I should probably stop repeating that it has again been an exceptional year of non-fiction for me, as I do not see this changing any time soon. There is so much great non-fiction around and I am always drawn to reading it; I very rarely struggle with this genre. If there is one thing I would like to do more, it’s to read more older texts and classics. I have read so many introductions and overviews that I really should be tackling the original sources rather than reading another summary.

I read 50+ non-fiction books last year. Very few of them were bad or even meh, but I’ve tried to narrow things down for you. I already talked about The Golden Road, On Freedom and These Truths when I covered my absolute favourites of 2024. Here, in no particular order, are the rest:

The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy. Starting out with history, if you want to understand the Russian attack on Ukraine, there is no better way than reading Plokhy. What makes his viewpoint so valuable is that he’s not only an expert on Ukraine but also on Russia, and the way he shows how and why the history of the two countries has led to this horrific outcome is outstanding. By necessity, the overview of the ongoing war is incomplete and the analysis less deep. Still, I learned a lot, even though I have followed the events carefully since the annexation of Crimea. The book covers a bit of the same ground as Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe, an excellent one-volume history of Ukraine (and another ‘best of the year’ laureate). But the overlap is not particularly large, so I would strongly recommend reading both.

War by Bob Woodward. Woodward’s look at how President Biden and the American administration handled the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is an excellent complement to the second half of Plokhy’s book. I have no idea how Bob gets access to all his sources and, more importantly, gets them to talk, but holy shit talk they do. If you are interested in what actually goes on in the rooms where it happens, this is the book for you. In fact, it reads less like a book and more like a long piece of reportage, without a clear narrative arch. This didn’t bother me, though, and it is a good one to listen to, if you do audiobooks.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Talking about Gaza, Ta-Nehisi Coates puts Palestine center stage in The Message, where he reassesses his own prejudices and misconceptions about the region. It is not a perfect book and, in my view, not as good as his Between the World and Me, but it’s an important work nevertheless. I enjoy Coates’ writing and I admire the way he interrogates his own thinking, be it about Israel, about his relationship with Africa or with his own books. There are three essays in The Message, all of them interesting, but it is the last one about Palestine that will likely make or break the book for you.

Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum. I am a massive Anne Applebaum fan girl, and this book did nothing to change my mind. Applebaum makes a convincing case explaining how the autocrats of this world are ganging up to keep each other in power and undermine democracy everywhere. It is not a particularly thorough examination, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be, the point is clear enough. It also makes it an excellent point of entry into Applebaum’s work, as it’s not a very demanding work. I personally like her Twilight of Democracy better, but one has to keep in mind that it’s one of my absolute favourite non-fiction books of recent years.

All the Worst Humans by Phil Elwood. If you are wondering how all these autocrats stay in power, Phil Elwood will offer you one piece of the puzzle. Elwood is/was a PR operative based in Washington who has worked, among others, for Gaddafi, Assad and the government of Qatar. Remember that beautiful piece in Vogue about Asma al-Assad? Landing that piece is far from being the worst thing covered in this book: by the time Elwood is babysitting Gaddafi’s son in Las Vegas, it’s become completely unhinged. As a communication professional myself, I feel obliged to tell you that most of what is described in this book has nothing to do with normal PR work. And Elwood is glossing over many a nuance for the sake of the story. But I have no doubt that the things he describes do happen, which is horrifying, but makes for a very entertaining book. (This is another great one for audio, which is the way I did it, too.)

Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara. I promise this is the last one on this list with a really heavy theme. Kara gives a thorough account of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and as you can probably guess, it is not a cheerful picture. The conditions are awful, people are dying, the government does nothing, the companies don’t care, and we all are, of course, fuelling the demand for cobalt with our consumption and policies. This is probably why this is the hardest read on this list – I feel no guilt about Putin’s war on Ukraine, but I cannot distance myself the same way from the problems of the Congo. The writing here is good but not great, and the book could have been a bit shorter, but it’s still an extremely relevant and urgent read.

Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. Turning to lighter stuff, Harari’s latest focuses on information, power and AI. The first half is mostly about the development of different communication technologies throughout history and the second about the opportunities and dangers of the AI. I get it if you don’t find that particularly breezy, but for me Harari always provides intellectual entertainment. He is accessible, a great storyteller and a rebellious thinker. These are, of course, also his main problems. He simplifies too much, leaves out what doesn’t fit his narrative and loves to be contrarian even when there is no good reason. These issues are also present in Nexus, but I enjoyed it nevertheless (it is definitely superior to his 21 Lessons for the 21th Century and in my view also to Homo Deus, which was a revelatory book only for those who don’t read Science Fiction). As long as you don’t take his every word as gospel, you will likely emerge with some fresh ideas and a renewed interest in whatever topic he was covering. And incidentally, he makes some really interesting points about the Bible.

