Year-End Lists

Electric Lit: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021

[see also Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2021 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020 • Favorite Novels of 2020 • 15 Best Novels of 2019 • 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019]

The Top 3 Nonfiction Books of the Year

• Girlhood
  Melissa Febos
• White Magic
  Elissa Washuta
• Crying in H Mart
  Michelle Zauner

Other Nonfiction Favorites

• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Most Fun Thing

  Dispatches from a Skateboard Life
  Kyle Beachy
• Punch Me Up to the Gods
  Brian Broome
• Dear Memory

  Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief
  Victoria Chang
• Southbound

  Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change
  Anjali Enjeti
• Somebody's Daughter
  Ashley C. Ford
• Pedro's Theory

  Reimagining the Promised Land
  Marcos Gonsalez
• The 1619 Project

  A New Origin Story
  Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator)
• Tacky

  Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer
  Rax King
• The Hard Crowd

  Essays 2000-2020
  Rachel Kushner
• The Book of Difficult Fruit

  Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly
  Kate Lebo
• Aftershocks
  Nadia Owusu
• Pop Song

  Adventures in Art and Intimacy
  Larissa Pham
• Seek You

  A Journey Through American Loneliness
  Kristen Radtke
• Craft in the Real World

  Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
  Matthew Salesses
• Concepcion

  An Immigrant Family's Fortunes
  Albert Samaha
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

  In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
  George Saunders
• Let the Record Show

  A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
  Sarah Schulman
• The Right to Sex

  Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
  Amia Srinivasan
• Midnight's Borders

  A People's History of Modern India
  Suchitra Vijayan
• Pessoa
  Richard Zenith
• Women and Other Monsters

  Building a New Mythology
  Jess Zimmerman