Year-End Lists

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence: Nonfiction 2025

Winner

• A Walk in the Park
  Kevin Fedarko

Finalists

• Challenger

  A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
  Adam Higginbotham
• Cue the Sun!

  The Invention of Reality TV
  Emily Nussbaum

Longlist

• There's Always This Year

  On Basketball and Ascension
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• Out of the Sierra

  A Story of Rarámuri Resistance
  Victoria Blanco
• Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

  The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
  Jonathan Blitzer
• The Catalyst

  RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets
  Thomas R. Cech
• Cold Crematorium

  Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
  József Debreczeni
• Survival Is a Promise

  The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
  Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• Feeding Ghosts

  A Graphic Memoir
  Tessa Hulls
• The Infernal Machine

  A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective
  Steven Johnson
• This Part Is Silent

  A Life Between Cultures
  SJ Kim
• Sing Like Fish

  How Sound Rules Life Under Water
  Amorina Kingdon
• Thunder Song

  Essays
  Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
• Night Flyer

  Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
  Tiya Miles
• By the Fire We Carry

  The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
  Rebecca Nagle
• Language City

  The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York
  Ross Perlin
• Hip-Hop Is History
  Questlove
• Ingrained

  The Making of a Craftsman
  Callum Robinson
• When Women Ran Fifth Avenue

  Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
  Julie Satow
• Whiskey Tender

  A Memoir
  Deborah Jackson Taffa
• Personal Score

  Sport, Culture, Identity
  Ellen van Neerven
• Private Revolutions

  Four Women Face China's New Social Order
  Yuan Yang