The Best Nonfiction Books of 2026

The best nonfiction books of 2026 are the titles most recommended across the year's most credible lists, ranked here by our transparent Consensus Score.

2026 is still early — only J.P. Morgan has published 2026 picks so far. Year-end lists from The New York Times, The Economist, the Financial Times and more land through the fall.

The Infinity Machine
Sebastian Mallaby
AI for Good
Josh Tyrangiel
America: The Imagination of a Nation
Joel Stein
The Coming Storm
Odd Arne Westad
Mattering
Jennifer Breheny Wallace
The Stimulated Mind
Tommy Wood
Irreplaceable
World Monuments Fund
Keith Haring in 3D
Larry Warsh and Glenn Adamson
Squeeze Me
Ruthie Rogers and Ed Ruscha
We Are the World (Cup)
Roger Bennett

J.P. Morgan — J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List 2026

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The Infinity Machine
Sebastian Mallaby
AI for Good
Josh Tyrangiel
America: The Imagination of a Nation
Joel Stein
The Coming Storm
Odd Arne Westad
Mattering
Jennifer Breheny Wallace
The Stimulated Mind
Tommy Wood
Irreplaceable
World Monuments Fund
Keith Haring in 3D
Larry Warsh and Glenn Adamson
Squeeze Me
Ruthie Rogers and Ed Ruscha
We Are the World (Cup)
Roger Bennett

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2025

2026 is still early, so here's the complete 2025 archive — every credible nonfiction list from that year, by source.

The New York Times — The 10 Best Books of 2025

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A Marriage at Sea
Sophie Elmhirst
Mother Emanuel
Kevin Sack
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy
There Is No Place for Us
Brian Goldstone
Wild Thing
Sue Prideaux

The Economist — The Economist's Books of the Year 2025

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38 Londres Street
Philippe Sands
Dark Renaissance
Stephen Greenblatt
Electric Spark
Frances Wilson
John & Paul
Ian Leslie
Food Intelligence
Julia Belluz
The Last Days of Budapest
Adam LeBor
The Revolutionists
Jason Burke
The Hour of the Predator
Giuliano da Empoli
Buckley
Sam Tanenhaus
How to End a Story
Helen Garner
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy
Raising Hare
Chloe Dalton
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
Leo Damrosch
Zbig
Edward Luce
Fatherhood
Augustine Sedgewick
The Genius Myth
Helen Lewis
Lone Wolf
Adam Weymouth
Why Q Needs U
Danny Bate
The Age of Diagnosis
Suzanne O'Sullivan
Collisions
Alec Nevala-Lee
Crick
Matthew Cobb
Ends of the Earth
Neil Shubin
Fair Doses
Seth Berkley
Is a River Alive?
Robert Macfarlane
The Lost Orchid
Sarah Bilston
The Web Beneath the Waves
Samanth Subramanian
Allies at War
Tim Bouverie
The CIA Book Club
Charlie English
The Gods of New York
Jonathan Mahler
The Illegals
Shaun Walker
Peak Human
Johan Norberg
Strangers and Intimates
Tiffany Jenkins
The Third Reich of Dreams
Charlotte Beradt
Those Who Are About to Die
Harry Sidebottom
The Traitors Circle
Jonathan Freedland
Arctic Passages
Kieran Mulvaney
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
Barbara Demick
The Highest Exam
Ruixue Jia
The Finest Hotel in Kabul
Lyse Doucet
I Deliver Parcels in Beijing
Hu Anyan
In Covid's Wake
Stephen Macedo
The Party's Interests Come First
Joseph Torigian
Righting Wrongs
Kenneth Roth
Russia's Man of War
Cathy Scott-Clark
We the People
Jill Lepore
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows
Steven Pinker
Why Nothing Works
Marc J. Dunkelman
Caribe
Keshia Sakarah
Chesnok
Polina Chesnakova
The Complete Illustrated Guide to Japanese Cooking
Sachiyo Harada
FUSAO
Ixta Belfrage
Italopunk
Vanja van der Leeden
Something from Nothing
Alison Roman

The Wall Street Journal — The Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2025

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In Covid's Wake
Stephen Macedo
King of Kings
Scott Anderson
Raising Hare
Chloe Dalton
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
Leo Damrosch
The Undiscovered Country
Paul Andrew Hutton
Valley of Forgetting
Jennie Erin Smith

