The Best Nonfiction of 2023

Our favorite reads brought history vividly to life, explored the far reaches of the natural world, enhanced our understanding of social issues and told poignant, memorable life stories.

American History, History

A Fever in the Heartland

By Timothy Egan

The latest enthralling historical narrative from National Book Award-winning author Timothy Egan focuses on the rapid rise and spectacular collapse of the KKK in the 1920s.

A Man of Two Faces

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

In his memoir, award-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen “re members” and “dis remembers,” excavating and reassembling memories as if working on his family’s portrait.

Memoir, True Crime

Gator Country

By Rebecca Renner

Rebecca Renner’s Gator Country follows an undercover mission to expose alligator poachers in the Everglades, revealing the scraggly splendor of the region’s inhabitants.

European History, History

Goodbye, Eastern Europe

By Jacob Mikanowski

Journalist and historian Jacob Mikanowski manages to pull off the nearly impossible—an accessible and detailed history of Eastern Europe that spans 2,000 years in under 400 pages.

American History, History

I Saw Death Coming

By Kidada E. Williams

Kidada E. Williams demonstrates that the progress of the post-Civil War Reconstruction was hampered by a not-so-secret war against Black citizens.

Black History, History

King: A Life

By Jonathan Eig

Jonathan Eig’s monumental biography takes Martin Luther King Jr. down from his pedestal, revealing his flaws, needs, dreams, hopes and weariness.

Our Migrant Souls

By Héctor Tobar

Our Migrant Souls is one of the most important pieces of Latino nonfiction in several decades. Turning the last page, you will feel the weight of history on your shoulders.

Family & Relationships, Memoir

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Beth Nguyen has only spent 24 hours with her mother over the course of her adult life, and her revelatory memoir depicts all the love and anguish bound up with this fact.

Biography, Medicine, Social Science

Rough Sleepers

By Tracy Kidder

With a straightforward scrutiny that reveals without judging, Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder offers a long, hard look at the lives of homeless people in Rough Sleepers.

Social Science, True Crime

Still Life With Bones

By Alexa Hagerty

Anthropologist Alexa Hagerty’s extraordinary memoir pays tribute to the victims of genocide in South America, whose bones Hagerty returned to their grieving families.

Family & Relationships, History, Memoir

The Kneeling Man

By Leta McCollough Seletzky

For Leta McCollough Seletzky, the famous photo of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination is particularly haunting—because her father was the one trying to administer first aid.

Environment, Memoir, Nature

The Quickening

By Elizabeth Rush

Pulitzer finalist Elizabeth Rush combines memoir, reportage and science writing in a lyrical, women-centered addition to the Antarctic canon.

Nature, Science

The Underworld

The Underworld is Susan Casey’s dazzling answer to the age-old, tantalizing question about the ocean’s abyss: “What’s down there?”

History, True Crime

The Wager

David Grann’s narrative nonfiction masterpiece about an 18th-century man-of-war that ran aground in South America reveals humanity at its best and worst, from heroism to cannibalism.

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

By Tahir Hamut Izgil

Tahir Hamut Izgil’s beautifully written memoir is one of the only firsthand accounts available of the ongoing genocide of Uyghur people by the Chinese government.

Previous Best Nonfiction lists

Recent starred nonfiction

The Loves of My Life

By Edmund White

Novelist, biographer, playwright, essayist and queer icon Edmund White (The Humble Lover, A Saint From Texas) has spent his long career writing about love and sex in a way that shatters taboos and elevates the value of pleasure. His dishy new memoir, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, explores these themes during different […]

Art, Lifestyles

Magnum America

By Magnum Photos, Peter van Agtmael

Flipping through any given section of the exceptional photography tome Magnum America is like watching history pass before your eyes.

Lost Found Kept

By Deborah Derrickson Kossmann

Deborah Derrickson Kossmann reckons with family trauma and her mother’s hoarding disorder in her piercing, empathetic debut memoir, Lost Found Kept.

American History, History

A Man on Fire

By Douglas R. Egerton

Douglas R. Egerton’s magnificent, exhaustively researched and beautifully written A Man on Fire charts the extraordinary life of multitalented abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

American History, Black History, History

In Open Contempt

By Irvin Weathersby Jr.

Irvin Weathersby Jr.’s indispensable In Open Contempt examines how we bear witness to sites and perpetrators of racial trauma.

African History of Africa, An

By Zeinab Badawi

Zeinab Badawi’s incredible An African History of Africa should be studied in every school across the West.

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