The best nonfiction books of the year tackle undeniably difficult topics. Many are personal stories about surviving the unthinkable. Salman Rushdie describes the violent attack that nearly killed him. Zara Chowdhary captures the fear of living amid sectarian violence in India. And Alexandra Fuller reflects on the sudden passing of her 21-year-old son. Through the honesty of these authors and more, heartbreak and loss are broken down to their essential, universal parts. In sharing these histories, they remind us that there is no grief without love.
Here, the top 10 nonfiction books of 2024.
10. The Friday Afternoon Club, Griffin Dunne
In his memoir, actor and producer Griffin Dunne offers an inside look at his privileged life in a world where he was friends with Carrie Fisher, worked with Martin Scorsese, and hung out with his aunt Joan Didion. But for all the glamour that fills The Friday Afternoon Club, there’s a tragedy that anchors it: in 1982, the author’s sister Dominique was strangled. Dunne unspools a compassionate portrait of his fractured family.
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9. Grief is for People, Sloane Crosley
In 2019, twin crises hit Sloane Crosley back-to-back. First, her apartment was burglarized, and many of her prized possessions stolen. Then, just a month later, her mentor and close friend died by suicide. These losses lie at the center of Grief Is for People, the author’s unsparing memoir that dissects this period and its aftermath. As the title suggests, the book is most concerned with grief and how it manifests as Crosley attempts to make sense of enormous new holes in her life. On her path to understanding, a windy road that she captures in detail, she looks to philosophy and art to provide her with a language to explore it all.
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8. There’s Always This Year, Hanif Abdurraqib
Structured like quarters in a basketball game, Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year centers on his love for the sport and what it means to go home after achieving success. He describes growing up in 1990s Columbus, just as fellow Ohioan LeBron James was coming up. In lyrical prose, he circles in on James’ performance on the court, questioning why some Black men are deemed exceptional, and what happens to those who aren’t. There’s Always This Year shows off Abdurraqib’s skills as a critic as he narrows in on a specific subject to illuminate its broader connections to American culture. In this case, he offers a book about basketball that is also one about grief, family, and hope.
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7. Knife, Salman Rushdie
When Salman Rushdie was attacked onstage in Chautauqua, N.Y., in 2022 by a man with a knife, he felt the inevitability of a moment he had long feared, thanks to a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini over his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. With great honesty and in gripping detail, Rushdie recounts that terrifying day and his journey to recovery. His near-death experience gives him a renewed sense of clarity, coalescing into a stunning memoir full of observations on art, love, and freedom.
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6. Whiskey Tender, Deborah Jackson Taffa
What does it mean to really belong? It’s the question at the center of Deborah Jackson Taffa’s stirring memoir, which explores the author’s relationship with her mixed-tribe Native identity. She tells stories of survival, from how her grandparents endured Indian boarding schools to her own tumultuous coming of age, living on and off a reservation. Whiskey Tender mines these intimate, personal experiences alongside a thorough analysis of Native history, exploring the often devastating consequences of inherited trauma. In following these threads, Taffa also makes an urgent call for intergenerational storytelling as a means of preserving both Native culture and power.
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5. The Light Eaters, Zoë Schlanger
Journalist Zoë Schlanger reminds us of a common truth that we tend to take for granted: plants are remarkable. Behind each stage of development in their lives is a complex system, one that she describes in awe-inspiring detail. Combining research with her own personal stories, the author illuminates why plants are so vital to our ecosystem and asks pressing questions about the relationship between humans and natural life. The result is a surprising and tender book of science writing that urges us all to reconsider how we think about the greenery that lives both in our homes and outside of them.
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4. The Lucky Ones, Zara Chowdhary
As a teenager in 2002, Zara Chowdhary was living in India when a train fire in Godhra killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims. For the three months that followed, the 16-year-old and her family, along with thousands of other Muslims, lived in fear as sectarian violence broke out and transformed the country. The Lucky Ones recounts this time in all of its atrocities, underlining how the promise of democracy fails to account for those who need it most.
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3. Soldiers and Kings, Jason De León
A riveting work of narrative nonfiction, Jason De León’s book provides a window into the world of smugglers, known as coyotes, who guide Central American migrants across the border to the U.S. For seven years, De León followed smugglers and migrants as they journeyed through Mexico. With an unwavering hand, the author describes their plight and their humanity. The power of Soldiers and Kings, which won a National Book Award, lies in the trust that De León builds and maintains with his subjects as he delicately delves into the many dimensions of their lives.
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2. Fi, Alexandra Fuller
The summer before her 50th birthday, Alexandra Fuller suffered the unimaginable: her 21-year-old son, Fi, died in his sleep. The seemingly random nature of this tragedy—Fi was young and mostly healthy—rocked Fuller to her core. But in her memoir, named after her beloved son, the author reflects on how she moved forward and showed up for her surviving daughters. In lush prose, Fuller takes readers from a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a retreat in Canada as she reckons with living in a world that begs more questions about life and death than it ever answers.
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1. The Barn, Wright Thompson
In 1955, two white men were charged with the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Black boy in Mississippi. Nearly seven decades later, there’s still so much that’s unknown about the horrific act of violence that has been taught in history books from a limited point of view. In his revelatory book, Wright Thompson digs through the details of a whitewashed history, homing in on the barn where the murder took place. A layered and deeply reported history,The Barn combines Thompson’s years of research with his own personal connection to the American South to unpack the far-reaching implications of Till’s lynching and the systems that covered it up.
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