The Best Nonfiction Books I Read This Year

It is not a secret that I don’t read much nonfiction books but I was determined to change that this year. I have been adding more nonfiction books to my to-read list and have read a bunch over the past year. So, keep reading to find out the best nonfiction books I read this year!

To be clear, I don’t hate nonfiction books. In fact, I actually enjoy reading them and learning new facts about history. It’s just that I enjoy fiction books, especially fantasy novels a lot more. And with limited time, I can’t read every book out there.

By reading over a hundred books in 2025, I was able to read books from all genres and came across a bunch of great nonfiction books as result. You can see the full list below!

The Best Nonfiction Books I Read This Year

• Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Clapp
• A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
• 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 book blurb for Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp, I knew I was going to read this book in the near future. Waste Wars was published in early 2025 and I instantly added it to my to-read list. 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.

Capp 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 and hold countries accountable. 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!

Anthony Bourdain Books

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.

He has gone on to write many books over the course of his career and I have made it a point to read them all. A Cook’s Tour is also a great read and focus on different topics.

Kitchen Confidential 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.

A Cook’s Tour sees Bourdain travel around the world as he tries different food. The premise is simple but Bourdain’s writing style and storytelling made this a fantastic read. This book makes me want to travel around the world too and visit all the places Bourdain does in his book!

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

These are the best nonfiction books I read in 2025 and I hope I read a couple more before the year is over. Nonfiction books are just as good as fiction and you just need to find the right ones to read.

All the ones I mentioned above are topics that piqued my interest and the books taught me a lot of new facts. How many of these books have you read or plan to read? Let us know in the comments below. Happy reading!