4 Nonfiction Books That Made Me Want to Read More Nonfiction

Updated October 1, 2026: I have repositioned this page as a personal reading essay rather than another “best nonfiction of 2025” list. My complete 2025 ranking now lives at The Best Nonfiction Books I Read in 2025.

I used to treat nonfiction as something I had to be in a very specific mood to read. Fiction was easier for me to pick up, especially fantasy and historical fiction. In 2025, I deliberately pushed against that habit, and four books in particular changed how I approached the genre.

4 Nonfiction Books That Made Me Want to Read More Nonfiction

Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp

Waste Wars showed me that nonfiction works best for me when it starts with a question I have never really considered. Where does all our trash actually go? Alexander Clapp’s reporting turns that simple question into a global investigation.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Kitchen Confidential reminded me that voice matters as much in nonfiction as it does in a novel. Anthony Bourdain’s personality is on every page, and that made the restaurant world feel immediate even though I have never worked in a professional kitchen.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

Knife made me appreciate memoir at its most direct. Rushdie is not simply recounting an event; he is working through what it meant to survive it, how it changed his life and what recovery looks like afterward.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain convinced me that deeply reported investigative books can be as hard to put down as thrillers. Patrick Radden Keefe takes a complicated story about the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis and makes the connections understandable without flattening the subject.

Those four books did more than give me a few good reading experiences. They changed the way I choose nonfiction. I now look for strong narrative voices, subjects I genuinely want to understand and writers who can make research feel like a story rather than an assignment.

For the complete consolidated list—including Carthage Must Be Destroyed, The Wide Wide Sea and A Cook’s Tour—read The Best Nonfiction Books I Read in 2025.