

“ How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America ,” by Clint Smith

The Atlantic staff writer recounts his visits to historical sites in America and West Africa to understand the various ways slavery and its deleterious aftermath are taught.

“ I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year ,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker

In this follow-up to “A Very Stable Genius,” two Pulitzer-winning Post reporters break down the last year of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency.

Best book covers of 2021

“ The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present ,” by Paul McCartney

This massive, richly illustrated two-volume collection of annotated lyrics essentially serves as McCartney’s memoir. There’s nothing like listening to him talk about the rise of a band that changed the world forever.

“ Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic that Changed History ,” by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta

A chronicle by two Post reporters of the United States’ early response to the covid-19 pandemic reveals that whenever public health and public relations came into conflict, public health lost out.

“ On Animals ,” by Susan Orlean

With humor and generosity, the New Yorker writer expounds upon the ark’s worth of birds and mammals she has brought into her life, from apartment-dwelling dogs to disparate livestock.

“ On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint ,” by Maggie Nelson

Considering the “freedom drive” in four realms — art, sex, drugs and the climate crisis — Nelson devotes an expansive essay to each, exploring how notions of liberation and limitation collide.

“ On Juneteenth ,” by Annette Gordon-Reed

The Pulitzer-winning historian interweaves her personal history with that of her home state of Texas to pierce false narratives about the country’s treatment of African Americans.

“ Oscar Wilde: A Life ,” by Matthew Sturgis

Drawing on the most up-to-date manuscript discoveries and scholarship, Sturgis delivers the fullest one-volume account of the iconic fin-de-siècle writer, aesthete, wit and gay martyr.

“ Peril ,” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

Through copious interviews, Post investigative journalists describe the waning days of the Trump administration as the 45th president refused to admit defeat to Joe Biden.

“ The Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom ,” by Reid Byers

Beautifully designed, Byers’s 500-page masterwork lays out how cultures from antiquity to the present created welcoming, comfortable spaces to house books.

“ Real Estate ,” by Deborah Levy

The most recent memoir by the Booker-shortlisted author of “Swimming Home” finds Levy, at 60, dreaming of the perfect house and pondering what underlies our drive for ownership.

“ Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption and Vengeance in Today’s China ,” by Desmond Shum

With shelves groaning under the weight of books on modern China, Shum’s is a rare insider account of the anti-socialist nexus of money and politics that defines China’s authoritarian political system.

“ Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump ,” by Spencer Ackerman

Ackerman draws straight, stark lines between the earliest days of the war on terror and its mutations today, with conflicts abroad and divisions at home.

“ The Secret to Superhuman Strength ,” by Alison Bechdel

The new graphic memoir from the “Fun Home” writer-artist explores Bechdel’s many motivations for living a life of aerobic pain and gain.

“ Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption ,” by Robert McCrum

Using accessible prose and modern reference points, McCrum addresses how Shakespeare moves us — still — and how his fearless creativity grew out of a tumultuous era and personal history.

“ Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic ,” by Glenn Frankel

A Pulitzer-winning former reporter for The Post analyzes “Midnight Cowboy’s” controversial subject matter, mournful eye and cynical humor.

“ Smile: The Story of a Face ,” by Sarah Ruhl

Ruhl, a celebrated playwright, reveals her 10-year journey coming to terms with a diagnosis of Bell’s palsy, which left her with a face she no longer recognized.

“ The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone ,” by Heather McGhee

A political commentator and policy analyst explores why racism so often ends up being the answer to an increasingly pressing question that affects everyone: Why can’t we have nice things?

“ Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR ,” by Lisa Napoli

During the early days of public radio, four women, who had little time for others’ low expectations, joined forces to change the face (and voice) of journalism.

“ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life ,” by George Saunders

Saunders shares his method for literary analysis using seven stories by four Russian authors in this master class that explores, among other questions, this one: “What makes a reader keep reading?”

“ Tangled Up in Blue: Policing in the American City ,” by Rosa Brooks

A Georgetown law professor recounts what happened when she became a reserve police officer serving the D.C. district with the highest concentration of reported crime.

“ Taste: My Life Through Food ,” by Stanley Tucci

Nowhere in this memoir’s 300 witty pages will you learn what inspired Tucci to become an actor. Instead, the host of “Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy” touches on the food that shaped his life.

“ There is Nothing for you Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century ,” by Fiona Hill

Hill, whose congressional testimony on Russia’s election interference made her famous, uses her personal story and her training in geopolitics to explore the political consequences of socioeconomic conditions.

“ Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know ,” by Adam Grant

An organizational psychologist coaches readers on how to better understand their unexamined beliefs while opening up to curiosity and humility.

“ This Is Your Mind on Plants ,” by Michael Pollan

The world-famous omnivore goes deep on three drugs — opium, caffeine and mescaline — tying scientific and historical explorations to gripping personal dramas.

“ Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood ,” by Dawn Turner

Through the stories of generations of Chicago women, Turner gives a tutorial of urban decay, poor city planning, and the influence of fads and digital advances on Black urban teenagers.

“ The Triumph of Nancy Reagan ,” by Karen Tumulty

A Post columnist paints a striking portrait of how the unique partnership between Nancy and Ronald Reagan shaped the 40th president’s political career.

“ Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning ,” by Fiona Sampson

In the first biography of the “How Do I Love Thee” poet since 1988, Sampson places Barrett Browning squarely in the midst of the political turmoil that roiled Victorian Britain.

“ Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene ,” by Richard Greene

Richard Greene, who edited Graham Greene’s collected correspondence (though there’s no relation between author and subject), chronicles a life as crazed as a hall of cracked mirrors.

“ The Vanderbilts: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty ,” by Anderson Cooper

The CNN anchor’s exploration of his wealthy ancestors is rich in social history, ingeniously organized and brimming with well-written anecdotes.

“ Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service ,” by Carol Leonnig

There’s plenty of courage in the Secret Service described by a Pulitzer-winning reporter for The Post, but not as much professionalism as you’d think, and not nearly enough sobriety.

