Best Nonfiction of 2023

15 books

Our favorite reads brought history vividly to life, explored the far reaches of the natural world, enhanced our understanding of social issues and told poignant, memorable life stories.

A Fever in the Heartland

The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Timothy Egan, 2023

I Saw Death Coming

A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

Kidada E. Williams, 2024

Memoir

A Man of Two Faces

A Memoir, A History, A Memorial

Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2023

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide

Tahir Hamut Izgil, 2023

Memoir, True Crime

Gator Country

Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades

Rebecca Renner, 2023

European History, History

Goodbye, Eastern Europe

An Intimate History of a Divided Land

Jacob Mikanowski, 2023

Black History, History

King: A Life

Jonathan Eig, 2023

Social Science

Our Migrant Souls

A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

Héctor Tobar, 2023

Family & Relationships, Memoir

Owner of a Lonely Heart

A Memoir

Beth Nguyen, 2023

Biography, Medicine, Social Science

Rough Sleepers

Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people

Tracy Kidder, 2024

Social Science, True Crime

Still Life with Bones

Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains

Alexa Hagerty, 2023

Family & Relationships, History, Memoir

The Kneeling Man

My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Leta McCollough Seletzky, 2023

Environment, Memoir, Nature

The Quickening

Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

Elizabeth Rush, 2023

Nature, Science

The Underworld

Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

Susan Casey, 2023

History, True Crime

The Wager

David Grann, 2023