Many of the best nonfiction books of the decade touch on people’s lives to speak of universal human experiences: those of grief and recovery, hubris and failure, dreams and disappointments. some, in their intimate specificity, open doors to worlds that few have seen. all employ dazzling prose to draw readers closer to their ideas. And taken together, they reflect a decade of brilliant success in locating unassailable truths: those we’ve been willfully blind to, those we’ve been afraid to face for too long, and those we didn’t know were waiting to be discovered.
These are time’s picks for the top 10 nonfiction books of the 2010s, in order of publication year.
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The Heat of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
In this epic yet intimate story, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of one of the most significant migrations in American history: when millions of African-Americans left the South for North America, heading to cities like chicago, los angeles and new york. Focusing on the stories of three people, each on their own difficult journey, Wilkerson delivers a story that reads and feels like a novel, yet speaks to deep and lasting truths about the painful experiences of racism, violence, and the struggle for the success of thousands of migrants against tremendous odds. The Heat of Other Suns is a deeply moving book about hope and vision, and what happens when some people determine they deserve a better life. Wilkerson’s description of the quest to reap America’s full promise resonates with equal force nearly 10 years later.
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the emperor of all diseases: a biography of cancer, siddhartha mukherjee (2010)
It takes real boldness and originality to write a “biography” of a disease as pernicious and difficult to define as cancer. We all know it and hate it, but thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee’s exceptional book, we can begin to understand it too. From the earliest origins of the disease to the forefront of the modern fight against it, Mukherjee traces the long and twisted history of humanity’s war against cancer, while also reminding us that it is a war we can never win, that we will always be intertwined with this disease. A model of meticulous science and elegant writing, Mukherjee’s book is ultimately nothing less than a history of mankind.
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behind the beautiful forever: life, death and hope in a mumbai underground city, katherine boo (2012)
In katherine boo’s book about life in a mumbai slum, the investigative journalist pulls off a kind of magic trick, transforming a giant report into a work that reads like great fiction. boo finally pulls us behind the curtain, revealing how much effort went into creating something that seems to unfold so easily: in total 40 months spent reporting among residents of the annawadi slum, home to 3,000 people living in 335 shacks, hard against the city’s growing airport. her narrative is aided by the discovery of 3,000 public records, as well as interviews with 168 people who describe the book’s catalyzing event: when a woman sets herself on fire. What endures, above all, is the moral weight of Boo’s story. behind the beautiful forevers shows what boo sees, through the eyes of mumbai’s garbage collectors, as the true tragedy of unequal societies: they don’t turn the rich against the poor, they turn the poor against themselves. /p>
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wild: from lost to found on the pacific ridge trail, cheryl strayed (2012)
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In the early 1990s, Cheryl Strayd watched her life fall apart. her mother died of cancer, leaving the family fragmented. she started using heroin. her first marriage ended. As she frames it in her Wild memoir from 2012, she “was 26 and an orphan.” having already endured the pain of a lifetime, one thing she had going for her was her youth. So she took advantage of that advantage and embarked on a solo trek from California to Washington on the Pacific Ridge Trail. Constantly testing her physical and mental limits, her adventure pulled her out of a downward spiral and gave her the strength to become the author and advice guru she has since become. her adventure provided a literal roadmap to transformation for women feeling untethered. The book went from being a best-selling memoir to a self-help phenomenon, as well as a successful movie starring and being produced by Reese Witherspoon. Yet after so much publicity, what remains surprising about the book is the candor and insight embedded in strayed’s hard-hitting prose, which, like her own journey, sublimates loneliness, pain, and regret into something transcendent.
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hello, sonali deraniyagala (2013)
The opening pages of sonali deraniyagala’s memoir read like a true horror novel. and how could they not? The economist, who was living in London at the time, was vacationing with her family off the coast of Sri Lanka when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck in 2004. About a quarter of a million people were killed, with the victims including the deraniyagala’s parents, husband and two young children. deraniyagala managed to survive by hanging from a tree branch. The magnitude of such a tragedy may seem unfathomable, but deraniyagala presents it in such detail that the pain of losing the most important people in her life in an instant is tangible. moving from the immediate aftermath of the trauma to the years that followed, she invites readers to enter her tormented brain. the story is painful, but the power of ola is in its intimate description of how to move on, even if you can never move on.