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• Entertainment

The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

T he best nonfiction books of the year dug deep, mining both personal and global history to uncover essential truths. John Vaillant captured the horrors of a wildfire to study the consequences of climate change. Matthew Desmond dissected how poverty persists in the United States and made a compassionate call for greater equity. Tracy K. Smith detailed her complicated mission to learn more about her ancestry and urged us to examine whose stories we deem worth preserving. Their books are among the most impactful nonfiction published in 2023. Here, the 10 best books of the year.

More: Read TIME's lists of the best songs , albums , movies , TV shows , podcasts and video games of 2023.

10. King, Jonathan Eig

In the first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr . in decades, journalist Jonathan Eig paints a complex and fully human portrait of an American leader. Drawing on newly released FBI files, telephone transcripts, and more, Eig presents King like he’s never been seen before. The author unveils this research in fresh and exciting turns, unpacking the activist’s public work alongside his private life. King is a nuanced new look at a civil rights icon.

Buy Now: King on Bookshop | Amazon

9. Fire Weather , John Vaillant

At the center of John Vaillant’s Fire Weather is a horrific real-life story that serves as a deafening wake-up call. The book traces the events of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, in which 88,000 Canadians were displaced after their homes and neighborhoods were destroyed in a fiery blaze over the course of just one afternoon. In describing the natural disaster, Vaillant breaks down the science in accessible terms and offers an important account of the consequences of climate change.

Buy Now: Fire Weather on Bookshop | Amazon

8. Liliana's Invincible Summer , Cristina Rivera Garza

For three decades, poet Cristina Rivera Garza has been haunted by her sister’s murder. In July 1990, Liliana, an architecture student living in Mexico City who loved swimming and cinema, was killed. Though an arrest warrant was filed for Liliana’s ex-boyfriend, he disappeared during the investigation. So, in 2019, Rivera Garza decided to seek answers to what happened to her beloved sister herself. She recounts her quest for information and justice, and uses her sister’s story to tell a larger one about domestic violence and femicide .

Buy Now: Liliana's Invincible Summer on Bookshop | Amazon

7. Poverty, By America , Matthew Desmond

In 2017, sociologist Matthew Desmond won a Pulitzer Prize for Evicted, which analyzed why so many American families were facing eviction in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. His latest book revisits similar themes, this time focusing on why poverty is so prevalent in the U.S . With an empathetic hand, he writes about the systems that keep Americans from living above the poverty line, and implores us all to fight for ways to bring prosperity to the masses.

Buy Now: Poverty, By America on Bookshop | Amazon

More: The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023

6. How to Say Babylon, Safiya Sinclair

As a child growing up in Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair had to adhere to her Rastafarian father’s strict rules, which governed everything from the clothes she wore to the people she was allowed to see. But the author managed to educate herself on other ways of living and decided to use her voice to break free. In her memoir, Sinclair captures her turbulent coming of age, and how she grappled with realizing that the traditions she was raised in were suffocating her. The result is a moving portrait of a woman’s self-empowerment.

Buy Now: How to Say Babylon on Bookshop | Amazon

5. You Could Make This Place Beautiful , Maggie Smith

After her marriage falls apart, Maggie Smith inspects the pieces of the life she once knew to pave a path forward. You Could Make This Place Beautiful finds Smith dissecting the very form in which she is writing as she constantly questions the purpose of memoir and the stories we tell ourselves. Mining her heartbreak and memories both with her husband and without him, Smith moves between rage, sorrow, and grief. And through it all, she illustrates her unwavering love for her son and daughter.

Buy Now: You Could Make This Place Beautiful on Bookshop | Amazon

4. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama , Nathan Thrall

In February 2012, 5-year-old Milad Salama boarded a bus with his fellow Palestinian classmates en route to a theme park. But he never made it there. The bus crashed outside Jerusalem, and the children aboard it were injured or killed. This devastating scene propels Nathan Thrall’s book , which follows Milad’s father Abed from his first romance to the day of the collision, all told against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . Thrall tackles the subject with care and expertise, introducing the lives of several Israelis and Palestinians to illuminate their struggles and complex histories.

Buy Now: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama on Bookshop | Amazon

3. To Free the Captives , Tracy K. Smith

In her memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith crafts a searing narrative about being Black in America. She excavates her past to better understand the racial violence that persists today, wading through generations of her family’s history. But as she tries to learn more about her lineage, beginning with the Alabama town where her father grew up, Smith realizes that the research process itself is fraught and riddled with missing pieces.

Buy Now: To Free the Captives on Bookshop | Amazon

2. Doppelganger, Naomi Klein

What would you do if all of a sudden people started mixing you up with a person whose beliefs you can’t stand? Leftist activist and author Naomi Klein has been forced to answer this exact question: she is constantly confused with Naomi Wolf, who has spent the past few years spreading antivaccine rhetoric and fringe conspiracy theories. Klein investigates how “other Naomi” became the type of public figure she is today, taking a dizzying trip through the current cultural landscape to examine politics, misinformation, and the slippery path to radicalization.

Buy Now: Doppelganger on Bookshop | Amazon

1. Some People Need Killing , Patricia Evangelista

The title of Patricia Evangelista’s memoir is rooted in a conversation the journalist once had with a vigilante who made that unnerving declaration. Her home country, the Philippines, was full of people who shared the same belief as this man—like those working for the state, who carried out thousands of killings of citizens during President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Evangelista tells the stories of those who were lost in the struggle, and interrogates the language we use to describe violence.

Buy Now: Some People Need Killing on Bookshop | Amazon

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The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2022

Featuring bob dylan, elena ferrante, kate beaton, jhumpa lahiri, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction; Nonfiction; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; and Literature in Translation.

