September 10, 2025, 3:00pm

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Then ten titles were selected from a pool of 652 books submitted for consideration by their publishers. This year’s judges for Nonfiction are Heather Kathleen Moody Hall, Tiya Miles (Chair), Raj Patel, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Eli Saslow.

The finalists in all categories will be announced on Tuesday, October 7, and the winners revealed at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 19.

In the meantime, here’s the longlist:

Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Caleb Gayle, Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers

Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Lana Lin, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam
Dorothy, a publishing project

Ben Ratliff, Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening
Graywolf Press

Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
Abrams Press / Abrams

Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Helen Whybrow, The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life
Milkweed Editions