The Four Best Nonfiction Books I Read This Year

I am almost always reading fiction novels and it is rare to find me reading a nonfiction book. But I wanted to change that heading into 2025 and have made an effort to read more nonfiction books. And this list will focus on the four best nonfiction books I read this year!

You might think I don’t like nonfiction books because I don’t read them often. But that is not the case. There are just so many amazing fiction books to read that I never find time to read much else. But here and there a book will capture my attention and I’ll add it to my reading list.

All the books on this list were ones I came across and knew I wanted to read them. Some were from lists while others I heard good things about. And I am glad I did because I learned a lot of new things and about celebrities that I knew little about beforehand. You can see the full list below!

The Four Best Nonfiction Books I Read This Year

• Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Clapp
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
• Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Waste Wars

When I read the blurb for Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp, I knew I had to read this book. This book was published in early 2025 and I made it a point to read it. And I was glad that I did because I learned a lot about where our trash ends up and how governments avoid responsibility and send it to other countries instead.

Journalist Alexander Clapp goes on a two-year journey across five continents to see for himself where most of the trash of the worlds ends up. His trip takes him to places like Java, the jungles of Guatemala, Turkey, and Ghana and what he sees there is shocking.

He finds people living beside heaps of trash, communities centered around trash that is imported from around the world to remote areas. cities are being overrun by trash and the environment is being poisoned by chemicals that will take thousands of years to break down.

Books like these are important because they raise awareness. Hopefully this leads to reform and governments being held accountable. Clapp deserves numerous awards for this book and I know I will be voting for this book as one of the best nonfiction books of 2025!

Kitchen Confidential

Many people know Anthony Bourdain from his popular TV shows about traveling the world and trying exotic dishes. But before that, he was a chef that worked on the east coast and wrote books in his spare time. One of those books, Kitchen Confidential, became a bestseller overnight and made Bourdain into a celebrity.

The book shares industry secrets as Bourdain doesn’t hold anything back. When Bourdain wrote this book, he feared that chefs would hate him for outing the industry secrets. But the opposite happened instead. Anybody that worked in a restaurant could verify his stories and saw themselves reflected in Bourdain’s stories.

The honesty of this book and Bourdain’s writing style make this a must read. Unlike other books by Bourdain, he isn’t afraid of stepping on anyone’s foot and it leads to honest and raw writing. If you ever thought about becoming a chef, this book will reveal the good and the bad and everything in between.

Knife

Most nonfiction books are about lighter subjects and are usually educational. And other times, books like Knife by Salman Rushdie are accounts of attempted murder and the trauma that the author had to deal with afterwards. Knife is a powerful book and it shows Salman Rushdie’s character.

The book discusses Rushdie being attacked and recovering from it and how it upended his life. Now, he’s always worried about being attacked. But what got him through the trauma was love and his wife’s support through it all. In Knife, Rushdie faces his attacker and tells him how it truly feels about him.

This is a powerful work of literature and you will feel every word in this book. Rushdie is a talented writer and is able to share his thoughts and emotions across every page with ease. He turns to other events in history like his to understand his attacker and to understand that he is one of many people persecuted for his writing.

Empire of Pain

In Empire of Pain, author Patrick Radden Keefe pulls the curtain to the side and lets everyone see the Sacklers for who they are. Keefe looks back at the origins of the Sackler family and how they became of the most powerful families in the 20th and the 21st century and how they made their money.

This book also looks at the opioid crisis and how the Sacklers were making millions of dollars a day as the United States got addicted to opioids. To understand how the opioid crisis happened, it is important to understand Arthur Sackler, the one who made millions and set the family for years to come.

His methods were adopted and perfected to push opioids to Americans decades later. The Sackler family has avoided being associated with opioids but Keefe’s book makes sure that everyone knows who the Sackers are and how they made their money.

Conclusion

While I enjoy fiction books, at the end of the day, I like a book that can keep me reading for hours. It depends on the author, not the genre. These nonfiction books were all incredible and I am glad that I gave them a chance.

These are the four best nonfiction books I read this year and hopefully I am able to find even more amazing nonfiction books to read. Have you read any of these books? Let us know in the comments below!

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