Across our site, we have thousands of nonfiction book recommendations, divided by subject matter (eg. history books, economics books etc.) On this page, you'll find more general book recommendations, useful if you're in the mood for nonfiction, want to read a really, really good book, but don't really mind so much what it's about.
There are vast numbers of new books published every year, which makes choosing some of the best ones seem somewhat random and subjective. To try and get some objective sense of which books to read, our first port of call every year is always the Baillie Gifford Prize, the UK's most prestigious nonfiction prize. Judges scour 100s of books—many of them lengthy tomes—to find the best nonfiction book of the year, a book that's compelling, important and well-written. The 2020 longlist was announced in September, and below you'll find a list of all 13 books that the judging panel felt made the cut.
Whether you're interested in ghosts or neuroscience, the Holocaust or the Beatles, it's a great time to be alive if you like reading really gripping nonfiction.
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
by Sudhir Hazareesingh
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Black Spartacus by Oxford politics don Sudhir Hazareesingh, an expert on French political and cultural history, tells the extraordinary life story of Toussaint Louverture, general and leader of the Haitian Revolution, the first successful black revolt against European colonial powers. He was fighting—at various times—the Spanish, French and British. But beyond that, it goes into detail about Toussaint's worldview and how he thought about the predicament of black slavery and what should be done about it—how he drew on European Enlightenment ideas, but was also strongly influenced by Christianity and beliefs and cultural practices from Africa. It's a great story.
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women
by Christina Lamb
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield is a shocking account of how rape is used as a weapon in war, told by veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. This is a book that everyone needs to read, that brings to life an atrocity which is too often is almost brushed under the carpet.
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
by Craig Brown
***Winner of the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Craig Brown's One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time is a quirky and interesting biography of the Fab Four, full of surprising information and interesting reflections on the 1960s, the Beatles' career trajectories and the joys and pitfalls of fame. Anything by Craig Brown is always worth reading.
The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story
by Kate Summerscale
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
This is the story of Alma Fielding, a woman who in the 1930s said her house had been taken over by a poltergeist—and the Hungarian ghosthunter, Nandor Fodor, who tried to understand what it all meant. A gripping read.
The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience
by Matthew Cobb
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Ten years ago, brain science seemed like a scary topic for the specialist, now it's everywhere. What to make of all the information out there, what we know, what we don't know about our brain? The Idea of the Brain, a highly readable book by Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester, will bring you up to speed.
Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World
by Amy Stanley
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by historian Amy Stanley opens at the turn of the 19th century, and tries to bring to life the world of a woman called Tsuneno, the daughter of a Buddhist priest who ends up working in Edo (modern Tokyo) and marrying a samurai (unhappily). The writing is beautiful and evocative and it is rather wonderful to have early modern Japan recreated by a historian using novelistic techniques.
Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe: A Memoir, A History, A Warning
by Geraldine Schwarz & Laura Marris (Translator)
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Diary of a Young Naturalist
by Dara McAnulty
***Winner of the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing***
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
by Francesca Wade
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Square Haunting is a group biography of five writers, who happened to live in the same square in London, though not together or necessarily at the same time. The title is based on a 1925 diary entry by Virginia Woolf (one of the five writers covered): “I like this London life in early summer, the street-sauntering and square-haunting.”
The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922 - 1968
by William Feaver
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
This book is the first volume in William Feaver's biography of Lucian Freud and the book to read on one of the 20th century's greatest painters. Feaver was a journalist and artist who became a friend of Freud's and they'd speak on the phone most weeks. As they put together material for this book—a process that took many years—they agreed that it wouldn't be published until after Freud died. The second volume of the biography, which covers the years till Freud's death in 2011, has also been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.
The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968 - 2011
by William Feaver
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
This is volume two in William Feaver's two-part biography. Volume one covers the years 1992-1968 and was shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.
Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
by Barbara Demick
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss
by Rachel Clarke
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care Hardcover
by Madeleine Bunting
***Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
by Hallie Rubenhold
***Winner of the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction ***
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize***
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the women of ISIS
by Azadeh Moaveni
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
by Casey Cep
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons
by Laura Cumming
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Maoism: A Global History
by Julia Lovell
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
***Shortlisted for the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding***
The Spy and the Traitor
by Ben Macintyre
***Shortlisted for the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
“Heiligman’s book is a multi-layered work of cultural history. It is a tightly wound story of two brothers, one of whom goes on to become one of the most famous impressionist painters and the other a seller of paintings. Both Van Gogh brothers played a central role in the history of late 19th-century art and ended up dying tragically, within months of one another.” Read more...
“Steve Sheinkin is one of the most prolific and talented writers at work today. Sheinkin ingeniously uses Ellsberg’s quirks and his life story to give readers a unique look at America’s involvement in Vietnam. He does it as well as any adult writer could have handled this material.” Read more...
“It’s a slim book that contains an immense amount of information about one of the most well-known periods in contemporary American history—the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. It presents that history in a unique way.” Read more...
“Symphony for the City of the Dead is, in brief, the story of the Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich and his Seventh Symphony, which he composed during the 444-day Siege of Leningrad by Hitler’s armies during World War Two. It’s an incredibly multilayered history and narrative, both fast-paced and readable. I recommended it to many of my adult friends who read serious nonfiction, because it delivers for any reader.” Read more...
“War: How Conflict Shaped Us is a book compiled out of her Reith Lectures and investigates various aspects of humanity and its relationship to war. As one would expect from a book based on lectures, it’s a quick read, and gives a good sweep of the subject, but lacks the granularity to be fully satisfying. But Margaret MacMillan is a leading historian, an expert on World War I (amongst other things), and it’s great to be taken on a tour of such a critical subject, pointing out the paradoxes and contradictions of war along the way. It’s a book to reread and take notes on.” Read more...
“As the title suggests, this book is about slavery and Bristol and the author is relentless in outlining all the connections between the two. “The slave trade was called the Guinea trade. That is commemorated in one of Bristol’s streets being called Guinea Street.” We learn that between 1730 and 1746 Bristol merchants were responsible for organising 40% of all British voyages to Africa, and overall was responsible for trading around half a million people. Although this was very much a collective effort, the author goes through which individuals should be particularly held to account, and which not so much, investigating whether it matters if you’re a slave trader, or just using slavery to get rich in some other way. He starts with a quick survey of the pre-18th century period and takes it to up to 2020 and the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston. “ Read more...
“Tanya Talaga has written an urgent, passionate book, which is about the legacies of colonialism in the most naked, raw sense. Of all the books, this is the one that proves how much the chaos and disorder and misery is still unfolding for living people. The book opens with these terrible child suicides among the Canadian First Nations. These are young kids from their early teens through into their 20s, taking their own lives in horrifying numbers. It’s like an epidemic. These are the children of peoples who are stuck in this apparently immovable situation, their lives are cramped and conditions create dislocation and despair.” Read more...
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
“Hämäläinen has produced this book that studies the rise of the Lakota nation from the 17th century through to the 19th century. It’s an extraordinary story, because it shows a group of people forming their space, their culture, in opposition to the various forces that are lined up against them.” Read more...
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
“One part of the book’s project is to establish that change came because people among the colonised put their lives on the line for it. The other lies in exploring the extent to which the resistance in the various parts of the Empire she’s describing found echoes and also amplification within Britain itself…This is what I found most interesting about the book, the way she brings those two worlds together.” Read more...
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
“It is a moving as well as interesting book, because it’s a combination of life-writing and historical and political analysis. These two don’t always go together, but this book really manages to combine them effectively. Family histories can be quite soft, but this one revisits a background that was full of stress, disappointment and difficulty as well as dreams and aspirations. Carby’s approach is quite steely in places, but her book is also a story of discovery, which combines judgement with sympathetic testimony as it explores the two large worlds squeezed into her small childhood home in South London. Hazel Carby has, as you say, taught at Yale for many years, but she grew up in the Croydon area and also worked as a schoolteacher in East London.” Read more...