Today’s installment: Nonfiction .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing  by Elena Ferrante, trans. by Ann Goldstein (Europa)

12 Rave • 12 Positive • 4 Mixed

“The lucid, well-formed essays that make up In the Margins  are written in an equally captivating voice … Although a slim collection, there is more than enough meat here to nourish both the common reader and the Ferrante aficionado … Every essay here is a blend of deep thought, rigorous analysis and graceful prose. We occasionally get the odd glimpse of the author…but mainly the focus is on the nuts and bolts of writing and Ferrante’s practice of her craft. The essays are at their most rewarding when Ferrante discusses the origins of her books, in particular the celebrated Neapolitan Novels, and the multifaceted heroines that power them … These essays might not bring us any closer to finding out who Ferrante really is. Instead, though, they provide valuable insight into how she developed as a writer and how she works her magic.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Star Tribune )

2. Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (W. W. Norton)

14 Rave • 8 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Index here

“The cleverly punctuated title of Dennis Duncan’s book, Index, A History of the, should signal that this isn’t a dry account of a small cogwheel in the publishing machine. Instead, it is an engaging tale of the long search for the quickest way to find what you need in those big, information-rich things called books. It is indeed an adventure, and ‘bookish’ in the most appealing sense … Duncan goes into fascinating detail about all this—page numbers get an entire chapter of their own—with digressions into curious byways of booklore and literature … From ancient Egypt to Silicon Valley, Duncan is an ideal tour guide: witty, engaging, knowledgeable and a fount of diverting anecdotes. The book skews toward the literary, but anyone interested in the 2,200-year journey to quickly find what one needs in a book will be enlightened, and will never again take an index for granted. The well-designed book also includes nearly 40 illustrations. As might be expected, the index—created not by the author but by Paula Clarke Bain—is magnificent.”

–Steven Moore ( The Washington Post )

3. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

4. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Super-Infinite here

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

5. Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed) 12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Can the Irish border be described as a ‘thin place’? Never have I read such an eloquent description for the omnipresent border in our psyche … Readers will draw their own meaning from Ní Dochartaigh’s words, and she allows space for them to ponder … This debut is not a memoir in the traditional sense; nor is it simply a polemic about the sectarian violence that tore through the author’s childhood in Derry; instead, it combines both of these elements under the insistent gaze of the poet-writer who is always keen to draw our attention to nature … Readers may be surprised at the depths that  Thin Places explores. Do not mistake its appreciation of the natural world for anything twee or solely comforting … This is not for the faint-hearted …

Ní Dochartaigh’s writing is generous and she leaves little for the reader to surmise in those dark days she describes in startling detail … The darkness in her subject matter lends itself to the light, however. The natural world at large is a balm for her … It might sound incongruous to write about the beauty of the whooper swan and the enduring effect of Troubles in the same paragraph, but Ní Dochartaigh’s manages it … This is a book full of hope found in dark places and it confronts some of the realities of the Irish border and the enduring effect it has on our lives.”

–Mia Colleran ( The Irish Independent )

6. Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri (Princeton University Press)

8 Rave • 14 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the ‘essential aesthetic and political mission’ of translation. She is excellent in all three modes—so excellent, in fact, that I, a translator myself, could barely read this book. I kept putting it aside, compelled by Lahiri’s writing to go sit at my desk and translate … One of Lahiri’s great gifts as an essayist is her ability to braid multiple ways of thinking together, often in startling ways … a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they’re complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up. ‘Look,’ her essays seem to say: Look how much there is for us to wake up to.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

7. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive Watch an interview with Kate Beaton here

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment … There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

8. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)

10 Rave • 15 Positive • 7 Mixed • 4 Pan

“It is filled with songs and hyperbole and views on love and lust even darker than Blood on the Tracks … There are 66 songs discussed here … Only four are by women, which is ridiculous, but he never asked us … Nothing is proved, but everything is experienced—one really weird and brilliant person’s experience, someone who changed the world many times … Part of the pleasure of the book, even exceeding the delectable Chronicles: Volume One , is that you feel liberated from Being Bob Dylan. He’s not telling you what you got wrong about him. The prose is so vivid and fecund, it was useless to underline, because I just would have underlined the whole book. Dylan’s pulpy, noir imagination is not always for the squeamish. If your idea of art is affirmation of acceptable values, Bob Dylan doesn’t need you … The writing here is at turns vivid, hilarious, and will awaken you to songs you thought you knew … The prose brims everywhere you turn. It is almost disturbing. Bob Dylan got his Nobel and all the other accolades, and now he’s doing my job, and he’s so damn good at it.”

–David Yaffe ( AirMail )

9. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive Listen to Hua Hsu read an excerpt from Stay True here

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

10. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (Catapult)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an excerpt from Body Work here

“In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative , memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill … Febos rejects these belittlements with eloquence … In its hybridity, this book formalizes one of Febos’s central tenets within it: that there is no disentangling craft from the personal, just as there is no disentangling the personal from the political. It’s a memoir of a life indelibly changed by literary practice and the rigorous integrity demanded of it … Febos is an essayist of grace and terrific precision, her sentences meticulously sculpted, her paragraphs shapely and compressed … what’s fresh, of course, is Febos herself, remapping this terrain through her context, her life and writing, her unusual combinations of sources (William H. Gass meets Elissa Washuta, for example), her painstaking exactitude and unflappable sureness—and the new readers she will reach with all of this.”

–Megan Milks ( 4Columns )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Complete List of New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers

Go beyond just the current list of New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers 2024 to discover every bestselling book listed on the NYT Bestseller List in 2024.

Since 1931, The New York Times has been publishing a weekly list of bestselling books. Since then, becoming a New York Times bestseller has become a dream for virtually every writer.

When I first started reading adult books, one of the first places I went for book recommendations was the New York Times Nonfiction Nonfiction Best Sellers. I wanted to know what books were the most widely read, and start with those.

However, scrolling through the list week by week on The New York Times website is rather annoying. I just wanted all the bestselling nonfiction books gathered together in one place.

