The Best Nonfiction Books I Read in 2025

Updated October 1, 2026: This is now the definitive Books of Brilliance page for the best nonfiction books I read in 2025. I consolidated my overlapping 2025 nonfiction lists here so readers have one complete, first-person guide instead of several pages covering many of the same books.

Nonfiction has never been my default genre. If I have an open slot on my reading list, I am still more likely to reach for fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction or a mystery. But in 2025, I made a deliberate effort to change that and read more nonfiction.

That experiment worked better than I expected. I found myself reading about ancient Carthage, Captain Cook’s final voyage, the global trash trade, restaurant kitchens, travel and food, recovery after violence, and the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis. The best books did what great fiction does for me: they made me want to keep turning pages while also changing how I understood the world.

These are the nonfiction books that stayed with me most from my 2025 reading year.

The Best Nonfiction Books I Read in 2025

• Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles
• The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides
• Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
• A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
• Knife by Salman Rushdie
• Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles

I picked up Carthage Must Be Destroyed after visiting a museum exhibit that made me realize how little I knew about Carthage. That curiosity turned into one of my favorite nonfiction reading experiences of the year.

Miles follows Carthage from its rise through its wars with Rome and eventual destruction. I especially liked the way the book made an ancient civilization feel much more complicated than the simplified version most of us absorb through Roman history. It reminded me why history books work best for me when they are built around a question I genuinely want answered.

The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides

I already knew I was likely to enjoy The Wide Wide Sea because I love history and books that feel like real-life adventures. Hampton Sides reconstructs James Cook’s final voyage with enough momentum that the book often reads like a novel.

What stayed with me was the tension between exploration, ambition and the damage that can follow when cultures collide. Sides gives readers a sweeping story without losing sight of the consequences of the expedition.

Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp

Waste Wars was one of the biggest surprises of my year. The premise sounds simple: follow the trash that wealthy countries throw away. What Alexander Clapp uncovers is a global system that most people rarely see.

Clapp spent years reporting across multiple continents, visiting communities where imported waste has reshaped local economies and environments. I liked that the book never felt like a pile of statistics. It stayed grounded in places and people, which made the scale of the problem much harder to ignore.

This was the kind of nonfiction I wanted to find when I decided to read more of the genre: deeply reported, surprising and capable of making an everyday part of life look completely different afterward.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Kitchen Confidential showed me why Anthony Bourdain’s voice became so influential. The book is messy, funny, blunt and completely confident in its point of view.

I knew Bourdain primarily from television, so reading about the years before that fame gave me a different appreciation for him. He writes about restaurant culture with affection and frustration at the same time. That combination keeps the book from becoming either a simple celebration of kitchens or a list of horror stories.

A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain

After Kitchen Confidential, I wanted to keep reading Bourdain. A Cook’s Tour expands the canvas from restaurant kitchens to food, travel and culture around the world.

I enjoyed the pairing because the two books show different sides of the same writer. Kitchen Confidential explains where Bourdain came from. A Cook’s Tour begins showing where his curiosity would take him. It also made me want to travel more intentionally and think about food as a way into a place rather than just something to eat while visiting it.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

Knife was easily one of the most emotionally intense nonfiction books I read in 2025. Salman Rushdie writes about the attack that nearly killed him, his recovery and the psychological aftermath of surviving an act of violence that was directed at him because of his writing.

What made the book work for me was its directness. Rushdie is not observing someone else’s trauma from a safe distance. He is trying to understand his own experience while writing through it. That gives the book an immediacy that is difficult to shake.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain was one of the most absorbing books on this list. Patrick Radden Keefe traces the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma and the marketing of OxyContin with the pacing of narrative nonfiction while still showing the reporting behind the story.

The book made me think about how institutions build reputations, how wealth can shape public memory and how difficult accountability can become when money and prestige are involved. Keefe’s ability to connect individual decisions to a much larger system is what made the book stand out for me.

There is also a timely reason to revisit Keefe now. On October 1, 2026, the Baillie Gifford Prize announced that his newer book, London Falling, made the 2026 shortlist. Keefe previously won the prize in 2021 for Empire of Pain. That does not change why I chose this book for my 2025 list, but it is a useful reminder of how consistently strong his investigative nonfiction has been.

What These Books Changed About My Reading

The biggest thing I learned in 2025 is that I do not need to become a “nonfiction reader” in some formal sense. I just need the right subject and the right writer.

I am still going to read far more fiction. Fantasy is still my favorite genre, and historical fiction remains one of the safest bets when I want a book I know I am likely to enjoy. But nonfiction earned a much bigger place in my reading life because these books proved that real events can be every bit as immersive as an invented world.

Going forward, I am especially interested in narrative history, investigative reporting, food and travel writing, and deeply reported books about systems most people rarely see. Those are the books that converted a reading goal into a habit.

If you are a fiction-first reader who wants to try more nonfiction, I would start with the topic that already fascinates you rather than the book you think you are supposed to read. That approach worked for me.