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
“Susskind is an economist at Oxford, which means he’s good at explaining the economics with words instead of equations, and that’s what this book tries to do. He goes into the economic history and lays out the relationship between technology and employment that has held in the past (covering, for example, the Luddites. Apparently Ned Ludd, from whom they took their name, was not a real person). As I understand it, however, the future is likely to be different from the past, and robots really are going to be taking our jobs. For that reason, we need to be looking at things like Universal Basic Income (UBI) to give people financial support but beyond that, sources of meaning in life other than work. Whether Susskind turns out to be overly dramatic or scarily prescient only time will tell” Read more...
Twilight of Democracy
by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum’s latest book, Twilight of Democracy, is part polemic, part memoir, and tracks how and why so many people she knew (eg Viktor Orban, who has been prime minister of Hungary for the past decade) abandoned liberal democracy and became far right populists. Applebaum was a foreign correspondent in eastern Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and continued to cover the region for many years.
We interviewed Anne Applebaum on the best Memoirs of Communism.
Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
by Gaia Vince
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize***
“I wrote this book to answer what, for me, is the biggest question: how did we become so different from all the other animals—able to alter our own destiny and that of the rest of life on earth?” —Gaia Vince.
Read our interview with Gaia Vince—whose last book, Adventures in the Anthropocene, won the 2015 Royal Society Science Book Prize—
“If you wanted to understand why anthropology matters you couldn’t get a better book. He’s both gifted and careful….The person who actually knows stuff but doesn’t bore you to death. And that’s not as easy to find as you would like.” Read more...
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
“Boots On The Ground is a chronological examination of the Vietnam War as it unfolded, and also framed by the story of how the Vietnam Memorial in Washington came about. It is a meditation on how a nation remembers war and why memory is so fraught.” Read more...
How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy
by Daniel Kaufman, Massimo Pigliucci & Skye C Cleary
Are you an existentialist? A Stoic? Or does Buddhism have more appeal? In How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy, philosophers Skye Cleary, Massimo Pigliucci and Dan Kaufman gather together essays by 15 thinkers, with each presenting the philosophy they’ve chosen to guide their lives.
We have interviews with both Skye Cleary, on the Philosophy of Love, and Massimo Pigliucci, on the Best Stoicism Books, on Five Books.
“In this book, journalist Alev Scott is banned from Turkey and takes a wonderful journey through the lands of the Ottoman Empire instead.” Read more...
“It’s hard not be intrigued by Niccolò Machiavelli, a man whose name is synonymous with evil genius in many European languages. His most famous work, The Prince, has been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Erica Benner’s Be Like the Fox, which came out in paperback this year, blew me away for a number of reasons. One, Niccolò comes across as such an enthusiastic, principled, humorous character; it’s hard not to find him immensely likeable as you live through the ups and downs of his life with him. Secondly, this period when Italy was the battleground of Europe, the Pope out of control and the Medicis up to this, that and the other, is just fascinating, and one I’ve long wanted to know more about. Lastly, the style Erica Benner uses to tell this story is immensely appealing. I’m a huge fan of primary sources, i.e., if you want to know about Machiavelli, just read Machiavelli. The problem is, if you don’t know enough of the history, you’re constantly looking up footnotes or doing searches on Wikipedia (“Who was Cesare Borgia?”) which is disruptive. What Erica Benner does is incorporate direct quotes of Machiavelli’s into her account. So I am reading both the original, and an interpretation at the same time. I really couldn’t put this book down.” Read more...
