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In an interview for Time, celebrating the 40th anniversary of his classic exposé of the hippie movement, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, writer Tom Wolfe declared nonfiction the “the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.”
While the genre, as we now understand it, may indeed have “come out” of the last century, it came into its own in this one. Standing on the shoulders of giants like Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Wolfe himself, a new generation of memoirists, essayists, journalists, and inventive blends of all three have picked up the nonfiction gauntlet and run with it, giving us new ways of understanding our own world, and new windows into the lives of others.
From empowering personal narratives to uncovered historical epics, we’ve gathered our favorite personal narratives, investigative deep dives, cultural reckonings, and uncovered histories of the new millennium—excluding Oprah’s nonfiction Book Club picks, which would all qualify. Which books would you add to the list?
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
In this modern classic, Jeannette Walls unflinchingly recalls the nitty-gritty of her traumatic childhood. Her father was an alcoholic dreamer who couldn't hold a job. Her mother was a wannabe artist who conveniently believed kids were better off largely unattended. Walls and her three siblings paid for her parents' neglect and dysfunction: At 3, Jeanette was cooking her own hot dogs and was so badly burned she had to be taken to the hospital, but because her father wanted to dodge the medical bills, he "rescued" her in the midst of her treatment. They moved from "home" to home, including to what Walls's dad termed the "glass castle," though in truth it was no more than an unfinished shack.
Ultimately, Walls and her sisters and brother do escape, finding a fresh start in New York City, where Walls, for one, becomes a writer for New York Magazine. Every now and then, though, she spots her parents, also now in New York, living on the streets.
Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
The winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize gives the American housing crisis a human face—and a rapidly beating pulse. Told through the intimate and propulsive lens of eight Milwaukeean families trying to keep a roof over their heads, this book reads like a novel while inspiring real-world action.
We Are the Weather, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Books on the climate catastrophe are always urgent, often insightful—and rarely fun to read. This refreshing exception from the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close uses lush lyricism, damning data, and wildly original storytelling to craft an environmentalist narrative that inspires action and commands attention. While this book does have an agenda (spoiler alert: it has to do with our eating habits) Foer never lectures. Instead, he lays both himself and the research bare on the page, asking us to work through the existential and material questions of our changing planet alongside him. An unforgettable—and genuinely unputdownable—reckoning with the dire state of the planet and the very nature of our species, this book should be required reading for anyone who lives on this planet in the present and wants to in the future.
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
This stunning memoir, now a classic, was finished posthumously by Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy. It’s the story of a young neurosurgeon who dies of metastatic lung cancer at the age of 37, leaving a baby daughter behind. He writes of grappling with his diagnosis and treatment, and the quality of time itself—along with his remorse that after spending most of his life in school, he had barely begun to live. The great gift of this book, whether you’re grieving in parallel or not, is that it’s a testament to engage with life—and it’s also a reminder that short lives can still yield lasting, impenetrable legacies
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo
Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker journalist Katherine Boo spent more than three years in Mumbai’s now-notorious Annawadi slum to bring an overdue focus to the unbelievable lives of its inhabitants. With compassion, dignity, and grace, Boo captures the interconnected stories of college hopefuls and trash collectors, slumlords and survivors—people chasing different fates but bound to the same land: a half-acre occupied by 3,000, built out of the wreckage of a rapidly changing country.
Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
Rarely has depression been explored with such candor and courage as in Kiese Laymon’s lyrical memoir cum epistle to his mother, a poverty-scarred addict who raised her overweight Black son, in fits and starts, against the backdrop of racially divided Mississippi during the '80s and '90s. It's a valentine to survivors everywhere.
South to America, by Imani Perry
The South has given America its Dollar Stores, the best of its cuisine and culture, and—while most people don’t give it credit for this— many of the leaders of the Black Power movement. Perry, a daughter of the South and a Princeton professor, shows us dimensions of the South and its centrality to American identity that have previously gone under-examined.
