If you're looking to learn something new in the new year, we have the book list for you! Below you'll find some of our favorite eye-opening nonfiction of 2025 — books that dive deep into their subject matter, whether that's big tech, true crime or the very ground beneath our feet.
For the past 13 years, we've been collecting our favorite reads in our annual Books We Love guide. Click here for hundreds more eye-opening recommendations.
A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, by Haley Cohen Gilliland
Journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland offers an extraordinary investigation into how Argentine grandmothers banded together to find their disappeared children and grandchildren. Rendered in meticulous detail via deep archival research and reporting, A Flower Traveled in My Blood traces how, during the Dirty War in Argentina, a military junta systematically disappeared about 30,000 supposed "subversives," including more than 300 pregnant women whose newborns were then fraudulently adopted. Through the story of one woman's decades-long participation in the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo movement, searching for the truth about what happened to her daughter and grandchild, Gilliland weaves in a profound meditation on questions of generational bonds, identity and what makes a family. — Kristen Martin, book critic and author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, by Imani Perry
As we've become accustomed to scrolling through pictures mindlessly, it's easy to forget that there can be deep meaning in what we see, stories in a single color. Imani Perry dives deep to explore what the color blue has represented for generations of Black people across continents. It's a color that represents hope. A color that became a sound. It's the history in the hue of indigo dye, so valued that indigo cloth was a major currency of the slave trade. It's a color that, like Black culture itself, contains multitudes and Perry's meditation renders it in profound clarity. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams
Sarah Wynn-Williams was a young, idealistic policy wonk and diplomat who saw the potential of Facebook to influence geopolitics for good and wanted to be a part of it. Making a persistent, passionate case for the influence that the social media site could have, she got in the door, where she helped rearrange the seating charts to position the company's leaders alongside global heads of state. What starts as a kind of dishy peek inside a tech startup growing into a Goliath morphs into an exposé of the people in charge failing to understand their power. Meta disputes the book's allegations and argues the author violated a nondisparagement clause in her severance agreement. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, by Sophie Gilbert
Girls navigating the path to womanhood in the early aughts faced an onslaught of media telling them who and how to be. Contradictory depictions of young women were everywhere across pop culture: purity culture clashed with Girls Gone Wild, reality TV made beauty and love commodities, models went from "super" women to teenage waifs. Sophie Gilbert explores the influence pornography had on culture at the time, providing vital insight into messages for young girls that were often objectifying even if they were sold as empowering. For anyone who enjoys You're Wrong About or craving connective tissue to Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane gives the river a voice in this extraordinary work of nature writing. In pursuit of an answer to the titular question, he explores the lives of three very different rivers, explicating their perils and potential triumphs. What is epic in scope, Macfarlane makes feel intimate and urgent. His thorough knowledge of the subject matter is rivaled only by his mastery of language. These pages are full of passion; of clarity and poetry, fascinating and absolutely gorgeous. I think Macfarlane is one of the best writers working today. Don't miss this one. If you are interested in life, it's for you. — Jessica P. Wick, book critic and writer
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly
Both listeners and musicians are trapped in an abusive relationship with Spotify, the streaming service that has reshaped the modern music landscape. It has dramatically skewed the way we listen, making the experience more passive and the act of creating less tenable. Mood Machine masterfully interrogates this new paradigm. Part origin story, part investigation and part call to action, it creates a panoramic view of a flawed Spotify infrastructure that's rapidly devaluing musical labor and engagement. Written by a fierce advocate for artists' rights and one of the streaming economy's most dogged critics, this rousing industry probe has the tenacity to challenge algorithmic hegemony and the conviction to imagine a more sustainable future. — Sheldon Pearce, editor, NPR Music
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser
Until I read this book, I never really thought about why there seemed to be a number of prominent serial killers in the 1970s and '80s, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Caroline Fraser, though, has thought a lot about it – and in Murderland she provides a detailed examination of the confluence of smelting, environmental pollution, poor highway design and murder in the region. It's a miasma of psychopathy on the individual level and greed on the corporate one that makes you wonder whether the definition of "serial killer" ought to be expanded. — Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition
The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story, by Pagan Kennedy
Pagan Kennedy's book tells the story of the United States through the frame of The Secret History of the Rape Kit. The "box that holds DNA evidence collected after a sexual assault" was something that had to be invented and then disseminated. The woman who fought for it, Marty Goddard, and her untold story are the heart of this book – one of the best I read this year. As Kennedy told NPR in an interview, Goddard "created the idea that every survivor had the right to file evidence and to be treated with respect and to have that evidence taken seriously." That should not be remarkable, but it was. — Justine Kenin, editor, All Things Considered
Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, by Tiffany Jenkins
Don't let the page count worry you; Tiffany Jenkins is a confident guide through several centuries of social upheaval, tracing developing concepts of personal privacy: freedom from surveillance, autonomy in work, the personhood to participate in public life. (Many specifics feel timeless; early Kodak ads touted "the thrill of capturing the likeness of a person without their knowledge.") The scope of this history is impressive, and at a time when every app wants your location, concerning. A remarkable chronicle of the ways people have fought for our personhood and privacy – and what we stand to lose when those are gone. — Genevieve Valentine, book critic and author of Two Graves
Strata: Stories from Deep Time, by Laura Poppick
It can be fun (or frightening) to imagine humans at the center of everything, but the truth is, we arrived awfully late to the party. Humans have been around for a vanishingly small fraction of the Earth's roughly 4.5 billion-year life so far. Science journalist Laura Poppick's first book offers an accessible introduction to what we know of the vast, obscure past that predates us, one layer of rock at a time, offering an entertaining answer to that eternal question of latecomers the world over: So, what did we miss, guys? — Colin Dwyer, contributor to NPR's weekly Book Ahead
The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us, by John J. Lennon
Over the course of the past decade, alongside the post-Serial boom of true crime, John J. Lennon has emerged as our country's leading prison journalist, writing for outlets like The New Yorker from inside New York state prisons, where he is serving a 28-year-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. In The Tragedy of True Crime, Lennon reflects on his own crime and time spent in prison alongside the intimately reported stories of three other guilty men whom he has served alongside. This revelatory, challenging book asks readers to grapple with how true crime narratives flatten victim and perpetrator alike, and to consider what it might mean to allow admitted violent criminals to be given second chances. — Kristen Martin, book critic and author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, by Laura Delano
Unshrunk issues a provocative challenge to psychiatrists across the U.S.: Maybe pharmaceutical drugs aren't always the antidote. In this memoir, Laura Delano shares how a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in her teen years led to a life in and out of treatment. After more than a decade and 19 prescriptions, Delano made the decision to taper off her medication and find relief outside the mental health system. This is an uncomfortable read but one that will leave you wondering how we might take better care of ourselves and each other. — Lauren González, senior manager, Content Development Team
This is just a fraction of the 380+ titles we included in Books We Love this year. Click here to check out this year's titles, or browse nearly 4,000 books from the last 13 years.
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