“A journey through art history, from early art drawn on cave walls to the images we make today on our computers and phone cameras. It’s told through conversations between artist David Hockney and Martin Gayford, who talk with inspiring simplicity and clarity.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
“A fact-filled journey through the oceans with clever paper engineering and beautiful illustrations. This book has such panache – it is a standout, sumptuous feast of book design. Every page makes you sigh and reminds us just how extraordinary the watery depths and its inhabitants are.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
“It’s a gorgeously illustrated guide, not only to the constellations, planets, comets and northern lights – but also to the science, myths and history of the stars in our universe.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
“I love this book for show-casing over 100 young people – musical talents, environmental activists, engineers, artists and authors, as well as political voices. Your kids will feel that anything is possible and that the world is full of possibility after sitting down with this energetic volume for an afternoon.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
“The story of Maria Sibylla Merian’s (1647-1717) life blew me away the first time I stumbled upon it. When she was just 13, Merian began her study of butterfly metamorphosis – years before any other scientist had published a description of the process! This is just the beginning of a story that travels from the Netherlands to the wilds of the South American rainforests. It’s a story that will appeal to budding scientists as well as artists. This biography is one to treasure and a book that does justice to a remarkable woman.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
“Simon Schama, when he’s on form, is pretty well one of the most exciting writers we have today. His prose crackles with wit, insight, and a sort of rather original articulacy. He is a great writer. He’s a brilliant researcher. The book is essentially a series of the most colourful anecdotes. Some of us were joking that rather than being called Belonging: the Story of the Jews, it ought to be called Belonging: the Story of Some Jews. And that’s a compliment, by the way, not a criticism. It is a rolling, extraordinary tapestry of bizarre stories. But, behind them, lie some themes. Why are Jews always being excluded? Why are they a peripatetic race? How do they take root in society? Societies partially exclude them, which means they’re more active in commerce than they are in government, and so on. All sorts of themes that have enriched and influenced Judaism over the centuries are in the book. So it’s quite profound. But, above all else, it is just the most coruscatingly enjoyable read. It’s very big, very long, about 650 pages. But you won’t regret reading it, it’s fantastic.” Read more...
“Carl Zimmer’s one of a handful of extremely good science writers, one of those people who are capable of presenting a very complex argument with a lot of different material in a way that’s both incredibly clear and uncompromising in its detail and its depth.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
Fiammetta Rocco, Artists & Art Critic
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
by Serhii Plokhy
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy is a gripping and highly readable book by Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy about the Chernobyl nuclear accident of April 26th, 1986 at Pripyat, in what is now Ukraine. The audiobook is read by the British actor Leighton Pugh.
***Winner of the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction***
“It’s really a story about us and the ‘Other’ and what happens between peoples when they make no effort to understand each other. It’s a book that’s set over 200 years ago, but it is as important now, as a metaphor about today as it was about that particular situation.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
Fiammetta Rocco, Artists & Art Critic
“It’s about why people box, why men box, why men are violent and what use they put it to. It was a really fascinating book, completely original. He uses memoir to make a wider point about masculinity and male violence.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
Fiammetta Rocco, Artists & Art Critic
“The fact is, the age of AI is coming fast, and we need to be ready for it. This book will help you decide how worried you should be.” Read more...
The Best Science Books to Take on Holiday
Jim Al-Khalili, Physicist
“I love language and languages but have always been quite confused by grammar. Why are some things allowed in English and others not? This book finally helped it all fall into place. You’ll also find out lots of interesting facts about words. Did you know that buxom used to mean obedient? Or that it’s OK to say ‘Can I?’ rather than ‘May I?'” Read more...
“The most hilarious piece of journalism that I’d come across and it was gripping too.” Read more...
“Once you discover Kapuściński, it’s a love affair for life. He’s such a beautiful writer.” Read more...
“A really extraordinary book. It precedes George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London by decades.” Read more...
“A really interesting journey that works on lots of different levels. It’s funny, it’s very thoughtful, it’s chaotic.” Read more...
“To Be a Machine is a great piece of journalism by the Irish journalist, Mark O’Connell. He’s gone to America and met all these wacky characters.” Read more...
“Daniel Mendelsohn is a teacher of classics at Bard College on the East coast of the US and is a great fan of Homer’s Odyssey. He’s teaching a class on the Odyssey and his 82-year-old father decides to join the class with all these 18- and 19-year-olds.” Read more...
“During the 19th century, Islam had to deal with the introduction of medicine and of operations, with the intimacy required for real medicine.” Read more...
