The books that are changing how readers, critics, and scholars think
"The Ideas Index" uses readers' ratings, reviewers' assessments and scholars' citations to find the most influential nonfiction books published since 2020.
Explore MoreUnder The Radar
View AllBreakthrough Books
View AllMediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future
Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962
Solito
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
King: A Life
The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-earth
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
Pessoa: A Biography
The Trayvon Generation
Ordinary Notes
New Releases
View AllThe Uncool: a Memoir
Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess
The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me
View from the East Wing: A Memoir
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776
The Land and Its People
Trudeau & Doonesbury
Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe
Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire
Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old
On Witness and Respair
The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War
Under the Radar
View AllThe Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA
Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider
Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness
The Best of Brevity: Twenty Years of Groundbreaking Flash Nonfiction
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
Until the Last Gun Is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America's Soul
The Future Is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land
V Is For Victory: Franklin Roosevelt's American Revolution and the Triumph of World War II
There's a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis
Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice
Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me
In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden
Best of 2025
View AllWhen It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings
Raising Hare: A Memoir
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found
Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World
Joyride: A Memoir
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals
The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
Best of 2024
View AllThe Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Ingrained: An Uplifting Memoir about Woodworking and Craftsmanship
Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes
The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022
Malcolm Before X
I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
The Place of Tides
The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
Byron: A Life in Ten Letters
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
The Lucky Ones
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Best of 2023
View AllThe Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains
Strong Female Character
How to Say Babylon
Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America
Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility
The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter
King: A Life
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future
Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
Creep: Accusations and Confessions
Best of 2022
View AllRegenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet
Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life
My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route
The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth
The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT
The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson
Sandy Hook
Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
Black Folk Could Fly: Selected Writings by Randall Kenan
Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
Deaf Utopia: A Memoir—And a Love Letter to a Way of Life
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
Best of 2021
View AllThe Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece
Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News
Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought
The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden (Bestselling Historical Nonfiction)
Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing
The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice
Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos
Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner
White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief
Underwater Wild: My Octopus Teacher's Extraordinary World
Cuba: An American History
Best of 2020
View AllBlack Futures
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
Diary of a Young Naturalist
The Best of Brevity: Twenty Years of Groundbreaking Flash Nonfiction
The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times
Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West
What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing—What Birds Are Doing, and Why
Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers
Highest Rated by Critics
View AllCobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything
Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land
Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells
Niche: A Memoir in Pastiche
Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard
The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness
Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
Three Roads Back
Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn
The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne
The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird
Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Highest Rated by Readers
View AllDewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul
Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul's Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life
Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption
Memorial Days
Misfits: A Personal Manifesto
My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy
All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South
Everything Is Spiritual: Finding Your Way in a Turbulent World
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote
How to Say Babylon
Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan's First Female Pilot
Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios
Highest Rated by Scholars
View AllThe Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
Who's Afraid of Gender?
The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future
Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy
How to Blow Up a Pipeline