Best Nonfiction of 2024

~ Personal Selections ~

Let me say that, in terms of category, I’m using “nonfiction” here loosely. What I mean is not poetry and not fiction. I’ll be direct and say that I am reluctant to even consider making a list of favorite poetry collections I read during a calendar year for fear that it would be seen as playing favorites or else be somehow misleading about the sort of poetry I’m interested in platforming for ONE ART. We can talk about it.

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Recommendations:

Rick Rubin – The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Shahnaz Habib – Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

Kyle Chayka – Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson – What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

Corey Keyes – Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down

Jamil Zaki – Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness

Kyle Chayka – The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism

Junichiro Tanizaki – In Praise of Shadows

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Sadly, I’m sure I’m forgetting a few nonfiction reads that I loved in 2024. They are probably mentioned in past Substack posts in my Sunday Newsletters (“SC Weekly” as of 2025).

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I have a habit of slow-playing, partially re-reading, and drawing out how long I stay in a nonfiction book that I’m really enjoying. Given this, there are a number of books that I’ve been in the process of reading over several years. There are a handful of books that I started reading in 2024 (or earlier) and I’m still extremely enthusiastic about and going through slowly including, Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus. I’ve listened to so many interviews with Harari that I know a good deal of what he and his texts are about. This has, seemingly, become part of my process.

Another example is Rick Rubin’s text The Creative Act which, I’m not joking at all, may be the best craft book I’ve ever read. I’ve been slipping in and out of this text and hope to one day teach a workshop based on it. In this workshop, we’d go short chapter by short chapter, and discuss the merits (or bizarreness) of what Rubin shares and then discuss how we might apply the information and techniques to our own artistic path.

Fun fact. When I started reading The Creative Act, I briefly forgot who Rick Rubin was. After reading the first two or three sections of the book, I looked up a photo of him and this temporarily confirmed my suspicion that he was (or intended to be) some kind of cult leader. The text reads a little in this vein, at times, but at the end of the day it’s not a book trying to sell you a cure-all or vague “secret” or expensive tickets to an upcoming seminar. It’s a thoughtful text, paced extremely well, and crafted just enough while remaining down to earth. When I remembered who Rick Rubin is, the text took on another interesting layer. Aside from stories I’ve read, mostly what I know about this eccentric music producer are a couple cameos on Bourdain’s travel shows and David Letterman’s My Next Guess Needs No Introduction. Frankly, I think it’s good going into this text with limited knowledge about Rubin’s life and work.

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Mixed Feelings:

Dan Ariely – Misbelief

Yascha Mounk – The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

Jonathan Haidt – The Anxious Generation

Gabor Maté – The Myth of Normal

Alexander Ward – The Internationalists

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New-ish Recommendations:

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

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On My Reading List

~ Note: some I’ve already spent time with. ~

Last Updated: 3.19.25

Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer

Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods by Mariana Alessandri

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection… by Nicholas Carr

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

The New Masculinity by Alex Manley

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackson

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine

How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz

The Purpose Code by Jordan Grumet

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

Mortal Republic by Edward J. Watts

Liberalism against Itself by Samuel Moyn

Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power… by Emma Seppälä

Elite Capture by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Democracy for Realists by Christopher H. Achen

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Mysticism by Simon Critchley

The Amen Effect by Sharon Brous

The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present by Byung-Chul Han

The Open Work by Umberto Eco

Democracy in Retrograde by Sami Sage & Emily Amick

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester

Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno

Infinite Resignation by Eugene Thacker

The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

A History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Playing with Reality by Kelly Clancy

Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change by Tad DeLay

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction by Brian Dillon

The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice by Tony Hoagland

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff

The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro

Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir by Alice Carrière

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

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Note: If you’ve read any of these and specifically don’t think they’re worth reading, please share.

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What were your favorite 2024 reads?

What are you in the process of reading?

What’s next on your reading list?