When I couldn’t find it, I decided to create it.

Here are all the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers from this year. I’ve got the current #1 and this week’s bestselling list, both of which you can find all over the place.

This list also compiles every book that appears on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers list in 2024 for Hardcover Nonfiction. Every week I update it so you can get the most accurate view of the year in one place.

Since this is a bit of a sprawling post, feel free to jump to the section that most interests you or take your time scrolling through the complete list of New York Times nonfiction best sellers.

Quick Links

• Current #1 NYT Bestseller
• Current New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List
• Previous #1 Fiction Best Sellers
• Heavyweights (10+ Weeks)
• Fan Favorites (5+ Weeks)
• Honorable Mention (2+ Weeks)
• One Hit Wonders

Don’t Miss a Thing

Current #1 New York Times Best Seller

The Demon of Unrest

Erik larson.

Erik Larson delves into the five months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the first shots fired on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War. In a period of betrayal, error, and miscommunication, Larson focuses on the stories of four individuals: Sumter’s commander caught between sympathy to the South and loyalty to the Union; a bloodthirsty radical promoting secession at every turn; the wife of a local planter who is conflicted about marriage and slavery; and in the thick of it all, is Abraham Lincoln, desperately trying to avert a war.

Publication Date: 30 April 2024 Learn More: Goodreads | StoryGraph |  More Info Buy Now: Amazon | Apple Books

Current List of New York Times Best Sellers

The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health impacts that a phone-based life has on children.

A wide-ranging examination of Judaism and antisemitism in America today.

The Army Reserve officer, former member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate explains why she left the Democratic Party.

A trove of items collected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s late husband inspired an appraisal of central figures and pivotal moments of the 1960s.

Fox News anchors and personalities contribute to a collection of reflections on motherhood.

The New York Times contributing Opinion writer evaluates the tone of our current culture and politics, which interweaves larger wrongs and smaller slights.

The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.

A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.

The author of “On Desperate Ground” depicts Captain James Cook’s final voyage and the controversies surrounding its legacy.

The Booker Prize-winning author details the attack on him at the Chautauqua Institution in 2022 and the steps he took to heal from it.

The actress and filmmaker describes her eating disorders and difficult relationship with her mother.

Meditations and stories about the transformational power of love by the author of “Dusk, Night, Dawn” and “Bird by Bird.”

The CNN host draws out lessons for the present polarized era from the 17th-century Netherlands, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

The author of “Operation Paperclip” portrays possible outcomes in the minutes following a nuclear missile launch.

See what Upcoming Releases are coming out soon!

Previous #1 New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers

Greenlights

Matthew mcconaughey.

(99 Weeks) Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey offers a memoir on his approach to getting the most satisfaction out of life. McConaughey poured over decades of his diaries to share the highs and lows of his life and the funny stories that shaped him along the way.

Publication Date: 20 October 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

I’m Glad My Mom Died

Jennette mccurdy.

(82 Weeks) Both vulnerable and hilarious, Jennette McCurdy’s tell-all memoir sends a poignant message of the dangers of child acting. McCurdy brilliantly embraces her inner child by describing how desperately she wanted to please her mom by acting, even if it lead to an eating disordered and a chaotic relationship with her family that she didn’t full understand until attending therapy after her mother’s death. 

Publication Date: 9 August 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

What Happened to You?

Bruce d. perry and oprah winfrey.

(58 Weeks) Instead of asking What’s wrong with you? , we should be asking What happened to you ? Oprah Winfrey teams up with neuroscientist Bruce D. Perry to discuss how understanding the trauma we faced at a young age can impact our behaviors now. By understanding our past, we can shift our viewpoint and see a clear path to healing.

Publication Date: 27 April 2021 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Peter Attia

(58 Weeks) Who doesn’t want to live longer? Peter Atria has all the strategies that will help you live longer … and better. Using the latest science, Atria explains how to improve your physical, cognitive, and emotional health so that you can help prevent chronic disease and extend your lifespan.

Publication Date: 28 March 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

David Grann

( 54 Weeks ) In 1742, a patched-together vessel washed up on the shores of Brazil with thirty emaciated men. They told an astounding tale of surviving after the HMS Wager was shipwrecked chasing a Spanish treasure galleon. After cobbling together a raft, they floated for 100 days and traveled 3,000 miles. The sailors were lauded as heroes until six months later when three more castaways washed ashore accusing the first men of mutiny. With accusations of treachery and murder, a court-martial is convened to find the truth, with the guilty party likely to be hung.

Publication Date: 18 April 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Matthew perry.

(34 Weeks) Known for his role as Chandler Bing on Friends , Matthew Perry gives a behind-the-scenes look at the hit sitcom. Yet, while his career was hitting a high, Perry struggled through some of his darkest days. In this candid memoir, Perry discusses his lifelong battle with addiction and the persistence, hope, and friends who helped him along the way.

Publication Date: 1 November 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Walter Isaacson

(27 Weeks ) From the author of  Steve Jobs  and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.

Publication Date: 14 March 2023 Amazon | Goodreads I More Info

The Woman in Me

Britney spears.

( 20 Weeks ) In the 1990s, Britney Spears burst onto the scene and became a cultural pop icon and leading the way for the teen pop revival of the 90s and 00s. Yet fame brought personal struggles and a shocking conservatorship that trapped her for decades. In her new memoir, Britney Spears discusses her journey and the power of telling your own story. Though not the best-written memoir of the year, The Woman in Me shocks with details about Spears’s life and contemplates the private pain of a public figure.

Publication Date: 24 October 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Poverty, by America

Matthew desmond.

( 18 Weeks ) The United States of America is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Sociologist Matthew Desmond explores the root of poverty in America. From concentrating wealth (and poverty) to subsidizing those already financially secure, Desmond gives a searing look into how America keeps the rich rich and the poor poor.

