9 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022

Some of the most important issues of our time, such as autocracy, conspiracies, and healthcare reform, are covered in our favourite nonfiction books of the year, many of which are simply the best books of the year. They come in a variety of formats, including reported nonfiction, memoir, comic guidebooks, and supervillainy. Every type of reader will find something to like here, whether they want to learn something new, laugh a lot, or just lose themselves in a good novel. Not all of these books are available yet, so if you see one you like, preorder it for yourself. You’ll be saying “thank you” to Past You when the book shows up at your door.

Lost & Found

Kathryn Schultz

One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz’s beloved father—a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee—went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief. Those twin experiences form the heart of Lost & Found, a profound meditation on the families that make us and the families we make.

Release Date: January 11, 2022

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Admissions

Kendra James

Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made—to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier.

Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system.

Release Date: January 18, 2022

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South to America

Imani Perry

We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge.

In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

Release Date: January 25, 2022

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The Nineties

Chuck Klosterman

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader.

In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was.

Release Date: February 8, 2022

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Foreverland

Heather Havrilesky

Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply “happy” or “unhappy,” but something much murkier—at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight.

Release Date: February 8, 2022

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Ancestor Trouble

Maud Newton

Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud’s father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the “purity” of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War.

Release Date: March 29, 2022

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How You Get Famous

Nicole Pasulka

Ten years ago, an aimless coat check girl better known today as Merrie Cherry sweet-talked her boss into giving her $100 to host a drag show at a Brooklyn dive bar. Soon, kids like Aja were kicking their way into the scene, sneaking into clubs, pocketing their tips to help mom pay the mortgage, and sharing the stage with electric performers like Thorgy Thor and Sasha Velour.

Because suddenly, in the biggest, brightest city in America, drag was offering young, broke, creative queer people a chance at real money—and for thousands or even millions of people to learn their names.

Release Date: June 7, 2022

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Hollywood Ending

Ken Auletta

Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote an iconic New Yorker profile of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was then at the height of his powers. The profile made waves for exposing how volatile, even violent, Weinstein was to his employees and collaborators. But there was a much darker story that was just out of reach: rumors had long swirled that Weinstein was a sexual predator. Auletta confronted Weinstein, who denied the claims. Since no one was willing to go on the record, Auletta and the magazine concluded they couldn’t close the case. Years later, he was able to share his reporting notes and knowledge with Ronan Farrow.

Release Date: July 12, 2022

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The Last Days of Roger Federer

Geoff Dyer

When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? As our bodies decay, how do we keep on? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. With a playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he recounts Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, J. M. W.

Release Date: May 3, 2022

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Tags: General Nonfiction