“Border was extraordinarily poetically written. In a strange way, it’s a cross between Eric Newby, who wrote A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, and Paddy Leigh Fermor.” Read more...
How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed Aids
by David France
***Winner of the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
David France was a gay man living in New York City in the early 1980s. The book tells the story of how his social circle was decimated by the disease, but it also tells the story of how AIDS, ultimately and in the face of great prejudice, changed social attitudes towards homosexuality. On top of the personal and social story, he tells the industrial/science story of how big pharma and governments sought to come up with a cure for the disease.
“We tend to read about the civil rights struggle or the story of poor blacks in the South, but not so much middle class African-American society.” Read more...
Stephanie Flanders, Economist
“What Stasiland does really well, is it shows that these aren’t just arguments. That these people believed these views to the roots of their souls.” Read more...
“Everyone has heard of the Vikings, but before I read this book I didn’t know what was fact and what was fiction. I didn’t know who Leif Eriksson was or whether he had really reached America. I presumed Vikings wore horned helmets and didn’t know they came as far south as Baghdad. This book, by historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, separates some of the myths from reality and is also a wonderful way of going on a voyage of discovery with her. I felt like I was following in the footsteps of Erik the Red and Co. and imagined what it would be like crossing icy oceans in a longboat. I also love the photographs of sites in Greenland and her descriptions of the landscape.” Read more...
“It’s a fantastic read, so the pages zip by.” Read more...
Diane Coyle, Economist
East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
by Philippe Sands
This is a fantastic and very impressive book, tracing the history war crimes and genocide, through two lawyers associated with the Nuremberg trials.
“It’s about a UK-based writer whose father disappeared in Libya.” Read more...
Stephanie Flanders, Economist
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
by Svetlana Alexievich
The Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time offers a polyphonic requiem to the Soviet Union – and the way of life and culture that went with it – formed up of the oral accounts of those who lived through it.
Mayflower
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Philbrick rexamines the earliest days of Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth and, in carefully recreating the story, explodes some of the most firmly held beliefs about life in the earliest days of America.
“I chose Kidder for this list because of the intensity of his observation, and what this book tells us about research as part of literary nonfiction.” Read more...
Peter Hessler, Journalist
“This is a historical book, and I chose it for the way Evan Connell handles historical material. It’s unique, and a masterful book.” Read more...
Peter Hessler, Journalist
A Capote Reader
by Truman Capote
I like the range of the collection, and I find it a useful thing to keep with me and refer to. I love to read him for his poetic sense
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion
I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment
“In my opinion Coming into the Country, about Alaska, is his best book. It describes the natural history and scenery in incredible detail, but he’s also writing about a very unusual part of America, and how it was becoming what it is now. He was there at an interesting moment in the seventies, when they were trying to find a new capital for the state. There were a lot of decisions to be made about resource management, and he illuminates those issues as well as describing how communities and individuals function in this incredibly rugged place. It’s a wonderful book.” Read more...
Peter Hessler, Journalist
A Civil Action
by Jonathan Harr
This is just a whiz-bang narrative about a very complicated legal case in New England and the Boston lawyer who fought for years to win justice for a handful of families caught in an environmental nightmare
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1
How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy
by Daniel Kaufman, Massimo Pigliucci & Skye C Cleary -
2
Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
by Gaia Vince -
3
Slavery and Bristol
by GM Best -
4
War: How Conflict Shaped Us
by Margaret MacMillan -
5
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
by Daniel Susskind -
6
Twilight of Democracy
by Anne Applebaum
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, recommended by Sophie Roell
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, recommended by Sophie Roell
As the world went into lockdown early in 2020, many of us without frontline jobs and lucky enough not to fall sick with Covid-19 found more time to read than usual. The sudden change to a slower gear also left more room to reflect on the state of the world and our place as humans in it. Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, takes us through her personal choice of the best nonfiction books of 2020.
