Discovering nonfiction that reads like a story but keeps the scholarship front and center is the great white whale hunt for bookish adventurers. Countless authors attempt the feat, but it’s rare to find a book that showcases not only a fresh voice but also a new perspective.
Scientific American staff read some truly exceptional nonfiction books in 2025 while on the prowl for intriguing stories, robust reporting and exceptional voices. Below is Scientific American’s best nonfiction of 2025, culminating a year of reading and adding new books to the top shelf.
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Empire of AI
by Karen Hao
Penguin Press
Tags: AI, Investigative
Easily one of the most gripping nonfiction books I’ve ever read, it keeps you hanging with cliff-hangers that envelop its dramatic characters, occasionally brave and often cowardly people hired and fired by artificial intelligence company OpenAI. One of the few journalists ever invited to interview OpenAI staff, Hao’s expertise flies off every page, and her dozens of pages of notes and citations back it up. She doesn’t hold back as she unveils the ivory towers and monied meetings driving AI, as well as the unrecognized workers around the globe sacrificing their mental health to build it safer. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager
Is a River Alive?
by Robert Macfarlane
W. W. Norton
Tags: Environment, History
Does nature have inherent rights—to be respected and to be protected and restored from damage? To find answers, nature writer Robert Macfarlane traveled to three very different rivers in Ecuador, India and eastern Canada. His keen observational eye and provocative prose reveal the majesty of the many degraded rivers around the world. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
Replaceable You
by Mary Roach
W. W. Norton
Tags: Medical Science, Humor
Roach has knocked it out of the park again. We follow her around the globe as she sniffs out the most curious, novel and extraordinary science happening in the amorphous field of human augmentation. In just the tip of the iceberg of her many adventures in this slim book, she interviews people who have elected to have their limbs removed, meets scientists studying pig organs and spends some time in an iron lung just to see what it feels like. Roach’s writing is on full display on these pages. She’s brilliant but also approachable and funny—a dream dinner guest in your pocket. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager
Everything Is Tuberculosis
by John Green
Crash Course Books
Tags: Medical Science, History
Everything Is Tuberculosis shatters the misconception of a disease too easily thought vanquished. In this urgent and compassionate work, John Green shows how this illness is still the world’s deadliest infectious disease, and he does it with sharp reporting and deeply emotional storytelling. His voice resonates with clarity and conviction. The book combines history and science to make the unsettling point that tuberculosis is nothing but a social issue tied to inequality. Eye-opening and unsettling, it’s a call to action against inequality to be remembered in nonfiction. —Isabella Bruni, Digital Producer
The Feather Detective
by Chris Sweeney
Avid Reader Press
Tags: True Crime, Bird Books
In 1960 a commercial flight taking off from Boston Logan International Airport ran into a flock of birds and nosedived into nearby Winthrop Bay, killing 62 of the 72 people on board. Investigators sent bird remains embedded in the wreckage to the Smithsonian Institution in what became the first forensics case for Roxie Laybourne, a then up-and-coming taxidermist at the institute and the wonderful protagonist of this compelling, novel-like account. Journalist Chris Sweeney traces Laybourne’s rise to become a legendary forensic ornithologist, one who in her career would identify the remains of more than 10,000 airplane-struck birds. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
This Is for Everyone
by Tim Berners-Lee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tags: Technology, History
This might be the first celebrity memoir I’ve ever read, inspired by my former co-worker Hector Coronado’s promise of “Rebecca Solnit–esque optimism” and an introduction to the technology behind the World Wide Web that non–tech nerds could understand. It’s a breezy ride through the life of Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, who peppers the Web’s key technological developments and societal challenges with the occasional encounter with Bono or the Queen of England. Most powerful is Berners-Lee’s dedication to his vision of what the Web, specifically, and the Internet writ large can be—even as the rich and powerful have spent decades manipulating it to their own ends. —Meghan Bartels, Senior Reporter
Human Nature
by Kate Marvel
Ecco
Tags: Climate Change, History
Marvel is a huge figure in the climate science world, and her book offers a compelling introduction to the science of how our planet is changing. But this engaging book does so much more. Each chapter explores one emotion that climate change can inspire in us. And sitting with these emotions isn’t a frivolous distraction from the work that needs to be done, Marvel argues. Instead, feeling deeply about our world and the threats it faces—the anger and fear and grief, of course, but also the wonder and surprise and hope—is a necessary step in healing our planet. —Meghan Bartels, Senior Reporter
Take to the Trees
by Marguerite Holloway
W. W. Norton
Tags: Memoir, Nature
Holloway, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, takes us to a new understanding about the trials and tribulations of ecology, contrasting the planet’s environmental crisis with her own personal stories of survival. She climbs great hemlocks with a women’s climbing group to overcome a fear of heights brought on by motherhood and the loss of her brother and mother. We learn along with her to appreciate the details, described so lovingly and painstakingly, of endangered trees. The spot illustrations of leaves, bark, roots and seeds by Ellen Wiener enliven our enjoyment even more. (Full disclosure: Holloway and I were colleagues at Scientific American for many years, and I was privileged to see her journalism career blossom.) —Maria-Christina Keller, Copy Director
They Poisoned the World
by Mariah Blake
Crown
Tags: True Crime, History
An epic of science writing, for which Blake conducted more than 600 interviews, They Poisoned the World brings readers to Hoosick Falls, N.Y., where townspeople keep falling ill and dying from a mysterious cause. Meanwhile the local factories producing Teflon pump pollutants into local water supplies. Over decades, the dangers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, so called forever chemicals, come to light despite the manufacturers’ attempts to keep dodging responsibility. This book will likely leave you horrified and enraged. But reckoning with the truth—no matter how stomach-turning—is the first step toward justice. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
Raising Hare
by Chloe Dalton
Pantheon
Tags: Memoir, Nature
If the sensation “cozy” were a book, it would be Chloe Dalton’s memoir Raising Hare. She recounts her tale as a workaholic city slicker who starts living in a cottage in the English countryside during the height of the pandemic. Out on a walk one day, she comes across an abandoned newborn hare. After deliberating, she brings it home with her. Determined to maintain a kind of wild existence for the animal, she rearranges her life to care for the sweet creature. Along the way, Dalton discovers a newfound interest in the natural world and draws attention to how commercial agricultural practices harm wild animals. This book may especially appeal to animal lovers, but it will warm all hearts. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
