Year-End Lists

The Washington Post: 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2025

• Apple in China

  The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
  Patrick McGee
• Articulate

  A Deaf Memoir of Voice
  Rachel Kolb
• Baldwin

  A Love Story
  Nicholas Boggs
• Black Genius

  Essays on an American Legacy
  Tre Johnson
• Black Moses

  A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
  Caleb Gayle
• Blank Space

  A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century
  W. David Marx
• Bone Valley

  A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida
  Gilbert King
• Book of Lives

  A Memoir of Sorts
  Margaret Atwood
• Buckley

  The Life and the Revolution That Changed America
  Sam Tanenhaus
• Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
  John Cassidy
• Claire McCardell

  The Designer Who Set Women Free
  Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
• Crumb

  A Cartoonist's Life
  Dan Nadel
• Dark Renaissance

  The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
  Stephen Greenblatt
• Electric Spark

  The Enigma of Dame Muriel
  Frances Wilson
• Fear No Pharaoh

  American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery
  Richard Kreitner
• Girl on Girl

  How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
  Sophie Gilbert
• The Golden Hour

  A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood
  Matthew Specktor
• The Harder I Fight the More I Love You

  A Memoir
  Neko Case
• How to Lose Your Mother

  A Daughter's Memoir
  Molly Jong-Fast
• Indignity

  A Life Reimagined
  Lea Ypi
• The Invention of Charlotte Brontë

  A New Life
  Graham Watson
• I Regret Almost Everything

  A Memoir
  Keith McNally
• Is a River Alive?
  Robert Macfarlane
• Jane Austen's Bookshelf

  A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
  Rebecca Romney
• The Last Supper

  Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s
  Paul Elie
• Let Only Red Flowers Bloom

  Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China
  Emily Feng
• Libraries of the Mind
  William Marx
• Little Bosses Everywhere

  How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
  Bridget Read
• Make It Ours

  Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh
  Robin Givhan
• Mark Twain
  Ron Chernow
• Memorial Days

  A Memoir
  Geraldine Brooks
• Mexico

  A 500-Year History
  Paul Gillingham
• The Mission

  The CIA in the 21st Century
  Tim Weiner
• Mood Machine

  The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
  Liz Pelly
• Murderland

  Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
  Caroline Fraser
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  Omar El Akkad
• Ordinary People Don't Carry Machine Guns

  Thoughts on War
  Artem Chapeye
• Paris Undercover

  A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship, and Betrayal
  Matthew Goodman
• Raising Hare

  A Memoir
  Chloe Dalton
• Second Life

  Having a Child in the Digital Age
  Amanda Hess
• Storyteller

  The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
  Leo Damrosch
• Strangers in the Land

  Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
  Michael Luo
• There Is No Place for Us

  Working and Homeless in America
  Brian Goldstone
• They Poisoned the World

  Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals
  Mariah Blake
• Things in Nature Merely Grow
  Yiyun Li
• A Truce That Is Not Peace
  Miriam Toews
• True Nature

  The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
  Lance Richardson
• We Should All Be Birds

  A Memoir
  Brian Buckbee with Carol Ann Fitzgerald
• We the People

  A History of the U.S. Constitution
  Jill Lepore
• Zbig

  The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet
  Edward Luce