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1
Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands
by Hazel Carby -
2
Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent
by Priyamavada Gopal -
3
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
by Pekka Hämäläinen -
4
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
by Charles King -
5
All Our Relations: Indigenous Trauma in the Shadow of Colonialism
by Tanya Talaga
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, recommended by Patrick Wright
The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, recommended by Patrick Wright
Every year the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize is awarded to the best nonfiction book that has contributed to ‘global cultural understanding.’ This year, the legacies of colonization and empire loom large. Patrick Wright, Emeritus Professor at King’s College London and chair of this year’s panel of judges, talks us through the books shortlisted for the £25,000 prize.
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1
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
by Casey Cep -
2
On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons
by Laura Cumming -
3
The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922 - 1968
by William Feaver -
4
Maoism: A Global History
by Julia Lovell -
5
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the women of ISIS
by Azadeh Moaveni -
6
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
by Hallie Rubenhold
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, recommended by Stig Abell
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, recommended by Stig Abell
Every year, the Baillie Gifford Prize judges seek to identify the very best nonfiction books published in the last year. Here, the chair of this year’s judging panel Stig Abell talks us through the 2019 shortlist: a thrilling line-up of books that are as notable for their literary prowess as for their weight and significance.
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1
Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine
by Hannah Fry -
2
The Spy and the Traitor
by Ben Macintyre -
3
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man
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4
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
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5
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
by Serhii Plokhy -
6
She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
by Carl Zimmer
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018, recommended by Fiammetta Rocco
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018, recommended by Fiammetta Rocco
It’s a difficult task: to identify the very best nonfiction books of the year. But the Baillie Gifford Prize aims to do just that. The chair of the prize’s 2018 judging panel Fiammetta Rocco talks to us about the six fascinating titles that made the shortlist.
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1
Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom
by Erica Benner -
2
Talk on the Wild Side: The Untameable Nature of Language
by Lane Greene -
3
Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas
by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough -
4
Haig's Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany's War on the Western Front
by Jonathan Boff -
5
Ottoman Odyssey: Travels through a Lost Empire
by Alev Scott
Editors’ Picks: Favourite Nonfiction of 2018, recommended by Sophie Roell
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1
Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer
by Jeyaraney Kathirithamby & Sarah B Pomeroy -
2
Young Heroes
by Lula Bridgeport -
3
What We See in the Stars: An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky
by Kelsey Oseid -
4
Ocean
by Emmanuelle Grundmann & Hélène Druvert -
5
A History of Pictures for Children
by David Hockney & Martin Gayford
Editors’ Picks: The Best Children’s Nonfiction of 2018, recommended by Zoe Greaves
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1
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times
by Christopher de Bellaigue -
2
How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed Aids
by David France -
3
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
by Kapka Kassabova -
4
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic
by Daniel Mendelsohn -
5
To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
by Mark O'Connell -
6
Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900
by Simon Schama
Best Nonfiction Books of 2017, recommended by Peter Bazalgette
The best books on Immersive Nonfiction, recommended by Will Storr
A good writer must always aim to write the truth – a more complex narrative than one of heroes and villains. But to find the truth, sometimes you’ve got to get up and go there yourself, says Will Storr, journalist and author of Selfie. Here he selects five books that have inspired his own immersive approach to nonfiction.
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1
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between
by Hisham Matar -
2
Negroland: A Memoir
by Margo Jefferson -
3
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
by Svetlana Alexievich -
4
East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
by Philippe Sands -
5
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
by Robert J. Gordon
Best Nonfiction Books of 2016, recommended by Stephanie Flanders
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1
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by Philip Hoose -
2
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
by Steve Sheinkin -
3
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
by M T Anderson -
4
Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers
by Deborah Heiligman -
5
Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam
by Elizabeth Partridge
The Best Nonfiction Books for Teens, recommended by Marc Favreau
The Best Nonfiction Books for Teens, recommended by Marc Favreau
Whether you want your kids to know more about the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War or the life of Vincent van Gogh or Dmitri Shostakovich, we’re entering a golden era of nonfiction books for teens (also known as ‘Young Adult’ or YA nonfiction). Marc Favreau, author of the brilliant Spies, recommends some of the best.