Publication Date: 21 March 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Rachel Maddow

(17 Weeks ) Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.

Publication Date: 17 October 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Oath and Honor

( 17 Weeks ) The former congresswoman from Wyoming recounts how she helped lead the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. In relating her experiences during the attack, and everything that came after, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those she believes helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks she believes we still face.

Publication Date: 5 December 2023 Amazon | Goodreads  

Blood Money

Peter schweizer.

( 7 Weeks ) Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer presents a plan by the Chinese Communist Party to covertly manipulate America. Looking at Chinese military documents and American financial records, Schweizer claims the Chinese Communist Party has covert operations linked to the American drug trade, the social justice movement and the medical establishment.

Publication Date: 27 February 2024 Amazon | Goodreads

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan haidt.

( 6 Weeks ) The author goes into why moving from a play-based childhood to a screen-based childhood has changed the neurological development children, making them more anxious, along with other mental health problems.  He shows why this causes them to withdraw further into a digital world, and then proposes a solution that he says will reduce the incidence of mental illness in the rising generations.

Publication Date: 26 March 2024 Amazon | Goodreads

Anne Lamott

( 4 Weeks ) Bestselling author Anne Lamott shares her thoughts on love and how necessary in our lives. In each chapter, Lamott shows the transformative power of love, from the aching love for a child who disappoints to love of a community in transition. Lamott shares her own personal experiences and states that love helps us think that tomorrow will be better than today.

Publication Date: 9 April 2024 Amazon | Goodreads

The House of Hidden Meanings

( 4 Weeks ) Legendary icon RuPaul reveals a portrait of his life in brutal honesty. From growing up a poor queer Black kid in San Diego to becoming a drag queen and then building one of world’s largest television franchise, RuPaul shares a look at his life and reflects on performance, found-family, self-acceptance and identity.

Publication Date: 5 March 2024 Amazon | Goodreads

Get It Together

Jesse watters.

( 4 Weeks ) Fox New host Jesse Watters interviews radical Liberal activists hoping to understand where their views come from. Watters believes that most activists don’t actually need to change the world but change themselves; a lack of introspection about their own experiences lead them to extreme views that the general American public then buys into.

Publication Date: 19 March 2024 Amazon | Goodreads

Medgar & Myrlie

Joy-ann reid.

( 3 Weeks ) In this groundbreaking and thrilling account of two heroes of the civil rights movement, Joy-Ann Reid uses Medgar and Myrlie’s relationship as a lens through which to explore the on-the-ground work that went into winning basic rights for Black Americans, and the repercussions that still resonate today.

Publication Date: 6 February 2024 Amazon | Goodreads  

An Unfinished Love Story

Doris kearns goodwin.

( 2 Weeks ) Having worked closely with John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband Dick had a front-row seat to the 1960s. Digging through a treasure trove of documents, diaries, and memorabilia from that decade, the Goodwins spent Dick’s last days reflecting on the achievements and failures of those great leaders. Weaving together American history and her personal life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin gives an intimate look at a tumultuous decade.

Publication Date: 16 April 2024 Learn More: Goodreads | StoryGraph | More Info Buy Now: Amazon | Apple Books

Save for Later

Heavyweights (10+ Weeks on the NYT Bestseller List)

The In-Between

Hadley vlahos.

( 17 Weeks ) Hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos shows palliative care teaches as much about how to live your life as how to die. Vlahos recounts the most memorable patients she’s worked with: a woman who never questioned her faith until death, a man seeing visions of his late daughter, and a young patient regretting how much she cared about others’ opinions.

Publication Date: 10 January 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Killing the Witches

Bill o’reilly and martin dugard.

( 13 Weeks ) The 13th book in the Killing series takes on the Salem Witch Trials and the mass hysterical that gripped the town in the 1690s. When young girls began having violent fits, three young women were arrested, accused of being witches. Soon the mania swept the entire New England town, with hundreds accused and almost two dozen executed.

Publication Date: 26 September 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory

Tim alberta.

( 11 Weeks ) Journalist Tim Alberta, a practicing Christian and son of an evangelical pastor, looks at the divisions in evangelical Christianity. For many conservative Christians, love of America has become a strong focus of their religion, leading to right wing Christian nationalism. Alberta examines the ways conservative Christians have pursued, used, and abused power in their quest and the growing disconnect with scripture.

Publication Date: 5 December 2023 Amazon | Goodreads

Being Henry

Henry winkler.

( 11 Weeks ) Henry Winkler rose to stardom starring as the iconic “Fonz” in Happy Days . With poignant humor, Winkler’s memoir tells of his troubled childhood, his struggles with severe dyslexia, and his rise to fame. Yet what do your greatest days seem to be behind you? Winkler writes of the challenge to escape typecasting and his eventual star in other roles, all while staying one of the nicest men in Hollywood.

Publication Date: 31 October 2023 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Behind the Seams

Dolly parton.

( 11 Weeks ) Iconic singer-songwriter Dolly Parton shares the story of her lifelong love with fashion and how she developed her own distinctive style. With gorgeous photographs of her costume archive, Parton discusses her boldest dresses and hairstyles, telling never before heard stories that span her illustrious career.

Publication Date: 17 October 2023 Amazon | Goodreads

Democracy Awakening

Heather cox richardson.

( 10 Weeks ) During the impeachment crisis of 2019, historian Heather Cox Richardson started a daily newsletter explaining the historical context of current events. Richardson argues that a small group of wealthy citizens have fought to distort history to lead American into authoritarianism. Explaining several decades of American politics, Richardson suggests a way forward to America’s future.

Publication Date: 26 September 2023 Amazon | Goodreads

My Name is Barbra

Barbra streisand.

( 10 Weeks ) Iconic entertainer Barbra Streisand has dominated the entertainment business throughout her career, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards for her various performances. In a frank and funny memoir, Streisand takes readers through her life – growing up in Brooklyn, her breakout performance in Funny Girl, her career success, her advocacy, and all her opinions along the way.

