The Best Books of 2021: Nonfiction

We end our lists with the year’s best general nonfiction, and even for so broad a catch-all category, one signal characteristic this year was unpredictability: I try to read as widely as possible, and even I was pleasantly surprised by the odd choices and risky innovations so many writers make in their books this season. The result was a huge crop of terrific reading experiences, and these were the best of them:

10 Cross Examined: Putting Christianity on Trial by John W. Campbell (Prometheus Books) – This big book is the latest soup-to-nuts forensic deconstruction of Christianity - its provenance, the veracity of its claims, the nature of the morality it puts forward - and one of the best, massively learned and all the more compelling for its judicious tone.

9 Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty by Maurice Chammah (Crown Publishing) – A brilliant, deeply unsettling work of reporting, this study of the death penalty relies on witnesses and participants of all kinds talking about the unthinkable darkness at the heart of the American justice system, and it makes for riveting reading.

8 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (Random House) – One of the greatest short story writers working in English today takes readers on a knowing, incredibly enjoyable tour through short works of the great Russian writers, and no matter how well you know those writers, you’ll encounter them anew in these pages.

7 North by Shakespeare by Michael Blanding (Hachette) – Michael Blandings takes up the story of unknown Shakespeare conspiracy theorist Dennis McCarthy and tells it with terrific narrative dash, laying out one of the only “Shakespearean Authorship Controversy” ideas that really makes sense of some of the oddities of the Bard’s creative life. 

6 The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing by Mark Kurlansky (Bloomsbury) – Since Mark Kurlansky’s books have never tremendously impressed me, and since I consider all kinds of fishing mindlessly barbaric, I didn’t have many hopes when opening this book – but it was completely captivating, a smart and involving dispatch from a truly alien (to me) world.

5 Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf) – The author’s father died unexpectedly in 2020 while the family, and the whole world, was dealing with the ravages of COVID-19, and that experience drew out of her this remarkably heartfelt personal account of loss and personal memory.

4 Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995 (Liveright) – Diary collections almost never make good reading (you go to them for the dirt-dishing critical apparatus), much less reading as good as this big volume, where we follow Patrician Highsmith through decades of her personal, professional, and romantic life, all of it narrated with he signature insight and acidic wit, but with a disarming vulnerability throughout.

3 These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper) – The second essay collection on our list this year is this book by novelist Ann Patchett, with pieces touching on a surprisingly variety of subjects, all knitted together with beautifully-crafted prose that makes everything in here richly re-readable.

2 Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as as Way of Life by Heather Cass White (FSG) – Naturally, reading itself often makes its way onto this list (see #s 8,7, & 4), but never so fully and gloriously as this wide-ranging book by critic Heather Cass White, which is anchored in a handful of central texts but ranges over virtually the whole world of reading. 

1 Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? by Eric Powell & Harold Schechter (Albatross Funnybooks) – Unusual enough that a graphic novel should place at #1 on the Best Fiction list, but downright seismic for a graphic novel to place at #1 on the Best Nonfiction list in the same year – and yet, the best nonfiction of 2021 is this fantastic concoction by artist Eric Powell and true-crime maestro Harold Schechter, telling the creepy, horrifying story of the Gein family. And on that ominous note, we ring out the year …