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between me and the world, ta-nehisi coates (2015)
“in the united states, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage,” writes ta-nehisi coates in between the world and me, which takes the form of letter to his son. Throughout the book, Coates illustrates how black bodies have been discarded and destroyed at every moment in American history, from centuries of slavery to the lynchings of Jim Crow and the police murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Coates’ writing is also intensely personal, meditating on the fear instilled in him during his bleak upbringing in Baltimore and the rage and hopelessness he felt after his close friend, Prince Jones, was killed by a police officer. The book was a bestseller, winning the National Book Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. but more importantly, me and the world opened a national dialogue about the country’s mythology, forcing an uncomfortable and necessary reevaluation of the American dream.
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (2016)
What does it mean to be forced to leave your home? For millions of Americans, Matthew Desmond shows in his eye-opening Pulitzer Prize-winning book, that it’s a question that too often needs to be answered. Desmond, a sociologist, follows eight families in Milwaukee as they grapple with measly paychecks, court dates, and paperwork in the struggle to keep their homes, as well as showcasing the struggle of homeowners who are just trying to keep their properties full. of paying tenants. Evicted is a deeply empathetic story of a housing system gone wrong, and an examination of how its failings seep into every other aspect of life, from education to nutrition. In a decade when the country came to further recognize the limits of the American dream, few books so convincingly used insightful reporting to launch a cry for new policies to provide the most basic need: a roof over everyone’s head. .
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the order of time, carlo rovelli (2018)
The peculiarities of time are not new to our age, but even so it can be difficult to avoid the feeling that today’s world is uniquely defined by that inescapable race forward. Still, “the nature of time is perhaps the greatest remaining mystery,” writes theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli in The Order of Time. Rovelli isn’t shy about tackling a big mystery, or bringing others along on his journey. The scientist’s illuminating follow-up to his bestseller Seven Short Lectures on Physics replicates the mind-opening feeling of a major university lecture: the pause in the world as the brain advances, the student’s connection to the teacher. , the click of understanding. Translated from the Italian by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, this elegant volume gives poetic voice to the common human experience of moving through time, while at the same time leaving the reader much better equipped to understand how exactly that happens. Using Smurfs to illustrate physics diagrams but also opening chapters with Horace epigraphs, makes complicated theories not only understandable, but meaningful. the order of time is a resounding affirmation of the humanity behind the science.
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bad blood: secrets and lies in a silicon valley startup, john carreyrou (2018)
John Carreyrou’s masterclass in investigative journalism might also be the best thriller of the decade. is the gripping story of the rise and fall of elizabeth holmes, once hailed as “the next steve jobs,” and her now-defunct company theranos, which claimed to have developed game-changing blood-testing technology but was actually directing a giant scam at their investors and clients. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes the richest self-made woman in America, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. That same year, Carreyrou, working on an insider’s council, published the first article to question the validity of Theranos “science.” the house of cards collapsed from there. In Bad Blood, Carreyrou, a veteran reporter for the Wall Street Journal, delivers a full narrative, one that would be impossible to deduce from just reading incremental reports. It takes readers from A to Z in a fascinating and disturbing story involving the likes of then Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz, the future American. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Oscar-winning director Errol Morris, and Silicon Valley investment guru Marc Andreessen. What’s more, the quality of bad blood‘s narrative intrigue, tension, and character development rivals the great swashbuckling stories of the canon.
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these truths: a history of the united states, jill lepore (2018)
In recent decades, history writing has tended to be narrow, focusing on bits and pieces of the past, but Jill Lepore deepens and expands on these truths, her nuanced exploration of American history. Written at a time of political upheaval, the acclaimed historian focuses on the central ideas of the United States and their contradictions, from free speech and its suppression, to freedom and slavery, and economic expansion and deprivation, that They have animated the country since its foundation. While bringing a fresh look at well-covered events of the past, Lepore is also the first great popular story to bring our history into the present, incorporating everything from the triumphs of the gay rights movement to the ugly fissures of the 2016 presidency. election. It’s exactly the kind of story readers need today to understand the key struggles that have defined America and recognize that our history is ever present.
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