Publication Date: 7 November 2023 Amazon | Goodreads

Fan Favorites (5+ Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List)

My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee

Amazon | Goodreads (9 Weeks) The musician known for his work with the band Rush chronicles his life as the child of Holocaust survivors and his time in the limelight.  

Ghosts of Honolulu by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll Jr.

Amazon | Goodreads (8 Weeks) The story of a Japanese American naval intelligence agent, a Japanese spy and events in Hawaii before the start of World War II.  

Teddy and Booker T. by Brian Kilmeade

Amazon | Goodreads (6 Weeks) The Fox News host gives an account of the relationship between President Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington.  

Burn Book by Kara Swisher

Amazon | Goodreads (6 Weeks) The tech journalist and podcast host gives an overview of the tech industry and the foibles of its founders.

King by Jonathan Eig

Amazon | Goodreads (5 Weeks) A biography of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., which includes new archival material and reflections from some who worked, lived and fought with him.  

Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Amazon | Goodreads (5 Weeks) The author of “Operation Paperclip” portrays possible outcomes in the minutes following a nuclear missile launch.  

Honorable Mention (2-4 Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List)

One Hit Wonders (1 Week on the New York Times Best Seller List)

Do You Agree with The New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers?

What books do you think are the best of the year? Do you think The New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers deserve the hype? As always, let me know in the comments!

More New Book Releases:

• The New York Times Fiction Bestseller List
• The Most-Anticipated Upcoming Releases of 2024
• The 2023 New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers
• The Current Celebrity Book Club Picks
• The Top 50 Books of the Last Decade

Recommended

• Recent Reviews

The Personal Librarian

“The Personal Librarian is a good, well-paced creative nonfiction book about a real person that will snag the reader and hold his or her attention from beginning to end.”

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is a perfect example of creative nonfiction. It benefits the reader from both types of reading—it is educational, and it is entertaining.

Benedict and Murray picked their subject, Belle da Costa Greene (aka Belle Marion Greener), with care. A true to life person, Belle, chosen to work with John Pierpont Morgan establishing his library, is a fair-skinned Black woman who spends her life passing as a white woman.

And this thread carries through the entirety of the story. Belle’s mother—also fair skinned, as are her other children—encourages Belle to continue the deception. She knows this is the only way her daughter will succeed in life.

It’s a heavy weight that Belle carries, never sure if her secret will be exposed. There are points in the book where she steps to the edge, almost exposing herself, but catches herself before she steps over.

The story is told in the first person, which puts the reader into Belle’s mind—sharing her thoughts, experiencing her life’s events. There are moments when Belle’s attitude borders on conceit for the successes she has, and yet living in her mind and knowing her secret, this attitude is perfectly acceptable.

Each chapter is written as a journal, with dates and places, and in the present tense, taking the reader through the story as it happens. It begins as Belle applies for the position of personal librarian to J. P. Morgan and is hired above other applicants. From here, Belle’s respectability grows as does her need to keep her secret. Throughout the story Belle is received by the wealthy set as part of the group because of her position with Morgan.

The authors bring in plenty of tension and conflict.

Belle establishes a quasi-comfortable relationship with Morgan and to some extent, his family. Here Benedict and Murray bring in the antagonist—Anne Morgan. One of J. P.’s daughters who does not like Belle at all, leaving Belle to worry about her secret and if she will be exposed by Anne. But Anne has her own secrets. The antagonist role is not a strong one, and yet wanders through the story to tantalize.

Another crucial situation filled with tension and conflict is her position as an unmarried and unspoken for female in the world of men, and here the authors bring in a relationship with Bernard Berenson, an expert on Italian Renaissance art.

Berenson is older than Belle by about two decades, and he is married, but he and his wife, Mary, consider theirs an open marriage, with each having relationships outside of their union. Bernard is taken with Belle, and she with him. An unfortunate situation occurs resulting in a separation, and there are several years before they reconnect. It is at this time that Belle discovers Bernard’s dirty little secret.

Benedict and Murray do an admirable job of also bringing tension and conflict into Belle’s personal home life in which her father has abandoned the family because he is an equal rights activist and disagrees with Belle’s mother’s attitude about passing for white. It is years before Belle reconnects with her father and the relationship, although tenuous, is rebuilt.

And so, Belle’s personal secret drives tension through the story with each moment that she might face exposure and her understanding that she has no other options.

While Benedict and Murray take some liberties with historical dates and places, they use that to improve the literary flow of the story, and it works.

There is a lot of name-dropping throughout the story; names of wealthy families and influential persons in the literary and artistic world that may or may not be known to the reader. At times this is distracting and appears only to add pages to the story. Nnetheless, it does raise the reader’s curiosity about these infamous persons.

From an educational standpoint, Benedict and Murray share names of priceless manuscripts, books, paintings, authors, and much more, placing the reader in a position to research these items to satisfy curiosity.

The Personal Librarian is a good, well-paced creative nonfiction book about a real person that will snag the reader and hold his or her attention from beginning to end.

Judith Reveal lives in rural Maryland. She is the author of the Lindsey Gale Mystery series including: Cheating Death, The Music Room, A House to Kill For ; historical fiction, The Brownstone ; and nonfiction The Four Elements of Fiction: Character, Setting, Situation, and Theme; Around Greensboro ; as well as a memoir, Essays on Growing up Middle Class in Post World War II America.  Her latest novel,  Crossroads, was released in 2020.

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The Book You’re Reading Might Be Wrong

Most nonfiction isn’t fact-checked. The Kristi Noem saga could change that—but it probably won’t.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

If Kristi Noem never actually met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, then how did that anecdote make it into her memoir? The answer, after these three stories from The Atlantic :

• It’s not a rap beef. It’s a cultural reckoning.
• Trump flaunts his corruption.
• Who really has brain worms?