The Guardian — The Best Books of 2025

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Book of Lives
Margaret Atwood
How to End a Story
Helen Garner
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy
Fly, Wild Swans
Jung Chang
Matriarch
Tina Knowles
We Did OK, Kid
Anthony Hopkins
Vagabond
Tim Curry
A Mind of My Own
Kathy Burke
Bread of Angels
Patti Smith
Truly
Lionel Richie
The Uncool
Cameron Crowe
Frankly
Nicola Sturgeon
A Different Kind of Power
Jacinda Ardern
Death of an Ordinary Man
Sarah Perry
I Deliver Parcels in Beijing
Hu Anyan
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
A Truce That Is Not Peace
Miriam Toews
Lifeblood
Mina Holland
Mark Twain
Ron Chernow
Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found
Andrew Graham-Dixon
Electric Spark
Frances Wilson
Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife
Francesca Wade
Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life
Gerri Kimber
Josephine Baker's Secret War
Hanna Diamond
The Acid Queen
Susannah Cahalan
Erik Satie Three Piece Suite
Ian Penman
The Revolutionists
Jason Burke
The Alienation Effect
Owen Hatherley
The Finest Hotel in Kabul
Lyse Doucet
Homeland
Richard Beck
A Historian in Gaza
Jean-Pierre Filiu
What Is Free Speech?
Fara Dabhoiwala
Friends in Youth
Minoo Dinshaw
Minority Rule
Ash Sarkar
Wages for Housework
Emily Callaci
Motherland
Julia Ioffe
Those Passions
T.J. Clark
Original Sin
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
Ungovernable
Simon Hart
Get In
Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares
Vanished
Sadiah Qureshi
Is a River Alive?
Robert Macfarlane
Ends of the Earth
Neil Shubin
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad
Simon Parkin
Super Agers
Eric Topol
The Age of Diagnosis
Suzanne O'Sullivan
Our Brains, Our Selves
Masud Husain
Proto
Laura Spinney
Crick
Matthew Cobb
Destroyer of Worlds
Frank Close

McKinsey & Company — McKinsey Annual Book Recommendations 2025

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The AI Con
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
Building a God
Christopher DiCarlo
Genesis
Henry A. Kissinger, Craig Mundie, and Eric Schmidt
A Kids Book About AI Bias
Jennifer Epps
The Optimist
Keach Hagey
The Circuit
Francisco Jimenez
The Devil at His Elbow
Greg Bauerlein
G-Man
Beverly Gage
How to Say Babylon
Safiya Sinclair
The Mango Tree
Annabelle Tometich
Mark Twain
Ron Chernow
Matriarch
Tina Knowles
Patriot
Alexei Navalny
Red Scare
Clay Risen
The Rigor of Angels
William Egginton
The Sing Sing Files
Dan Slepian
This American Woman
Zainab Salbi
Titan
Ron Chernow
Range
David Epstein
There's Nothing Like This: Taylor Swift
Jonathan Evers
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
Book and Dagger
Elyse Graham
Challenger
Adam Higginbotham
The Demon of Unrest
Erik Larson
A Little History of Philosophy
Nigel Warburton
The Memory Palace
Christine DiMeo
A Place Called Yellowstone
Randall K. Wilson
The Power Broker
Robert Caro
Unforgiving Places
Jens Ludwig
101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think
Brianna Wiest
Ordinary Magic
Jamie Walton
Scarcity Brain
Michael Easter
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
The Haves and Have-Yachts
Evan Osnos
In Covid's Wake
Stephen Macedo
The Message
Ta-Nehisi Coates
People, Power, Change
Marshall Ganz
Poverty, by America
Matthew Desmond
Why Nothing Works
Marc J. Dunkelman
Every Living Thing
Jason Roberts
The Light Eaters
Zoe Schlanger

Bloomberg — Bloomberg's Best Books of 2025

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Look Closer
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Ambigrammia
Douglas Hofstadter
Good Things
Samin Nosrat
Wild Cities
Chris Fitch
Francesco. Il primo italiano
Aldo Cazzullo
Poems & Prayers
Matthew McConaughey
Life in Three Dimensions
Shigehiro Oishi
Super Agers
Eric Topol
100 Hotels of a Lifetime
Annie Fitzsimmons
Iron Hope
James Lawrence
Strangers in the Land
Michael Luo
Hostage
Eli Sharabi
Truth and Truthfulness
Bernard Williams
The Golden Rule
Lucy Pollock
The Art of Uncertainty
David Spiegelhalter
Everything Is Not Enough
Lola Akinmade Akerstrom
Unforgiving Places
Jens Ludwig
Stop Letting Everything Affect You
Daniel Chidiac
Range
David Epstein
After the North Pole
Erling Kagge
The Message
Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Mission
Tim Weiner
The Gunfighters
Bryan Burrough
Mark Twain
Ron Chernow
All That Glitters
Orlando Whitfield
Fall of Civilizations
Paul Cooper
The Gods of New York
Jonathan Mahler
Question 7
Richard Flanagan
Things Become Other Things
Craig Mod
Don't Build, Rebuild
Aaron Betsky
The Fate of the Day
Rick Atkinson
Lawless Republic
Josiah Osgood
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows
Steven Pinker
Can We Be Great Again?
Jeremy Hunt
Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari
What Is Intelligence?
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
The Next Day
Melinda French Gates
A Brief History of Intelligence
Max Bennett
The Future of Truth
Werner Herzog
How to Stand up to a Dictator
Maria Ressa
The First King of England
David Woodman
A Different Kind of Power
Jacinda Ardern
The Let Them Theory
Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins
The Good Sport
Kevin White
Henry V
Dan Jones

J.P. Morgan — J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List 2025

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Life in Three Dimensions
Shigehiro Oishi
The Next Day
Melinda French Gates
Iron Hope
James Lawrence
The Tell: A Memoir
Amy Griffin
Raising AI
De Kai
MirrorMirror
Michael Petry
The Fricks Collect
Ian Wardropper
Mars: Photographs from the NASA Archives
Nikki Giovanni
Living with Flowers
Aerin Lauder
The Values Compass
Mandeep Rai

Bill Gates (Gates Notes) — Bill Gates: Five Books to Read This Winter (2025)

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Clearing the Air
Hannah Ritchie
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows
Steven Pinker