The Best Nonfiction Books of 2024

A remarkable volume—its 500-page length itself underscoring the author’s commitment to the complexity of the problem—Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tracks the history of the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border through the intimate accounts of those who’ve lived it. In painstaking detail, Blitzer compiles the history of the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, and illustrates how foreign and immigration policies have irrevocably altered human lives—as well as tying them to one another. “Immigrants have a way of changing two places at once: their new homes and their old ones,” Blitzer writes. “Rather than cleaving apart the worlds of the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the Americans were irrevocably binding them together.”

Over seven years, anthropology professor Jason De León embedded with a group of human smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border, and it is their unfiltered and up-close stories he offers in his gut-wrenching work of nonfiction, Soldiers and Kings. Above all, De León emphasizes how this extralegal industry is driven by the most basic and essential of human needs, pushed to the brink by the forces of capitalism, poverty, climate change, and injustice. “Humans will forever seek places where they and their loved ones can thrive and feel safe,” De León writes. “This means that wherever there are border walls separating the haves and the have-nots, you will always find desperate people and enterprising smugglers working their way over, under, and through those barricades at all costs.” This National Book Award winner is a bold and commendable feat of ethnography.

Combining cultural criticism with memoir, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s Magical/Realism is that precious sort of essay collection—one that casts a wide lens over a vast subject matter (in this case, “Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders”) but draws insights that feel singular and provocative. Examining colonialism’s impact on imagination, untangling the threads between “fantasy” and “magical realism,” and relaying the impact of fantasy on her own healing, Villareal makes ample use of pop culture: Fans of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, Kurt Cobain, and video games will be delighted (and challenged) by her brilliant analysis.

I know the term “lyrical” is pulled out far too often to describe memoirs like Carvell Wallace’s Another Word for Love, but in this case, it’s the right adjective. Wallace has crafted this book with the rhythm and grace of a songwriter. In 35 essays, he collectively traces the arc of his life from youth to parenthood in three sections, “Loss,” “God,” and “Reunion,” through which he reveals the intersections of the intimate with the societal: his coming-of-age as a young Black American; his experiences with substance abuse, police violence, and divorce; his evolving understanding of masculinity and queerness; his pursuits of beauty and divinity; and his steadfast love for his mother and his children. Another Word for Love is a gem of a memoir.

ELLE senior digital designer Leah Romero raved about The Light Eaters to me multiple times this year, so I asked if she’d contribute a recommendation to this list. “After reading this book, I’ve come to care for my plants in different manner,” she says. “I used to admire them for their beauty, but now I see them as resilient and ingenious products of millions of years of evolution. The Light Eaters explores the complexities of plant biology and their so-called ‘intelligence,’ questioning what intelligence truly means and whether it’s unique to humans. The book is filled with interesting facts—some so seemingly fantastical they left me in awe, blurring the line between science and magic.”

Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest, There’s Always This Year, is about the author’s lifelong relationship with basketball; about his affection for Columbus, Ohio; about Lebron James; about music; about miracles. Abdurraqib, already a celebrated cultural critic with a talent for enthralling language, uses the game of basketball as the foundation for his insights about life itself. Sports fans will relish this book, no doubt, but it deserves to be read even by those who have never (and might never) pick up a ball. A triumph.

In our age of increasingly fractured realities, conspiracy is no idle threat. Reporter Jesselyn Cook treats that threat with precision and care as she follows the stories of five American families, each of them warped as falsehoods, delusions, and bad actors take root in their lives. Cook illuminates the very real harm perpetuated by conspiracy movements such as QAnon, but she does so while retaining an extraordinary empathy for those who fall under their sway.

In 2019, former ELLE digital director Jessica Roy published a story about the Sally sisters, two American women who grew up in the same Jehovah’s Witness family and married a pair of brothers—but only one of those sisters ended up in Syria, her husband fighting on behalf of ISIS. American Girls, Roy’s nonfiction debut, expands upon that story of sibling love, sibling rivalry, abuse and extremism, adding reams of reporting to create a riveting tale that treats its subjects with true care while never flinching from the reality of their choices.

A meticulous work of research and commitment, Antonia Hylton’s Madness takes readers deep inside the nearly century-old history of Maryland’s Crownsville State Hospital, one of the only segregated mental asylums with records—and a campus—that remain to this day. Featuring interviews with both former Crownsville staff and family members of those who lived there, Madness is a radically complex work of historical study, etching the intersections of race, mental health, criminal justice, public health, memory, and the essential quest for human dignity.

There’s no end to the arguments for “why art matters,” but in our era of ephemeral imagery and mass-produced decor, there is enormous wisdom to be gleaned from Get the Picture, Bianca Bosker’s insider account of art-world infatuation. In this new work of nonfiction, readers have the pleasure of following the Cork Dork author as she embeds herself amongst the gallerists, collectors, painters, critics, and performers who fill today’s contemporary scene. There, they teach her (and us) what makes art art—and why that question’s worth asking in an increasingly fractured world.

