While I read a lot in 2025, nonfiction only accounted for 23% of my reads. Not as many to pick from, but still some good ones.

You can also check out my top 10 fiction and my reading stats/goals.

1. Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley – Really solid and meaty writing advice. Used it with my intern this summer.
2. A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings – I thought this would be one of those windows into extremism, but it felt way too close too home.
3. Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis – Essential reading for a time when government workers are under attack.
4. You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi – Another incredibly practical book for writers. Longer than it needs to be (reprinted blog posts), but still good stuff.
5. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen – In-depth and frightening.
6. Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith by April Ajoy – More of the church/politics embrace that hits too close to home.
7. Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy by Bill Adair – Intriguing and depressing.
8. The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Christopher Hayes – Really interesting take, though the author goes a little too far down the rabbit hole on some of his tangents.
9. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder – Inspiring stories and narrative flow. Pretty much anything Tracy Kidder writes is worth a read.
10. Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders – More writing advice, though this one is very specific nuts and bolts for fiction writers, so less appealing for me. But I hadn’t read anything this practical before.

Honorable Mentions

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond – Really detailed investigative reporting about landlords and renters and poverty. It’s pretty depressing, but gives real insight.
• How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economics, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People-Powered Future! by Danny Caine – Not the best written book—the arguments often feel too hyperbolic. But I mention it because I think it’s time we wrestle with mega-corporate greed. Danny Caine’s other book highlighting independent bookstores is more positive and better, but this gives some of the foundation about why Amazon is a problem.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.