Best Nonfiction Books of 2023

If you're looking for compelling stories that also happen to be true, the UK's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is a great place to start. Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times, talks us through the six brilliant books that made the 2023 shortlist, from a gripping account of a 2016 firestorm in Alberta to the shadow the Cultural Revolution continues to cast over today's China. Read more nonfiction book recommendations on Five Books

The Wolfson History Prize is the UK's most prestigious history book prize. The judges, all professional historians, pick out books that combine excellence in research with readability. Oxford University historian Sudhir Hazareesingh, one of the Wolfson judges and author of Black Spartacus, talks us through the six terrific books that made the 2023 shortlist, from the Black Death and its critical impact on economic development to the magic of our relationship with books.

If you like nonfiction books that will get you up to speed with what's going on in the world, the Financial Times annual book prize is a great place to start. If you run a business, one or two useful books also feature. Andrew Hill, the newspaper's senior business writer, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist, from cobalt extraction in the Congo to how to manage the AI genie that's out of the bottle and coming towards us at speed.

We live in a golden age for nonfiction, with many highly readable books about important issues published every year. As 2023 comes to a close, Five Books editor Sophie Roell introduces the nonfiction books that won prizes this year.

The annual British Academy Book Prize seeks out books that promote 'global cultural understanding'—something we could all do with more of right now. Anthropologist Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at LSE and one of the prize's judges, talks us through the six excellent books that made the 2023 shortlist, from the ancient Library of Alexandria to fire walking in contemporary Greece.

The genre of philosophical biography is flourishing, as we pay attention not only to what philosophers said and wrote but also to how they lived and the intellectual context in which they developed their ideas. Nigel Warburton, our philosophy editor, picks out some of the best philosophy books of the year, from the man who lived in a storage jar in 5th century Athens to the latest contributions of cognitive science to our understanding of how we experience the world. Read more philosophy book recommendations on Five Books

The rise of China has led to an ever broader range of books about the country becoming available in English. There’s also a greater focus on its diversity, which the country’s Communist leadership likes to downplay. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of Chinese history at UC Irvine, talks us through his favourite books of 2023, from painful historical episodes to the harsh policies targeting a largely Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang today—by way of two lighter books that focus on food and cooking.

From the latest research on what art does to the brain to how women in Renaissance times used cosmetics, this year saw a range of accessible and authoritative books about art. Art historian Francesca Ramsay recommends her best art books of 2023—and argues that for all the doom and gloom, it's an exciting time to be an artist.

As summer collapses into fall across the northern hemisphere, Five Books editor Sophie Roell takes a look at the nonfiction books that have been published over the last three months. Reading serious nonfiction books remains the easiest way to get up to speed on not only things you're already interested in, but lots of things you didn't know you didn't know.

Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn selects the best recent autobiographical writing in this round-up of notable memoirs of 2023—taking in new work from such literary giants as Janet Malcolm and Annie Ernaux, the writer other writers are raving about, and a humorous debut depicting life in a haunted antiquarian bookshop.