“If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.”
Looking for the best new non-fiction books to read this summer 2025? Whether you’re prepping for a beach getaway, a quiet weekend at home, or just something fresh and thought-provoking to dive into, this list has you covered. From powerful memoirs and groundbreaking investigative journalism to empowering self-help and captivating true stories, these non-fiction summer reads have something for all the curious minds out there. The non-fiction books featured here are all new releases for summer 2025, making them perfect additions to your summer reading list. We here at What We Reading have handpicked titles that entertain, educate, and offer new perspectives – perfect for anyone looking to make the most of the longer days and slower pace. So, grab a drink, find a sunny spot, and check out these top non-fiction book recommendations for 2025! Your next favourite read could be waiting just below.
It’s Only Drowning: A True Story Of Learning To Surf And The Search For Common Ground – David Litt
First up on our list of the best non-fiction books for summer 2025 is David Litt’s memoir, It’s Only Drowning. The story opens with David, overwhelmed by America’s numerous crises, moving to the Jersey Shore and, inspired by his wild brother-in-law Matt, taking up surfing lessons. The former Barack Obama speechwriter spends the next few months being wiped out by waves. Yet, along the way, he discovers that surfing has the capacity to change him both in and out of the water and soon sets himself on the challenge of riding a big wave in Hawaii.
Together with the help of Matt, the pair embark on a journey spanning coasts and continents before reaching Oahu’s infamously dangerous North Shore. It’s Only Drowning is a laugh-out-loud love letter to surfing – and so much more. It’s a homage to setting out on adventures no matter your age, a blueprint for becoming braver, and a story of forming friendships, no matter the fault lines of education, ideology, and culture that threaten to tear us apart in today’s world.
Release date: 24 June 2025
Check Out These New Non-Fiction Books From Spring 2025
No Sense In Wishing – Lawrence Burney
In his new 2025 non-fiction book, No Sense in Wishing, Lawrence Burney offers readers a personal and incisive perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transform him. At a time when music is leading the way for Black Americans’ connection with Africans on The Continent, Burney takes trips to cover the blossoming creative scenes in the likes of Lagos and Johannesburg that are sure to inspire teary-eyed meditations on self and belonging.
Taking us readers on a tour from the streets of Baltimore to the concert halls of the Nigerian capital, No Sense in Wishing is a kaleidoscope exploration of Burney’s search for identity. With its gutsy and uncompromising criticism alongside candid and personal storytelling, it’s like an album that hits all the right notes exactly as you would want to hear them.
Release date: 8 July 2025
Bad Company: Private Equity And The Death Of The American Dream – Megan Greenwell
Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company tells the hidden story of private equity through the experiences of four American workers in a new 2025 non-fiction summer book, Bad Company. These workers watched as private equity upended their employers, and a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and a public housing organiser.
In the tradition of profoundly human reportage mirroring the likes of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Greenwell lifts the lid on shady multibillion-dollar companies ranging from Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, and KKR, showcasing how private equity is reshaping the global economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very concept of the American dream. Timely and masterfully delivered, Bad Company is a forceful rebuking of the US’ most consequential, yet least understood, economic drivers.
Release date: 10 June 2025
The True Happiness Company: How A Girl Like Me Falls For A Company Like That – Veena Dinavahi
It is hard for Veena Dinavahi to continue living while her classmates keep dying. A high-achieving daughter of doting Indian immigrants, she lives in a white American suburb with an unusually high suicide rate. One night, in an effort to help her daughter overcome her depression, Veena’s mother happens upon Bob Lyon – a sixty-year-old man in the backwoods of Georgia who claims he can make Veena want to live again. He calls himself “The True Happiness Company”.
As Veena finds herself sucked into his strangely close-knit community, Bob’s “suggestions” begin to feel less and less optional. Before she knew it, she had become a college dropout, a married mother of three, and a Mormon convert far too adept at shaking the feeling that something was very, very wrong. After being pushed too far, Veena cuts ties with Bob, re-enrols in college studying psychology, and starts to understand that true happiness cannot be a one-size-fits-all. Delivered with unflinching clarity and incisive wit, The True Happiness Company is a tale all about learning to trust your intuition in a world determined to annihilate it, making for one of the most anticipated new non-fiction books of summer 2025.
Release date: 20 May 2025
Murderland: Crime And Bloodlust In The Time Of Serial Killers – Caroline Fraser
Caroline Fraser’s new true crime book, Murderland, indelibly maps the life and time of Ted Bundy, as well as numerous other killers who exploded across the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and 1980s including the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, and even Charles Manson. Fraser’s trip uncovers a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction.
As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence begins to mount that the plumes of lead, copper, and arsenic from smelters dotted across the area not only blighted and sickened millions of lives but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers. A propulsive 2025 summer non-fiction thriller, Murderland takes readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
Release date: 10 June 2025
A Marriage At Sea: A True Story Of Love, Obsession, And Shipwreck – Sophie Elmhirst
Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive. She’s charismatic and ambitious. Yet, the two share a dream of running away together. And, in June 1972, after extensive studying and preparation, they fulfilled their dreams by quitting their jobs, selling their homes, buying a boat, and sailing away. All goes well for nearly a year. That is, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocks a hole in their boat and condemns it to the bottom of the ocean.
What follows in Sophie Elmhirst’s new summer non-fiction book for 2025 is a jaw-dropping fight for survival in the wild ocean with next to no hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find ways of not only surviving but also getting along. Taut, dazzling and propulsive, A Marriage at Sea couples an adrenaline-fuelled high-seas adventure with a gutting love story, asking why we love difficult people, and what we are all capable of under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Release date: 8 July 2025
The Dry Season: A Memoir Of Pleasure In A Year Without Sex – Melissa Febos
In the aftermath of a two-year-long relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break – for three months, she would abstain from dating, from relationships, and from sex. Finally, she would carve out some time for herself and examine the patterns that had resulted in her midlife disaster. After gaining insights into her past and finding the joys in being single, she decided to extend her celibacy, unaware that it would blossom into the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life.
By sitting out all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to view her life and her self-worth in an entirely new and radically different light. Her year of divestment transformed he relationships with her loved ones, her spirituality, her creative pursuits, as well as her understanding of herself. The Dry Season is one of the best new non-fiction books coming out this summer of 2025, delivered with an intimate personal narrative, incisive cultural criticisms and deep explorations of sex and love in the modern world.
Release date: 3 June 2025
Check Out The Best Non-Fiction Books From 2025
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