How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn. A 600-page book about ancient history is perhaps not everyone’s idea of a lighter topic, but it is mine. At least when written by Quinn, whom I discovered thanks to her previous book, In Search of the Phoenicians (Phoenicians being one of my obsessions when it comes to ancient history). In How the World Made the West, Quinn challenges the narrative that the roots of Western civilisation are pretty exclusively in Greece and Rome. She does it in an engaging and refreshing way: there is one point where she talks about the old European gods (the Roman ones) being replaced by an Asian one (Jesus), which is exactly the type of thing I love in my history books. She does get a bit muddled when she tries to simultaneously say that a) the Western civilisation has always been heavily influenced by the rest of the world and b) the Western civilisation as such doesn’t exist. Quinn makes some very good points along the way, but both cannot be true at the same time.

Alien Earths by Lisa Kaltenegger. This is even lighter, honest! Every year, I tend to read a few books about the cosmos and/or astrophysics. 2024 was more of a cosmos year: I really liked Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle and Under Alien Skies by Phil Plait was also good. But Alien Earths was my favourite of the genre – an accessible, fun book about the possibility and parameters of life in the universe. If I am completely honest, I have read so many books on the topic by now that I can no longer remember what I learned from this book and what I learned elsewhere, but I distinctly recall the reading experience being very enjoyable. Any women who builds a lab for creating lava worlds is my kind of woman.

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger. This is another fun one. Schlanger is a science journalist who became obsessed with plants, which is great news for us, as it means this book is really well written and fuelled by the author’s enthusiasm. I really, really loved the tone of the book, both on paper and as I listened to it. This is especially relevant as Schlanger tackles the thorny issue of plant ‘intelligence’, where the line between proper science and crazy theories can be extremely thin (and crazy theories have, in some cases, turned out to be true). In my opinion, she manages this balancing act well, but your mileage my vary. Regardless of where you fall on the intelligence debate, it’s a fascinating read. If you liked Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, there is a very good chance you’d like this.

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing. Laing’s latest is, in many ways, also about plants, but it is an intellectual rather than scientific take. On the surface, this is about Laing buying a house and restoring its historical garden, but as this is a Laing book, it’s of course not all it is about. She writes about the concept of the garden, its history and different facets, both good and bad. From Paradise Lost to the slavery-funded great estates of England to what it means to have a garden as we face climate change, it’s all fascinating. There were some parts that spoke to me more than others, but overall, it’s my favourite Laing after The Lonely City.

Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden. If Laing structures her book around her garden, for Eden the fulcrum is her kitchen. I have been a fan since her first book, Samarkand, and she has always been someone to mix food writing with other themes, travel in particular. Samarkand was the closest to a traditional cookbook, with Black Sea and Red Sands somewhere in the middle and Cold Kitchen the least concerned with recipes, although they are there. I do enjoy books that mix genres and Eden does it effortlessly in Cold Kitchen, the essays combining places, moods, memories and food. She loves countries that do not get much attention in Western media or publishing – Central Asia, the Baltics, the Caucasus. Even when she travels to somewhere more popular, like Istanbul, her take has little to do with the Istanbul that tourists know. It is not easy to recommend books that defy genre, but if your tastes align with mine, I strongly recommend picking it up: if you like both Peter Frankopan and Diana Henry, you are pretty much guaranteed to enjoy this. Also, there is a dog.

From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keogh. This is by far the least likely book on this list. I am not an Elvis fan and I do not care for celebrity memoirs. I picked this up only because I saw Riley Keogh talking about books in Instagram. I was impressed with her choices and her eloquence and bought the book. And was impressed all over again. This was originally meant to be Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir, which Riley Keogh decided to finish after her mother’s death. It is a relatively short book that I’m sure leaves out many things that might be of interest. But the way it talks about the experience of growing up in vastly abnormal circumstances – which was true of both authors – is special and precious. How Riley has managed to emerge from all this as such a seemingly balanced person is beyond me. I strongly recommend listening to this one, in addition to Keogh and Presley you’ll also get Julia Roberts.

American Nations by Colin Woodard. We started with the toughest history book on this list, so let’s finish with the most diverting. Not that the history of the US is all fun and games, but the angle Woodard takes here is fun and deeply fascinating, if your brain is built like mine. His main thesis is that the United States have never been particularly united, as the states have been built on entirely different foundations in terms of ethnicity, values, religion, ideology and historical experience. He distinguishes 11 nations from Yankeedom to Deep South, from Tidewater to El Norte. While the author does overstate his case somewhat (especially towards the end), the book is still illuminating and helpful in understanding the divisions we see in the US right now. I enjoyed it so much.

I realise that it’s a very long list, but it is what it is. For the record, I also wanted to mention that I read (among other things) Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen, Knife by Salman Rushdie, I Heard her Call My Name by Lucy Sante, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy, The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell, Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond and The Creative Act by Rick Rubin – all of which I have seen on different ‘best of the year’ lists, but were mostly three-star reads for me.

It’s not like my non-fiction TBR needs any additions, but I am still curious about your favourites from last year (or in general). As always, feel free to share in the comments.