The Art of the Check

The newsletter you’re reading right now was reviewed by a fact-checker named Sam. Sam spent about an hour this afternoon scrutinizing my words and sentences, and making sure the quotes from my interviews match my recordings. You know what probably didn’t get that kind of review? The book on your nightstand. Or, as it happens, Noem’s new memoir.

Book publishers don’t employ fact-checking teams, and they don’t require a full fact-check before publication. Instead, a book is usually reviewed only by editors and copy editors—people who shape the story’s structure, word choice, and grammar. An editor might catch something incorrect in the process, and a lawyer might examine some claims in the book to ensure that the publisher won’t be sued for defamation. But that’s it. University presses typically use a peer-review process that helps screen for any factual errors. But in publishing more broadly, no one checks every date, quote, or description. It works this way at all of the Big Five publishers, which include HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Hachette, and Macmillan. (None of these publishers responded to my requests for comment.)

Whaaat?! you might be thinking, spitting that Thursday glass of merlot all over your screen as every book you’ve ever read flashes before your eyes. Was it all a lie? The answer is no. But books absolutely do go out into the world containing factual errors. For most books, and especially for memoirs, “it’s up to the author to turn in a manuscript that is accurate,” Jane Friedman, a publishing-industry reporter, told me.

A few writers will go out and pay for their own fact-checker. Many don’t—including, evidently, Noem, who, as you may have heard by now, shot her dog in a gravel pit. That incident , which the South Dakota governor wrote about in her memoir, No Going Back , seems to be true. But a passage about the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is probably not. In the book, Noem claims to have met Kim during a congressional trip where he “underestimated” her. At least one former congressional staffer has said that that meeting never happened. And after being questioned about it, Noem’s office said it would be correcting a few errors in the book.

A simple fact-check could have prevented this particular embarrassment for Noem: A checker would have called others who were part of the delegation to verify whether the meeting had taken place. So why don’t publishers fact-check, to avoid this problem in the first place? From the publisher’s perspective, hiring a team of checkers is “a huge expense,” Friedman said—it would “destroy the profitability” of some books. And there are logistical challenges: Fact-checking memoirs, for example, can be difficult, because you’re dealing with people’s memories. But magazines do it all the time.

If authors want their work checked, they generally have to pay for it themselves. Many of my Atlantic colleagues have hired fact-checkers to review their books. But the process is cumbersome and expensive—the editorial equivalent of an “intensive colonoscopy,” as one colleague described it to me recently. The checker pores over every word and sentence of the book, using multiple sources to back up each fact. She listens to all of the author’s audio, reviews transcripts, and calls people to verify quotes. The whole process can take several weeks. One fact-checker I spoke with charges $5,000 to $8,000 for a standard nonfiction book. Others charge more. It makes sense, then, that, as Friedman said, the number of authors who opt for independent fact-checking “is minuscule.”

So what of Noem’s book? Her publisher, Center Street, which is a conservative imprint of Hachette, had a decision to make when the error was discovered: It could conduct an emergency recall of Noem’s books, pulling all of them back from bookstores and Amazon warehouses around the country, and print new, accurate copies, Kathleen Schmidt, a public-relations professional who writes the Substack newsletter Publishing Confidential , explained to me. But that would have been incredibly difficult, she said, given the logistics and extreme expense of both shipping and paper. Center Street issued a statement saying it would remove the Kim anecdote from the audio and ebook versions of No Going Back , as well as from any future reprints. (Noem’s team did not reply to a request for comment about her fact-checking process.)

This means that, for now, Noem’s book, which was officially released on Tuesday, will exist in the world as is. Many people will buy it, read it, and accept as fact that Noem once met—and was underestimated by—Kim Jong Un.

Books have always had a certain heft to them—sometimes literally, but also metaphorically. We tend to believe a book’s contents by virtue of their vessel. “People might be a little less likely to do that if they understood that the publisher is basically just publishing whatever the author said was correct,” Friedman told me.

Maybe this latest incident will spark a change in the publishing industry—but it probably won’t. For now, people should think critically about everything they read, remembering, Friedman said, “that [books] are fallible—as fallible as anything else.”

• The blurb problem keeps getting worse.
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Today’s News

• Last night, President Joe Biden said that if Israel launches a large-scale invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, the U.S. would stop supplying Israel with certain weapons and artillery shells.
• House Democrats overwhelmingly joined Republicans in rejecting Representative Majorie Taylor Greene’s motion to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson.
• Barron Trump, Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son, was selected to be a Florida delegate at the Republican National Convention, where he will participate in nominating his father for president.
• The Weekly Planet : Scientists are debating whether concepts such as memory, consciousness, and communication can be applied beyond the animal kingdom , Zoë Schlanger writes.
• Time-Travel Thursdays : 50 years ago, the architect Peter Blake questioned everything he thought he knew about modern building, Sam Fentress writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

A Fundamental Stage of Human Reproduction Is Shifting

By Katherine J. Wu

In recent decades , people around the world, especially in wealthy, developed countries , have been starting their families later and later. Since the 1970s, American women have on average delayed the beginning of parenthood from age 21 to 27 ; Korean women have nudged the number past 32 . As more women have kids in their 40s , the average age at which women give birth to any of their kids is now above 30, or fast approaching it, in most high-income nations. Rama Singh, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University, in Canada, thinks that if women keep having babies later in life, another fundamental reproductive stage could change: Women might start to enter menopause later too. That age currently sits around 50, a figure that some researchers believe has held since the genesis of our species. But to Singh’s mind, no ironclad biological law is stopping women’s reproductive years from stretching far past that threshold. If women decide to keep having kids at older ages, he told me, one day, hundreds of thousands of years from now, menopause could—theoretically—entirely disappear.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

Listen. The trailer for How to Know What’s Real , a new season of the How To podcast series (out on Monday). Co-hosts Megan Garber and Andrea Valdez explore deepfakes, illusions, misinformation, and more.