Know My Name, by Chanel Miller
This is one of the most moving, immersive memoirs you will ever read. Chanel Miller (formerly referred to as Emily Doe) revealed her identity right before her book was published in 2019, reclaiming her name and her strength by offering her own account of her sexual assault while unconscious by Brock Turner on the grounds of Stanford University, as well as its devastating aftermath. You’ll hear about Miller’s relationship with her family before and after the trial, her survival of another tragedy in her college days, and the mental health effects she suffered. But what makes this work a standout is how we witness Miller taking back her power, even as the judge in charge of her case deems the perpetrator's life more potentially impacted by his crime than Miller's, and gives him a light sentence. In response, Miller wrote, in part: "I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder." Amen.
Pro tip: Listen to this as an audiobook if you can. Miller reading her testimony will give you full-body chills on your morning commute.
The 1619 Project, created by Nicole Hannah-Jones
An expansion of the ongoing and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine initiative of the same name, The 1619 Project features fiction, poetry, and essays from the greatest thinkers of our time, from Jesmyn Ward to Michelle Alexander on American racism, past and present. While the work in this collection is dazzlingly diverse, each voice in this chorus asserts, unwaveringly, the centrality of slavery to our nation’s origins and present-day identity.
Survival Math, by Mitchell S. Jackson
In this follow-up to The Residue Years, the inimitable truthteller lays bare the agony and ecstasies of growing up Black in Portland, Oregon—and takes it upon himself to “keep alive the record of where we lived and how we lived and what we lived and died for.”
Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo
In this utterly engrossing, game-changing work of narrative nonfiction, a New York Magazine contributor profiles a trio of everyday women, shining a light on their darkest desires and how men (and other women) often thwart those wants.
Strangers to Ourselves, by Rachel Aviv
A New Yorker staff writer, Aviv has long covered psychiatric illness, public policy, and the consequences of poor mental health infrastructure in this country, such as rampant homelessness and violence. Her searing Strangers to Ourselves is a revelation of literary journalism and medical research, plaiting six personal stories, including her own. (As a child, she was hospitalized for anorexia, at that time the youngest patient ever diagnosed in the U.S.) “Ray” chronicles the downward spiral of a white male physician in Virginia and the impact on his wives and children.“Bapu” draws on original reporting about a wealthy schizophrenic woman in India who abandoned her husband and children to pursue a romantic relationship with the Hindu god Vishnu. “Naomi” is the heartbreaking tale of an impoverished, neglected African American in St. Paul, Minnesota, who tossed her infant twin sons into the Mississippi River. (One survived.) There are radical lessons to learn here, Aviv suggests, if we only open our eyes.
Intimations, by Zadie Smith
While quarantined amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith penned six dazzling, trenchant essays burrowing deep into our contemporary culture of disease and upheaval and reflecting on what was “once necessary” that now “appears inessential”—as well as on banana bread, pedicures, and tulips. Referencing Wordsworth, Marcus Aurelius, and Mel Gibson, among many others, Smith ponders our confounding current moment and offers musings like this one: “I do feel comforted to discover I’m not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.”
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb is both doctor and patient in this singular memoir about what people talk about when they take the couch. Gottlieb describes the moment she decided to seek therapy (the guy she was crazy about and thought she'd marry suddenly breaks it off) and interweaves that journey with those of her clients (names and identities altered for privacy). And one of the book's great attractions is that the reader gets to be voyeur, sitting in on sessions as some of her stickier patients insist on presenting versions of themselves that are clearly only a small part of the whole picture. But she's onto them. It's also apparent that Gottlieb, as a former television writer, knows a little something about plot: The windows we get into her psyche and those of her clients are unexpectedly thrilling, as well as illuminating.
Trick Mirror, by Jia Tolentino
In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois coined the phrase "double consciousness" to explain the mental gymnastics people of color perform in order to reconcile how the world sees them and how they see themselves. If there's any writer up to the task of examining this existential crisis through a feminist lens, it's Tolentino, whose astute commentary on the media's often-skewed perception of femininity and womanhood light up the pages of The New Yorker.
