20 Of The Best Nonfiction Books Of The Decade

Between The World And Me is a letter written by Coates to his 15 year old son Samori. The author shares his own experiences of being black in America with as much honesty as he can muster. He focuses on what it is like to belong in a Black body in America. He addresses racism, police brutality and the racially biased American dream. The book is filled with his fears, frustration and caution for his son. This powerful autobiographical account won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015.

There have been five mass extinctions on Earth over half a million years. We have been going through the sixth extinction, “The Anthropocene,” for quite some time now. Elizabeth Kolbert writes in her book, “Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy. The Sixth Extinction will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust.”

Humans have and are continuing to change the world in ways they don’t always comprehend. This 2015 Pulitzer Prize–winning book tries to help us understand our undeniable, irreversible impact on everything around us.

The author is a Princeton sociologist who follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to meet the very basic need for housing. It talks about poverty and shows how eviction worsens things for people who are already on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. It started a necessary conversation about the housing crisis in America. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2017 for pursuing a pressing issue that often goes unaddressed.

Secondhand Time chronicles the decline and fall of Soviet communism and the rise of oligarchic capitalism. The author uses her distinctive documentary style to give voice to the stories of individuals that get lost in the narratives of powerful states.

It was first published in Russia in 2013 and translated to English in 2016 by Bela Shayevich. Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

In this book, economist Yanis Varoufakis documents his battle with European Union officials over the Greek debt crisis. In 2015, as the finance minister of Greece, he attempted to renegotiate his country’s relationship with the EU. Read all about his fascinating battle in this tale of modern power.

Ijeoma Oluo explores a very wide range of subjects that are impacted by race and racial bias in America. She talks about intersectionality, police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline, microaggressions, and affirmative action. She breaks down for the readers the things that are effected by race and how. She talks about how racism does not come down to individual racist or ignorant people but how institutionalized racism and its biases affect the well being and opportunities of an entire race. This book is extremely insightful and lends clarity to vague concepts. It helps us have more informed conversations about race and brings to light some of the most pressing issues surrounding it.

John Carreyrou takes investigative reporting to its peak in this fascinating inside story of the rise and fall of Theranos. Theranos is a multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes America’s Richest Self-Made Woman. In the same year, Carreyou published an article to question the validity of her apparently game-changing blood-testing technology. The author walks us through Theranos’s giant scam through his persistent and compelling journalism.

In this powerful memoir, Kiese Laymon recounts his experience as a Black boy who struggles with weight. He writes in second person, addressing himself to his mother. He reflects on the racial American state and his experiences with abuse. Owing to Laymon’s honesty, tenderness and bravery, Heavy won the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction in 2019.

The Library Book explores the 1986 fire in the Los Angeles Public Library. By the time the disastrous fire was extinguished, it had consumed about 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. The investigation is woven with Susan Orlean’s love for books and libraries. This nonfiction book helps you appreciate what goes into running a library and how they’re essential to our welfare.

Jenney Odell urges us to live our physical lives in a physical place. She holds the opinion that doing “nothing” and not contributing to capitalistic drive to monetize is an act of political resistance. Doing nothing can create space for the kind of reflection that is essential to sustaining and savouring life. Pick up this book to learn to resist the virtual attention economy and lend it to the real world.

Maria Popova writes in her book, “Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love?”

These are the questions she tries to ponder and answer throughout. She does so by exploring the lives of historical figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, and Rachel Carson. Picking up this book will lead to fascination, contemplation and comfort.

Alice Wong is a disability rights activist who has compiled the stories and essays of disabled people belonging to diverse communities. Disability Visibility does what the title claims to do. It brings out the complexity, hardship and hope surrounding disability in a fierce, insightful, and heartfelt way.

Laurence C. Smith is the Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. In this nonfiction book, he talks about how fundamentally and drastically rivers have shaped human civilization. Rivers have effected everything from the very shape of the world to agriculture, transport and wars. Check out this fascinating read to understand why rivers are indispensable for our wellbeing.

Unwell Women is a deeply stirring book about women’s illnesses. Elinor Cleghorn addresses her autoimmune disease, which was misdiagnosed and untreated for over ten years. She talks about the ignorance and carelessness that surrounds women’s health and how this adversely effects marginalized women. With a few case studies, she brings to light the horrifying history of medical experimentation on enslaved women and sex workers. This book is personal and impactful and brings to light the compelling need to do right by all the unwell women.