Read. The writer dream hampton thinks hip-hop is broken . But she can’t stop trying to fix it, Spencer Kornhaber wrote last year.

Play our daily crossword.

A ton of inbreeding is required to produce purebred dogs—and it’s causing serious health problems for them, according to a recent New York Times column by Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist. Your Frenchie’s parents are likely more closely related than half-siblings! Your golden retriever might have parents that are genetically as close as siblings! Such inbreeding has consequences: A pug’s skull shape makes breathing difficult. German shepherds are prone to hip dysplasia. “As a species, we are so attached to the idea that we should be able to buy a dog who looks however we like—flat of face or fancy of coat—that we are willing to overlook the consequences” for them, Horowitz writes .

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic .

10 books to add to your reading list in May

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Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your May reading list.

Whether it’s first love or obsessive love or family love, May’s new releases have a lot to say about that which makes the world go ’round. However, if you’re disinclined to pick up a love story, there’s also a U.S. history-based memoir, a great beach read set on Cape Cod and the autobiography of a self-titled “feminist punk.” Happy reading!

Shanghailanders: A Novel By Juli Min Spiegel & Grau: 288 pages, $28 (May 7)

Unspooling backward from an imagined 2040 to 2014, this novel shows a Chinese family coping with 21st-century pressures and pleasures across three continents. The Yangs — father Leo, mother Eko and eldest daughters Yumi and Yoko — will interact with the “baby” of the family, Kiko; a long-suffering nanny, or ayi ; and a cab driver, in chapters that spiral back to a denouement as sophisticated and affecting as Leo, “a real Shanghai man.”

Blue Ruin: A Novel By Hari Kunzru Knopf: 272 pages, $28 (May 16)

Kunzru’s novel ends a trilogy speaking to current problems of racism, right-wing politics and inequality. Struggling artist Jay is delivering groceries during the global pandemic. Not feeling well, he seeks shelter with an ex-girlfriend. Alice, whose husband was Jay’s art-school frenemy, hides Jay in a barn. But isolation of all kinds, including economic, ups the dramatic ante, and the three “friends” must contend with their choices.

Housemates: A Novel By Emma Copley Eisenberg Hogarth: 352 pages, $29 (May 28)

Eisenberg’s fiction debut feels like a swim in a heated pool after a long journey. Bernie and Leah, Philadelphia housemates, embark on a road trip west in order to claim some photography materials from Bernie’s onetime academic mentor. En route, the women meet all manner of characters and discuss all kinds of topics, eventually (some readers will say inevitably) falling in love with each other. They’ll never bore each other, or readers.

Exhibit: A Novel By R.O. Kwon Riverhead Books: 224 pages, $28 (May 28)

Kwon, who tackled obsessive faith in her debut, “The Incendiaries,” and obsessive intimacy in the anthology “Kink,” coedited with Garth Greenwell, here explores the landscape of obsessive desire between the married woman Jin Han and the ballet star Lidija Jung. The author elegantly uses Jin’s belief that she is cursed by an unquiet spirit as a means of expressing the torment Jin feels being divided between safety and ecstasy.

The Winner: A Novel By Teddy Wayne Harper: 320 pages, $30 (May 28)

The author sees this novel as a departure from his usual work. But readers will see that even if “The Winner” has a more propulsive plot, it ties in with Wayne’s novels “Kapitoil” and “The Great Man Theory” as it also centers on socioeconomics. Conor O’Toole lands a job as a tennis pro in a wealthy community near Cape Cod and thinks he’s living a dream, juggling affairs with two women — until he hits a metaphorical foul shot.

First Love: Essays on Friendship By Lilly Dancyger Dial Press: 224 pages, $28 (May 7)

Dancyger, who has written about women and anger (“Burn It Down”) and her parents’ addiction (“Negative Space”), turns to the friendships that have sustained her. From childhood to adolescence and on to adulthood, the author’s intense bonds with other women, based on commonalities as varied as kinship, substance abuse or caregiving, place these essays integrating personal experience and cultural allusions alongside Leslie Jamison’s work.

Throne of Grace: A Mountain Man, an Epic Adventure, and the Bloody Conquest of the American West By Bob Drury and Tom Clavin St. Martin’s Press: 368 pages, $30 (May 7)

Jedediah Smith might be one of the most important, and one of the most overlooked, 19th century explorers in our nation’s history. Authors Clavin and Drury, who last wrote “Blood and Treasure,” about Daniel Boone, are correcting that oversight. Here they use Smith’s own journals, among other resources, to capture the adventures of a man who was the first white settler to see much of the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, as well as parts of Mexico.

The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning By A.J. Jacobs Crown: 304 pages, $30 (May 7)

Father of the stunt memoir (“The Know-It-All”) Jacobs examines those we call our Founding Fathers in an endeavor that has the indefatigable author wearing a tricorne hat, battling Redcoat reenactors and delivering quill-written missives to strangers. He challenges assumptions about some truths we have long held to be self-evident. Oh, wait, that’s the Declaration of Independence. Time to read this book!

Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir By Nina St. Pierre Dutton: 320 pages, $28 (May 7)

Her mother set herself on fire once, then discovered transcendental meditation. As she chased enlightenment, she moved the author and her brother all over California — until setting another fire that would result in tragedy. As St. Pierre faces her parent’s mental illness, she also investigates how and why people who lose their place in society often turn to extremes of spirituality, as well as how deep compassion can help them find real peace.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk By Kathleen Hanna Ecco: 336 pages, $30 (May 14)

Hanna, the former Bikini Kill frontwoman and co-founder of the Riot Grrrl movement, starts with her difficult childhood and traces its influences into her future actions like “Girls to the Front” and lyrics about gender-based violence. She survived Lyme disease, married the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz and became a parent. Along the way, her views have changed, but her honest, funny and raw voice has not.

More to Read

The week’s bestselling books, May 12

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Week in politics: Arizona Grand Jury indictments, aid for Israel amid Gaza protests

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