Owner of a Lonely Heart, by Beth Nguyen
In this achingly beautiful look at her relationship with her mother, Nguyen unpacks the toll of the Vietnam War, when, due to the chaos, her family was split apart. She, her father, and her sister eventually land in Grand Rapids, and her mother, in Boston, Nguyen only rediscovering her whereabouts at age 10. Just how the legacy of their loss divides them is told with wrenching emotion and exquisite, controlled prose. A soon-to-be classic with implications about immigration in any era.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, by T Kira Madden
Each entry in Madden’s memoir-in-essays is the literary equivalent of sucking on a Warhead: at once nostalgically sweet, stingingly sour, and unnervingly satisfying. Set mostly against the helter-skelter backdrop of Boca Raton—a place of both privilege and immense squalor—these vignettes acutely capture the grit of girlhood.
The Witches Are Coming, by Lindy West
While men like Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, and Donald Trump have decried the notion of holding men accountable for heinous behavior as "a witch hunt," the feminist firebrand and author of Shrill (also a Hulu series) leans into that idea, identifying herself as part of the coven coming to excoriate the culture that allows male chauvinism to flourish.
Sociopath, by Patric Gagne, PhD
When you hear the word sociopath, you probably imagine someone closer to Patrick Bateman than Patric Gagne: an ax-wielding serial killer, not a dedicated therapist, loving mother, and devoted wife. But, in this fast-paced and unforgettable memoir, Gagne reveals that the truth of sociopathy is far more fascinating than the fictional stereotypes. Even in kindergarten, Gagne realized that she “didn’t feel things the way other kids did.” Empathy, remorse, and fear eluded her. Violence felt good. But Gagne does not want to be at the whim of her hardwired impulses; she wants to live a life of her own design. With no standard treatment (or even diagnosis) for psychopathy, she resolves to build her own through academic research and personal experimentation. Laid over this psychological odyssey is a romantic one, but Gagne deftly skirts the cliché of "Love cures all." Her relationship with her husband requires just as much trial and error, adaptation, and compromise as her relationship with her own mind; both are worth the labor. Hilarious and riveting, Gagne’s story is a life raft not just for those living with her particular disorder but for all of us trying to figure out how to live with another person, or with any sort of unruly brain.
Monsters, by Claire Derderer
What are we supposed to think these days about Lolita, the politically incorrect novel that just won’t shrivel up and leave the culture no matter how wrong it seems? What about Picasso and Hemingway and Woody Allen and any number of artists and writers whose behavior was as reprehensible as their work was genius? As personal as it is unflinching, Dederer’s exploration of the confusing boundaries between life and art refuses all the easy answers.
Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schulz
In her memoir, divided between grief and love, Schulz reveals the story of how she lost a father and gained a wife. Be prepared to cry several times as you read. The love half of the book is even more emotionally devastating than the grief half because of how world-shakingly the feelings rush in. This is one of the very few books that manages to portray love that works—love without ruinous conflict, love without harm—in compelling terms. A reminder that the dream of good love is not only possible but worth waiting for.
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This 2015 winner of the National Book Award is a profound letter written by Coates to his son about what it means to be Black in America in the 21st century—a place in which you must balance the historical trauma of your people while also finding your own purpose.
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate
Filgate—whose piece in this anthology on the silence surrounding abuse went viral—amasses an extraordinary cadre of writers to riff on the chasm where “our mother does not match up with mother as we believe it’s meant to mean and all it’s meant to give us."
How to Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair
The winner of the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography is an intimate and ferocious tale of the author growing up under—and eventually, outgrowing— a father’s strict Rastafarianism. Sinclair spent her “early childhood in a wild state of happiness” on Jamaica’s achingly beautiful coast. But she soon learns that she is not simply a child on an island—she is a girl in a culture obsessed with female purity and obedience. As her father’s control tightens, her own creative passions grow; soon, she must choose between betraying the values that raised her and forfeiting the woman she desperately wants to become. While Sinclair’s story itself is deeply inspirational, it is her language that makes this book truly exceptional; her background as a prizewinning poet ignites every sentence.
