Nonfiction in Crisis? Maris Kreizman Picks 14 Books That Prove Otherwise

Nonfiction is in crisis, according to some book-world insiders. Editors at major houses find it harder to acquire books that claim to be true than it has been previously. Readers have passed over reliable nonfiction for escapist fare, and the end of the year brings a glut of celebrity memoirs that tend to suck up all the media attention.

Maris Kreizman wants none of that. She is recommending 14 nonfiction books coming out in the coming months, all of them authored by the people whose names appear on the spines. No ghostwriters, no big marketing budgets, no seven-figure advances. Just writers with something to say.

Kreizman’s argument is simple: the best nonfiction writing relies on our curiosity about the world we live in, as flawed as it may be. And she hopes something on this list will strike your own thirst for knowledge.

The 14 Books

The list runs from memoir to literary biography to cultural criticism. Here is what stands out:

1. Sarah Heppola follows up her bestselling memoir Blackout with The Only Thing There Is To Want: A Memoir of Three Loves.
2. Emily Ogden takes on Edgar Allan Poe in Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe, asking how and why his work became required reading in high school English classes.
3. Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber team up for I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity, drawing on their work together before their very famous podcast, Who Weekly.
4. Franny Choi, poet and essayist, offers We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg.
5. David Treuer delivers The Savage Mind: An American Legacy, a treatise on violence in America from the frontier age to the present day.
6. Soyica Diggs Colbert tells the story of the New York nightclub where Black women artists gathered at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Freedom’s Gate: Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, and Nina Simone Live at the New York Nightclub That Shaped the Civil Rights Movement.
7. Lauren Michele Jackson writes Back: Essays on the Soul and Spine of America, a collection she describes as a perfect pairing of author and subject.
8. Paris Marx tackles Big Tech in Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires, a book Kreizman singles out partly because she is a fan of his podcast, Tech Won’t Save Us.
9. Zaina Arafat moves from novel to memoir with Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope, following her debut You Exist Too Much, which chronicled a young woman’s feelings of dissonance as a Palestinian-American.
10. Lisa Hanawalt writes I Can’t Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex, a graphic memoir described as horny, charming, and suffused with the poignancy of wanting.
11. Ted Scheinman writes Jolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness, a memoir about undertaking electroconvulsive therapy. Kreizman discloses that Scheinman was briefly her boss at the now-defunct publication, Pacific Standard.
12. Lauren Elkin writes Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power, a book whose cover features the young sneering faces of the Bikini Kill bandmates.
13. Mona Chalabi combines data journalism and visual art in Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, an eye-opening study of money and financial insecurity.

Why These Books Matter

Kreizman’s list is a direct rebuttal to the crisis narrative. These are not celebrity memoirs. They are not ghostwritten. They are not marketed to death. They are writers doing the work themselves, and Kreizman believes the result will be better for it.

She also makes a case for the overlooked genre of micro-history. A specific time, a specific place, a specific story — those are the kinds of narratives that should appeal to a wide audience, she argues. The nightclub where Black women artists gathered at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement is a juicy angle, and it deserves to be told.

The list is also a reminder that nonfiction can be personal without being confessional. The Only Thing There Is To Want is a memoir of three loves. Darkness Becomes Bright is a literary biography. We Radiant Things is an essay collection. Each book has a different shape, but each is built on the same foundation: curiosity about the world.

A Cheerful Corrective

Kreizman’s own framing is the joke. She opens with the crisis narrative, then spends the rest of the piece proving it wrong. The books she recommends are not the products of a dying industry. They are the products of writers who care enough to show up.

The list is also a snapshot of what nonfiction can do. It can be a memoir of love. It can be a biography of Poe. It can be an essay collection on the spine of America. It can be a data-driven study of financial insecurity. It can be a graphic memoir about horses and sex. It can be a story about a nightclub in New York City.

Kreizman is betting that readers will find something here that speaks to them. She is also betting that nonfiction can survive the crisis — not by resisting change, but by embracing the writers who refuse to compromise.

Key Facts Box

• Release window: The books are arriving in the coming months, with the first official day of fall on September 22.
• Celebrity memoirs: Kyle MacLachlan, Judi Dench, LeVar Burton, and Dustin Hoffman all have memoirs out this year.
• Ghostwriters: None of the books on Kreizman’s list were written by ghostwriters.
• Seven-figure advances: None of the books on Kreizman’s list were acquired with seven-figure advances.
• New podcasts: Paris Marx hosts Tech Won’t Save Us, which Kreizman cites as the reason she is interested in his book Hyperscale.

Comparison Table

autobiography · book recommendations · literary biography · memoirs · nonfiction