The Best Nonfiction Books of 2025

From the terrorists who came up with the idea of hijacking planes to get attention to a biography of the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, the books in the running for this year's Baillie Gifford Prize, as always, display a wonderful breadth. Robbie Millen, literary editor of the Times and chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the shortlist of the UK's most prestigious nonfiction book prize.

The Wolfson History Prize is awarded annually for historical writing that is both brilliantly researched and a great read. Professor Helen King, one of this year's judges, talks us through the 2025 shortlist and explains why each book stood out.

To be shortlisted for the annual British Academy Book Prize, books have to be both rigorously researched and highly readable. Historian Rebecca Earle, chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the books that made this year's shortlist, from an environmental history that opens with Genghis Khan and the Mongol expansion to a 'musical detective story' that investigates the sounds made by our ancestors down the millennia.

A good historical biography should help us redefine and rethink what makes a person historically significant, says Roy Foster, chair of the judging panel of the Elizabeth Longford Prize. He talks us through the brilliant books that made the 2025 shortlist, including the lives of various monarchs who left their mark on European history, a portrait of an early modern spymaster, and a biography of Frantz Fanon, the anti-colonial writer.  

We always look forward to the shortlists for the National Book Critics Awards, on the basis that literary critics are probably the best read people out there. Here, we asked the garlanded critic Mary Ann Gwinn to talk us through the five biographies highlighted in 2025.

It's a nonfiction book prize that values "style, rigour, argument, meatiness, readability, freshness, oddity and individuality," says Minoo Dinshaw, author of Friends in Youth and one of this year's judges. He introduces the six brilliant books that made the shortlist of this year's Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, from the history of post-World War II Italy to the disputes caused by the discovery of dinosaur fossils.  

It’s been another big year for technology and AI, but books on geopolitics and global political rivalries are front and centre on the shortlist of the 2025 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. FT journalist Andrew Hill, the prize’s organizer, talks us through the six books that made the cut—from the enigmatic founders of multi-billion- and trillion-dollar businesses to the challenges governments face in achieving growth and prosperity.

Every year, we ask our philosophy editor Nigel Warburton to select the best new philosophy books aimed at the general reader. In 2025, he's chosen—among other things—biographies of Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein, and a carefully-curated collection of Existentialist writings.

Every year, the judges for the Royal Society Book Prize search for the most informative and most readable new books on scientific subjects. In 2025, their shortlist of the best popular science books includes a history of extinction in the colonial world, and the heartrending story of the struggle to save the world's first seed bank during the Siege of Leningrad. We spoke to the botanist Dr Sandra Knapp, chair of the judging panel.

We gathered together a selection of five new and noteworthy self-help and psychology books that advise us on how we might become stronger willed, more creative and better conversationalists—as well as exploring the science behind music therapy and the enduring fascination of horror movies.