10 of The New Yorker's Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2024

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

"'The Light Eaters' is a special piece of science writing for the way it solves the genre’s bind; it doesn’t force people or their findings into narrative engines. Instead, the field of botany itself functions like a character, one undergoing a potentially radical change, with all the excitement, discomfort, and uncertainty that transformation brings. The book’s power comes from showing a field in flux and reminding us that ideas have their own life cycles: from crackpot theory to utter embarrassment to real possibility to the stuff of textbooks."

No Judgment: Essays

"In 'No Judgment,' Lauren Oyler, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, collects a series of spry, wide-ranging essays that take on gossip, Goodreads, autofiction, Berlin, and more."

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

"This consuming family memoir recounts comically foul judgment, striking privilege, and unspeakable tragedy. Dunne grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of the movie producer Dominick Dunne, whose brother and enduring rival, the writer John Gregory Dunne, would marry Joan Didion... Throughout Dunne’s account, which concludes in 1990, with the birth of his daughter, he drops frequent bombshells, details raging family battles, and admits to frequent (if winsome) acts of self-sabotage."

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"In August, 2022, more than thirty years after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the killing of Salman Rushdie, an assassin came running at him. The man stabbed Rushdie as he was addressing an audience in Chautauqua, New York, and kept on doing so for nearly half a minute... Rushdie’s short masterpiece is a memoir about almost dying, the miracle of surviving, and being reconciled to a threat that could not be forgotten or outrun."

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

"In this memoir, two life-altering events—the birth of a daughter and the end of a marriage—are intertwined... Throughout, Jamison dwells on marital competitiveness, working motherhood, and the inheritances of love."

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are

"This chronicle of our planet’s 'silvery sister' begins with the explosive interaction, four and a half billion years ago, that split the moon from the Earth, and eventually encompasses the climatic chaos that is likely to ensue when it ultimately escapes our gravitational pull... Throughout, the author orbits a central idea: that understanding the science and the history of the moon may help to unlock mysteries elsewhere in the universe."

Alphabetical Diaries

"This unconventional text comprises diary-entry excerpts that are arranged according to the alphabetical order of their first letters. The sections derive their meaning not from chronology but from unexpected juxtapositions... Rich with intimacies and disclosures, these fragments show an artist searching for the right way to arrange her life."

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

"Blitzer weaves together a series of deeply personal portraits to trace the history of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s a complicated tale, spanning the lives of multiple generations of migrants and lawmakers, in both Central America and Washington, D.C. Blitzer doesn’t pretend to offer easy policy solutions; instead, he devotedly and eloquently documents the undeniable cause of what has become a regional quagmire: the individual right and unfailing will to survive."

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

"This book—like Silver’s previous one, 'The Signal and the Noise'—is a hefty set of meditations on probabilistic thinking. But this time the author, America’s most famous elections prognosticator, is taking in broader horizons, extending the lessons of poker and modern gambling to arenas like artificial intelligence and ethics."

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

"The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka chronicles the homogenization of digital culture and the quest to cultivate one’s own taste in an increasingly automated online world. "