What I Might Reading During Nonfiction November 2025

I'm planning to reading only nonfiction in November. 

What am I thinking about reading?

A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism by Julia Boyd.   An intimate portrait of German life during World War II, shining a light on ordinary people living in a picturesque Bavarian village under Nazi rule, from a past winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan. Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down.

The Story of a Heart: Two Families, One Heart, and the Medical Miracle that Saved a Child's Life by Rachel Clarke. An unforgettable and inspiring true story of how one family’s grief transformed into a lifesaving gift—written by a bestselling author and palliative care doctor.

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean. An explosive exposé of the right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson. In Democracy Awakening, acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power.

Travels with a Writing Brush: Classic Japanese Travel Writing from the Manyoshu to Basho, edited by Meredith McKinney. A rich and exquisite anthology that illuminates Japanese travel over a thousand years.

Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd. In Writing Creativity and Soul, Sue Monk Kidd will pull from her own life and the lives of other writers—Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, and many others—to provide a map for anyone who has ever felt lost as a writer.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Worlds Around Us by Ed Yong. An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”

Around the World in 80 Birds by Mike Unwin. This beautiful and inspiring book tells the stories of 80 birds around the world: from the sociable weaver bird in Namibia which constructs huge multi-nest 'apartment blocks' in the desert, to the bar-headed goose of China, one of the highest-flying migrants which crosses the Himalayas twice a year.

Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations by Sam Keen. Beloved author Sam Kean joins experimental archaeologists on their adventures across the globe, from the Andes to the South Seas. He fires medieval catapults, tries his hand at ancient surgery and tattooing, builds Roman-style roads—and, in novelistic interludes, spins gripping tales about the lives of our ancestors with vivid imagination and his signature meticulous research.

Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Klapp. Journalist Alexander Clapp spent two years roaming five continents to report deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists throughout the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour, to tell readers what he has figured out: While some trash gets tossed onto roadsides or buried underground, much of it actually lives a secret hot potato second life, getting shipped, sold, re-sold, or smuggled from one country to another, often with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world. 

Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture of this vast and unremitting conflict.

Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences by Joan Biskupic. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come.

Do you have other suggestions for me?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.