The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson's second book, Caste, has rightfully earned its space in the spotlight; it was selected as an Oprah's Book Club pick in 2020 and adapted into the acclaimed 2023 film Origin, directed by Ava DuVernay. But her Pulitzer Prize–winning debut is likewise required reading for anyone who wants to understand race in America. This magisterial work charts the mass exodus of African Americans in the early 20th century from the Jim Crow South into Northern and Western cities, where they built successful lives amid racism etched in softer shades. With consummate skill, Wilkerson braids the stirring stories of her three guides—a pugilistic Floridian turned Harlem activist, a Mississippi sharecropper later rooted in Chicago, and Ray Charles’s personal physician from Louisiana—into a classic of narrative nonfiction, destined to influence writers for generations to come
The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O'Rourke
In her soon-to-be-iconic opening, O’Rourke writes, “I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly.’” For decades, she experienced hives, fatigue, brain fog, and night sweats; laboratory tests pointed in different directions, with some specialists suggesting the root causes of her symptoms were psychological. O’Rourke heard echoes of the “hysteria” judgments from the Victorian and Freudian eras, spurring her anger—and her quest. The Invisible Kingdom, then, is a medical detective story, dramatic and beautifully written in the manner of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, with a crucial difference: Patients suffering from autoimmune disorders encounter roadblock after roadblock, frustrating detours, and inevitable cul-de-sacs. The zigzagging toward the truth stoked O’Rourke’s desire to advocate for others like her.
In Love, by Amy Bloom
Bloom’s gorgeous, gripping memoir is an ode to her husband, Brian, whose early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis exploded their world. Bloom is one of our most accomplished fiction writers, but here she chronicles the couple’s real-life journey, which ends in Switzerland, with Brian's decision to end his life, with his wife's support. But what endures are Bloom’s clear-eyed memories of the man she loved, told with tenderness, intimacy, and courage
The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
Considered one of the most influential books of the past 20 years, legal scholar Michelle Alexander's staggering interrogation of the ways in which modern America's criminal justice system—as a result of decades of disastrous and explicitly racist policies like the supposed "War on Drugs"—disproportionately affects people of color is a necessary reexamination of our nation's recent past and a reminder of what we must undo to change its present.
A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib
From Josephine Baker to Soul Train to “Sixteen Ways of Looking at Blackface,” Abdurraqib takes us on a wild ride through the history of Black performances, artists who crushed boundaries and carved out spaces for vigorous forms of African American expression. Abdurraqib, a Macarthur “Genius” Awardee, possesses an intimate, conspiratorial voice, musically inflected, blending scholarship with anecdote, a “waltz in a circular chamber of your homies and not-homies, shouting chants of excitement.” This National Book Award and National Critics Circle finalist deserves all its accolades and more.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Combining her background as a botanist and member of the Potawatomi Nation, this bestseller offers a new lens for moving through the world, with attention and consciousness of your place as a being among beings. This book will change the way you think of the world, and your place in it. One example? Her perspective on gardening: “This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.”
The Hard Crowd, by Rachel Kushner
The renowned author of The Flamethrowers gathers two decades’ worth of criticism and reportage in a collection that rockets into its own artistic stratosphere. From a motorcycle rally in Mexico to riffs on the Clash and Blondie to under-the-hood observations on craft, Kushner’s swagger is seductive. Equal parts French philosopher and leather-jacketed outlaw, Kushner is probing as she observes of Brazilian writer Claire Lispector, “the alienating strangeness of what it means to be alive.”
How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
America’s favorite food guru and author of the bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma expands our horizons as he explores, in gorgeous prose, the emerging science of psychedelic drugs in treating severe depression. Can a microdose a day keep the doctor away?
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders
In this exhilarating and erudite work of nonfiction by the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December is: “In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.” In it, one of the greatest short-story writers of our time draws on his own love of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol—and on his joy in teaching them to his MFA students at Syracuse University. The result is a worship song to writers and readers. As Saunders observes: “There’s a vast underground network for goodness at work in this world—a web of people who’ve put reading at the center of their lives because they know from experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people…” If you want to write better—or just read better—read this book.
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