If reading more was your New Year’s resolution, but you haven’t cracked open a single book, look no further than our must-read non-fiction picks for 2025. These are some of the best new releases—a list that includes a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s reimagining of contemporary criticism and a kaleidoscopic retelling of Princess Diana’s real life and enduring legacy.
We promise these non-fiction titles are anything but boring and will have you roused (as with the damning tell-all on the machinations of Spotify) and engrossed (as with the encyclopedic work traversing wild doomsday theories). Whether you escape into the golden age of magazines or get inspired by past feminist political movements, your reading time will be an edifying and restorative experience.
Just FYI, some of these books aren’t out yet, so it’s up to you whether to pre-order now—just get your bookmarks ready.
When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter
There was a time when magazines gave writers handsome stipends to chase leads and promised readers enticingly glossy tell-alls. Famed Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter waxes lyrical in When the Going Was Good, recounting highlights from his illustrious career—working at the satirical monthly Spy and, yes, right here at Observer—and sharing what it was like to collect a stable of lauded writers and photographers under one roof. The dishy book promises revealing tales from a formerly decadent media era, in particular shaping Vanity Fair into the epicenter of Hollywood, power and celebrity it is today.
Wages for Housework by Emily Callaci
Some may not know, or even have heard, the story of “Wages for Housework,” a bold political campaign that first advanced during second-wave feminism. It was a global movement in which women demanded that homemaking and childcare be paid like production in industry. In the perceptive Wages for Housework, historian Emily Callaci digs into this seemingly far-reaching crusade, presenting new archival material and extensive interviews that show passionate everyday women arguing for equity and access under a capitalist system that only ever compensates one kind of labor.
Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu
Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and an astute public intellectual, and Authority: Essays sees the formidable thinker share her long-form essays exploring the history of criticism and its current “crisis” of authority: pieces that offer a new playbook for understanding how our judgments can sometimes—and sometimes not—be correct. Paired alongside these title essays are infamous “takedowns,” including critical works on the likes of fellow writers Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith that have galvanized Chu as a critic of rigor and erudition.
Everything Must Go by Dorian Lynskey
Every few years, even decades, a media frenzy emerges about the imminent end of the world. In Everything Must Go, journalist and podcaster Dorian Lynskey deftly catalogs the many panicked—and nowadays, sometimes real—Armageddon fantasies we hear about: Y2k, plagues, nuclear war, climate change. Interspersed are analyses of the movies, novels and TV shows that relish depicting humanity’s demise, which Lynskey argues have been used throughout history to understand worldwide tragedies and assuage our increasingly daily existential angst.
Mood Machine by Liz Pelly
Now that the afterglow of Spotify Wrapped has ended, it’s time to get serious about the corrosive and consequential music platform. That’s according to Liz Pelly, author of Mood Machine, a new riveting cultural exposé that argues Spotify rips off musicians and discourages the development of new music and artists. The book proves a rousing indictment of the Swedish streaming service, which Pelly reveals as selling users’ data and numbing listeners into the same sounds via algorithms behind their curated playlists.
SEE ALSO: 11 Short Books to Help You Jumpstart Your 2025 Reading Resolutions
Warhol’s Muses by Laurence Leamer
Andy Warhol was so obsessed with celebrity that he not only telegraphed it in his art but also decided to create his own coterie of bespoke stars. In Warhol’s Muses, biographer Laurence Leamer tells the engrossing tale of the ten women known as the “Superstars” who Warhol sought to turn into major celebrities. With a rampant supply of drugs, casual sex and physical suffering, Warhol ultimately made them famous. Against the turbulent 1960s, the book contrasts Warhol’s exploitation of these naïve hangers-on against a time when women started imagining emancipation for themselves.
Lorne by Susan Morrison
Saturday Night Live has been on TV for almost 50 years, and one man has largely lorded over the program: Lorne Michaels. New Yorker editor Susan Morrison gives a lively and spirited account of Michaels’ reign in Lorne—an incumbency that first started with a pitch in 1974 for a show that would satirize popular culture for a new generation. With Morrison following Lorne around for present-day SNL tapings, the comic mastermind is revealed—through his résumé and his hustle—as one enterprising and magnetizing leader.
How to be Avant-Garde by Morgan Falconer
In How to be Avant-Garde, art historian Morgan Falconer reexamines the story of the 20th-century art movements—dadaism, surrealism, futurism—grouped together under the banner “avant-garde.” Each may have had a different aesthetic approach, but all were dedicated to defying institutional artistic gatekeeping and challenging conservative societal views. Falconer delivers a forceful account of recalcitrant artists, inspired by anger and fueled by disillusion, remaking art outside a “mechanized world.”
On Air by Steve Oney
National Public Radio (NPR) might get plenty of loyalty and love but not much money. On Air sees journalist Steve Oney give a detailed history of the beloved but beleaguered public radio station, an institution that has had a liberal roster of hosts and journalists but a checked relationship with its sometimes conservative overlord, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Offering insights into not-for-profit media and the inner workings of the lauded outlet, On Air has been in the works for a decade, so prepare for some fearless and revealing reporting.
Y2k by Colette Shade
Y2K is a humorous look back at the turn of the last century, an era when technology was fun, and the economy was abundant. Retracing the period from 1997 to 2008, culture journalist Colette Shade provides an arch examination of the era beyond fashion trends and flip phones. Here, Shade covers everything from tabloid-fueled mistreatment of female celebrities to the 2008 housing crash, making daring and elevated connections (like between neoliberal economics and our past obsession with thinness in beauty standards).
Fail Better by Hal Foster
Hal Foster, a prolific art critic and commentator, retraces the history of art criticism from the 1960s to the present in the punchy Fail Better. In this selection of essays, Foster pairs reflections on artists like Jasper Johns and Gerhard Richter with larger “reckonings” on the tensions between art criticism and politics over the last sixty years. With wit and scholarship, Foster advances new ways to transform our thinking and approach to contemporary art in this provocative essay collection.
Dianaworld by Edward White
Almost thirty years after her death, Diana Princess of Wales continues to fascinate new generations of people and fuel our popular culture. In Dianaworld, writer Edward White explores how so many continue to project their politics and beliefs onto the dearly departed royal—from the Brexit movement to #MeToo. The book’s kaleidoscopic approach takes stories from Diana’s private world (via interviews with former confidantes) and pairs them with confessions offered up by present-day fans, from drag queens to Gen Z TikTokers, who continue worshiping the icon.
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