Many remember the Challenger disaster; others know of its significance only through pop culture references. But Adam Higginbotham makes the tragedy feel dramatically near as he recounts the events leading up to—and the exact details behind—the space-shuttle explosion that took place on January 28, 1986, when Challenger broke apart a mere 73 seconds into its journey. Rightly treating the explosion as a watershed moment for 20th-century America, Higgenbottom writes of complex physics, equipment failures, and NASA bureaucracy in a manner that makes those subjects seem not only fascinating but urgent—particularly as our appetite for the Final Frontier is no less satiated nearly four decades on.

Yes, Praisesong might be one of only two cookbooks on this long list of histories, investigations, memoirs, and essay collections, but it deserves a slot thanks to the creativity of its curation. Combining stories passed down through her ancestors with forty recipes from Black Appalachia, Crystal Wilkinson has traced the web of food and family with reverence and wonder. As poetic as would be expected from the former poet laureate of Kentucky, Praisesong is a wonder of a cookbook-memoir hybrid.

In her ELLE interview with the comedian and podcaster Youngmi Mayer, freelance writer Delia Cai described Mayer’s memoir as “a book-length answer to the most cursed of questions: Where are you from?” She continues, “The book is [Mayer’s] life story, flushed out in painful detail, with frank diversions about abuse, drug use, suicidal ideation, and the effects of generations-deep trauma paired with brutal observations about status and power.” I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, both the title and the book itself, speak to the uncanny ways in which humor and heartbreak can (and must) co-exist.

With its chapters organized by their position in the infamous five stages of grief, Sloane Crosley’s Grief is For People is at times bracingly funny, then abruptly sober. The effect is less like whiplash than recognition; anyone who has lost or grieved understands the way these emotions crash into each other without warning. Crosley makes excellent use of this reality in Grief is For People, as she weaves between two wrenching losses in her own life: the death of her dear friend Russell Perreault, and the robbery of her apartment. Crosley’s resulting story—short but powerful—is as difficult and precious and singular as grief itself.

“I used to say taking a trip was just a coping mechanism,” writes Shayla Lawson in their travel-memoir-in-essays How to Live Free in a Dangerous World. “I know better now; it’s my way of mapping the Earth, so I know there’s something to come back to.” In stream-of-consciousness prose, the This Is Major author guides the reader through an enthralling journey across Zimbabwe, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Bermuda, and beyond, using each location as the touchstone for their essays exploring how (and why) race, gender, grief, sexuality, beauty, and autonomy impact their experience of a land and its people. There’s a real courage and generosity to Lawson’s work; readers will find much here to embolden their own self-exploration.

In this small but gutting work of memoir-meets-biography, Colombian journalist Paula Delgado-King chronicles two lives that intersect in violence: hers, and that of Leonor, a Colombian child solider who was beckoned into the guerilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) only to endure years of death and abuse. Over the course of 19 years, Delgago-King followed Leonor through her recruitment into FARC; her sexual slavery to a man decades her senior; her eventual escape; and her rehabilitation. The author’s resulting account is visceral, a clear-eyed account of the utterly human impact wrought by war.

In her ELLE interview with Ketanji Brown Jackson, Jacqueline Woodson described Jackson’s mind as “at once well-read and enchantingly creative, while at the same time steadfast and sure in its practicality.” Jackson’s memoir, Lovely One, demonstrates these traits on every page, guiding readers through the justice’s childhood in Washington, D.C., to her history-making appointment as the first Black female Supreme Court justice.

There’s a lot to ponder in the latest project from New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, who elegantly argues that algorithms have eroded—if not erased—the essential development of personal taste. As Chayka puts forth in Filterworld, the age of flawed-but-fulfilling human cultural curation has given way to the sanitization of Spotify’s so-called “Discover” playlists, or of Netflix’s Emily in Paris, or of subway tile and shiplap. There’s perhaps an old-school sanctimony to this criticism that some readers might chafe against. But there’s also a very real and alarming truth to Chayka’s insights, assembled alongside interviews and examples that span decades, mediums, and genres under the giant umbrella we call “culture.” Filterworld is the kind of book worth wrestling with, critiquing, and absorbing deeply—the antithesis of mindless consumption.

“Even now, I can taste my own history,” writes Chantha Nguon in her gorgeous Slow Noodles. “One occupying force tried to erase it all.” In this deeply personal memoir, Nguon guides us through her life as a Cambodian refugee from the Khmer Rouge; her escapes to Vietnam and Thailand; the loss of all those she loved and held dear; and the foods that kept her heritage—and her story—ultimately intact. Interwoven with recipes and lists of ingredients, Nguon’s heart-rending writing reinforces the joy and agony of her core thesis: “The past never goes away.”

The first time I stumbled upon a Leslie Jamison essay on (the platform formerly known as) Twitter, I was transfixed; I stayed in bed late into the morning as I clicked through her work, swallowing paragraphs like Skittles. But, of course, Jamison’s work is so much more satisfying than candy, and her new memoir, Splinters, is Jamison operating at the height of her talents. A tale of Jamison’s early motherhood and the end of her marriage, the book is unshrinking, nuanced, radiant, and so wondrously honest—a referendum on the splintered identities that complicate and comprise the artist, the wife, the mother, the woman.