The Greatest Nonfiction Books Since 1990
How is this list generated?
This list is generated from 130 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others. I generally trust "best of all time" lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists. On the lists that are actually ranked, the book that is 1st counts a lot more than the book that's 100th. If you're interested in the details about how the rankings are generated and which lists are the most important(in my eyes) please check out the list details page.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections please feel free to e-mail me.
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101 . Consider The Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Consider the Lobster (2005) is a collection of essays by novelist David Foster Wallace. It is also the title of one of the essays, which was published in Gourmet Magazine in 2004. The entire list o...
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102 . Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
The book describes the exploitation of black Americans after the end of the American Civil War. Blackmon presents evidence that slavery in the United States did not end with the Civil War, instead ...
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105 . The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman that chronicles the struggles of a Hmong refugee fami...
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106 . Backlash by Susan Faludi
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women is the title of a 1991 nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Faludi, which argues for the existence of a media driven "backlash" against...
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107 . The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of Science is a 2008 popular science book about the history of science written by Richard Holmes. In it, the author d...
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108 . We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda is a 1998 non-fiction book about the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, wr...
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109 . John Adams by David McCullough
John Adams is a 2001 biography of Founding Father and second U.S. President John Adams written by popular historian David McCullough. It won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize (for "Biography or Autobiography")...
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110 . Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
From the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression comes a monumental new work, a decade in the writing, about family. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tel...
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112 . The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold sto...
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113 . We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction by Joan Didion
A definitive compilation of essays and nonfiction writings spanning more than forty years includes the author's reflections on politics, lifestyle, place, and cultural figures, including her studie...
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114 . The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
The Forever War is a non-fiction book by American journalist Dexter Filkins about his observations on assignment in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Iraq War. The book made the New York Times Book R...
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115 . The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the P...
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116 . The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
The Beauty Myth examines beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women. Subtitled How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, Wolf examines how modern conceptions of women's beauty impact the sp...
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117 . Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott
Schott's Miscellanies are a trio of best-selling books by Ben Schott. They consist of a collection of trivia generally centred on the culture of the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent the rest ...
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118 . A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
This multi-award book is history on an epic yet human scale. Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, "A People's Tragedy" offers a...
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119 . A Child Called 'It' by Dave Pelzer
A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive is Dave Pelzer's 1995 autobiographical account of his alleged abuse as a child by an alcoholic mother, Catherine Roerva.
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120 . The Rise of the West by William H. McNeill
The Rise of the West explores human history in terms of the effect of different world civilizations on one another. McNeill assumes "decent familiarity with Western history," which allows describin...
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121 . The Taming of Chance by Ian Hacking
In this important new study Ian Hacking continues the enquiry into the origins and development of certain characteristic modes of contemporary thought undertaking in such previous works as the best...
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122 . Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
"I woke up with a start at 4:00 one morning and realized that I was very, very pregnant." So begins novelist Anne Lamott's journal of the birth of her son, Sam, and their first year together. She m...
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123 . Mountains Beyond Mountains: One doctor's quest to heal the world by Tracy Kidder
Profound and powerful, Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba and Russia, as the charismatic but flawed genius Dr Paul Farmer challenges widely-held preconceptions ab...
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124 . Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Americans like to insist that we are living in a postracial, color-blind society. In fact, racist thought is alive and well; it has simply become more sophisticated and more insidious. And as award...
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125 . Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
Sontag: Her Life and Work is a 2019 biography of American writer Susan Sontag written by Benjamin Moser. The book won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Judges of the prize ca...
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126 . The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care by Anne Boyer
WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and m...
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127 . The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X is a biography of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne. The book was published in late 2020 by Liveright in hardcover format while an audiobook, narra...
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128 . The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation by David Brion Davis
A conclusion to the historian's three-volume history of slavery in Western culture covers the influential Haitian revolution, the complex significance of colonization, and the less-recognized impor...
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129 . Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner
In 1831 enslaved Jamaicans revolted. What began as a peaceful movement soon became a bloodbath as British troops retaliated. Tom Zoellner tells the inspiring story of the uprising that galvanized a...
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130 . Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
Winner of the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction Named on Amazon's Best Books of the Year 2015--Michael Botticelli, U.S. Drug Czar (Politico) Favorite Book of the Year--Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize Eco...
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131 . Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Steve Coll
Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and en...
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132 . Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is a 2019 book by Patrick Radden Keefe. Keefe began researching and writing the book after reading the obituary for Dolours Price ...
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133 . The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances FitzGerald
A history of the Evangelical movement in America traces the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that rendered evangelism a dominant religious force, describing the rise and fall of ...
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134 . W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and The American Century by David Levering Lewis
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS) (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and e...
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136 . Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
The unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice--and reparations Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy she...
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137 . W.E.B. Dubois : Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 by David Levering Lewis
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America - was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the languag...
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138 . The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall. Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea ...
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139 . The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
The Yellow House is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It is Broom's first book and it was published on August 13, 2019 by Grove Press. The Yellow House chronicles Broom's family (mapping back approximate...
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140 . The Return by Hisham Matar
The Return is a memoir by Hisham Matar that was first published in June 2016. The memoir centers on Matar's return to his native Libya in 2012 to search for the truth behind the 1990 disappearance ...
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141 . Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS is a 2015 non-fiction book by the American journalist Joby Warrick. The book traces the rise and spread of militant Islam behind the Islamic State of Iraq and the Lev...
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142 . Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
Washington's Crossing is a Pulitzer Prize winning book written by David Hackett Fischer and part of the "Pivotal Moments in American History" series. The book is primarily about George Washington's...
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143 . Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
Ever since the USS Walkercame from another world war to defy the terrifying Grik and diabolical Dominion, Matt Reddy and his crew have given their all to protect the oppressed Lemurians. But with t...
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145 . Encounters at the Heart of the World by Elizabeth A. Fenn
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People is a Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction history book about the Mandan people, a Native American tribe in North Dakota. It was wr...
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146 . Custer's Trials by T.J. Stiles
Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America is a book by T. J. Stiles. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History.
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147 . The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr
If Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fu...
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148 . A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
A Civil Action is a 1996 non-fiction novel by Jonathan Harr depicting the real-life water contamination case in Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1980s. The book became a best-seller and won the Nationa...
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149 . Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when...
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150 . Summer for the Gods by Edward Larson