The NYT Best Sellers - 25 January 2026 (Nonfiction)

The NYT Best Sellers - 25 January 2026 (Nonfiction)

01. 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
02. THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE by Bessel van der Kolk
03. NOBODY'S GIRL by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
04. ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder
05. FIRESTORM by Jacob Soboroff
06. OUTLIVE by Peter Attia
07. EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS by John Green
08. HOW TO TEST NEGATIVE FOR STUPID by John Kennedy
09. THE ANXIOUS GENERATION by Jonathan Haidt
10. A MARRIAGE AT SEA by Sophie Elmhirst
11. I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy
12. THE LOOK by Michelle Obama
13. HOMESCHOOLED by Stefan Merrill Block
14. ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad
15. FAMILY OF SPIES by Christine Kuehn

New this week:

05. FIRESTORM by Jacob Soboroff
MS NOW reporter Jacob Soboroff delivers a minute‑by‑minute, firsthand account of the January 2025 Great Los Angeles Fires—the Palisades and Eaton blazes that destroyed 16,000 structures, killed at least 31 (with excess mortality estimates up to 400), and became the costliest wildfire event in U.S. history. Drawing on his personal connection (raised in Pacific Palisades, watching his childhood neighborhood burn live on air), months of embedded reporting with firefighters, scientists, politicians, and victims, and analysis of cascading failures—from infrastructure collapse to disinformation—Soboroff portrays the fires as both a local tragedy and a harbinger of America’s “new age of disaster.” The narrative reads like a thriller, blending grief, investigative rigor, and urgent warnings about climate, politics, and preparedness in a world where such catastrophes are no longer exceptional.

13. HOMESCHOOLED by Stefan Merrill Block
At age nine, Stefan Merrill Block is withdrawn from public school by his mother, who believes teachers are stifling his creativity; with no formal training, she begins homeschooling him in their Texas living room, but beyond basic math lessons, Stefan is mostly left to his own devices amid her increasingly erratic whims—like bleaching his hair and enforcing a “crawling regimen” to recapture his babyhood. Long before homeschooling became mainstream (legalized in Texas just years prior), this unregulated setup isolates Stefan from peers, structure, and normal socialization, turning their home into a bubble shaped by her theories and loneliness. After five years, Stefan reenters high school as a freshman, confronting profound academic gaps, social awkwardness, and the shattering realization that he’s years behind—a trauma that forces him to reckon with his mother’s love as both nurturing and suffocating.