Nonfiction Books

In another of our end-of-year series highlighting the best audiobooks of 2024, our friends at AudioFile magazine offer an overview of the best new nonfiction audiobooks—including a sparky history of reality TV by New Yorker staffer Emily Nussbaum and highly acclaimed works of memoir and cultural criticism by Hanif Abdurraqib and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

From how to channel the tribal instincts innate to Homo sapiens to the role of Silicon Valley in the future of warfare, the Financial Times book award—now in its 20th year—has a broad definition of what makes a good business book. FT journalist Andrew Hill, the prize's organizer, talks us through the six excellent books that made the 2024 shortlist.

The British Academy Book Prize is awarded annually for a nonfiction book that combines rigorous research with engaging writing—and promotes global cultural understanding. Charles Tripp, chair of this year's judging panel, explains what that means and introduces the six books that made the 2024 shortlist.

It's January and time for our annual interview with an AI chatbot. We asked ChatGPT for its latest recommendations for books on artificial intelligence.

With Amazon refreshing its entire range in 2024—including the introduction of the first colour Kindle—it's hard to know which is the best Kindle for reading. We turned to Kindle expert Maneetpaul Singh, author of Kindle Bookworm, to talk us through the latest Kindles as we go into 2025.

History is too complex to be an easy guide for navigating the present, but that doesn't mean the experience of those who came before can't shed valuable insights into our current dilemmas. In his latest book, History for Tomorrow, social philosopher Roman Krznaric looks at ten crises currently facing the world and how lessons from the past might be able to help.

Biographers create character studies of fascinating people, through which we might insight into the historical context and the systems these individuals functioned within. Here, journalist and attorney William Cooper recommends five U.S. political biographies and memoirs that allow readers special access to the rooms where American decision-making takes place.

From the Baroque painter who killed a man in Rome during the Counter-Reformation to the surrealist artist who left Britain and died in Mexico City in 2011, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux talks to us about her favorite biographies of artists. Her new biography of Paul Gauguin, Wild Thing, is out this week and has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

If you're looking for nonfiction with a literary sensibility and a historical bent, the books highlighted by the annual Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize are a great place to start. British historian Susan Brigden, author of Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest and one of the prize's judges, talks us through the 2024 shortlist — from war and revolution to the splendours of Mughal India and Monet's garden at Giverny.

Mountaineering is a thrilling, mind-altering pastime that brings the climber into direct contact with some of the world's most beautiful landscapes. But it is also one that carries significant risk, explains Anna Fleming, author of the rock-climbing memoir Time on Rock. Here, she recommends five fascinating mountaineering books that combine history, nature, and sheer adventure.