Must Read Non-Fiction For September 2025

hy is playing games a universal human instinct?
And how can those games make your life happier, healthier and more fulfilled?

In this fascinating look at games through the ages, Tim Clare explores how, through play, we become fully ourselves.

From Roman anti-cheating devices to organised crime card syndicates, from Pokémon’s world domination to the combative domestic bonding ritual of Monopoly, The Game Changers explains why games are more popular now than ever, and how playing them helps us learn to be better losers, make smarter decisions and become more human.

From the author of the smash-hit Around the World in 80 Trains comes a new globetrotting journey – this time celebrating the peculiar magic and mayhem of the night train.

‘Nobody writes trains like Monisha Rajesh’ Irvine Welsh
‘Hugely entertaining’ The Times
‘A moonlit express train to travel writing heaven. This is Monisha Rajesh’s wittiest and most irresistible adventure yet’ William Dalrymple

The wonder of the night train: headlamps ablaze, passengers boarding after sunset and leaving before sunrise, slipping in and out of compartments unseen. For Monisha Rajesh, the singular thrill of sleeper trains inspired a new journey around the world – one filled with moonlit landscapes, cosy compartments and quirky companions.

From Austria’s Nightjet to the Caledonian Sleeper and the Santa Claus Express, Rajesh invites us on an adventure aboard the world’s most wondrous night trains. Along the way, she samples reindeer stew in Scandinavia, retraces the original route of the Orient Express, sips on pisco sours aboard the Andean Explorer, and watches the sun rise over the Potomac River on the Silver Meteor to New York.

A decade ago night trains were giving way to budget airlines and high-speed rail. But as people search for slower and more environmentally friendly ways to travel, night trains are in the midst of a renaissance. By turns romantic and hilarious, Moonlight Express brings us along for the ride – and drops us back at the platform before sunrise.

In this ultimate guide to ultrarunning, dive into 100 of the world’s most breathtaking and brutal ultramarathons – from the icy tundras of Sweden to the sun-scorched deserts of the USA, and the rugged mountains of Europe.

Whether you’re a seasoned marathoner in search of your next challenge or an aspiring runner eager to tackle your first ultra, each race is meticulously detailed with all the essential information: where to start, how to get there, and what it takes to reach the finish line.

Packed with insightful interviews with world-renowned runners and the visionary founders of these epic races, alongside detailed maps, stats, and stunning photography, this is the definitive guide to the world of ultrarunning, crafted by adventurers and authors Jen and Sim Benson.

Our world has innumerable boundaries, ranging from the obvious – like oceans and mountain ranges – to the intangible – like subtle differences in language or climate. Most of us cross invisible lines all the time, but rarely do we stop to consider them.

Invisible Lines presents 30 such unseen boundaries, intriguing and unexpected examples of the myriad ways in which we collectively engage with and experience the world. From football fans in Buenos Aires to air quality in China, Paris’ banlieues to sub-Saharan Africa’s Malaria Belt, the invisible boundaries that shape our experiences and existence provide a compelling guide to seeing and understanding our world anew.

A journey through the great mass-extinction events that have shaped our Earth: ‘Deeply informed and readable’ Nature

In this vast sweep of our Earth’s history, Michael Benton brings the deep past to life as never before. Deploying the cutting-edge tools in biology, chemistry, physics and geology that are transforming our understanding of previous environmental cataclysms – including the incredible new discovery of a hitherto unknown extinction event – he uncovers not only their lethal effects but also the processes that brought about such large-scale destruction.

Beginning with the oldest extinction, Benton investigates the Late Ordovician, which set the evolution of the first animals on an entirely new course; the late Devonian, brought on by global warming; the cataclysmic End-Permian, which wiped out over 90 per cent of all life on Earth; and, book-ending the age of the dinosaurs, the newly discovered Carnian Pluvial Event and the End-Cretaceous asteroid. He examines how global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes and meteorite impact have affected conditions on Earth, the drastic consequences for global ecology, and how life in turn survived, adapted and evolved.

This expert retelling of scientific breakthroughs allows us to link long-ago upheavals to our modern crises. As today’s climate scientists and political leaders grapple to understand these processes and our planet enters the sixth great extinction, these insights from the past may hold the key to survival.

Foreign Policy, Most Anticipated Books of 2024

A stunning investigation and indictment of the elements in United States’ foreign lobbying industry and the threat they pose to democracy.

For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they’ve not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they’ve secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, journalist Casey Michel contends some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.

These Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years ushering dictatorships directly into the halls of Washington, all while laundering the reputations of the most heinous, repressive regimes in the process. These lobbyists include figures like Ivy Lee, the inventor of the public relations industry – a man who whitewashed Mussolini, opened doors to the Soviets, and advised the Nazis on how to sway American audiences. They include people like Paul Manafort, who invented lobbying as we know it – and who then took his talents to autocrats from Ukraine to the Philippines, and then back to the White House. And they now include an increasing number of Americans elsewhere: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers, and even within think tanks and universities.

Many of these lobbyists have transformed into proxies for dictators and strongmen wherever they can be found. And for years, they’ve escaped scrutiny.

In Foreign Agents, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists, and all the damage and devastation they have caused in Washington and elsewhere. From Moscow to Beijing, from far-right nationalists to far-left communists, from anti-American autocrats to pro-Western authoritarians, these foreign lobbyists have helped any illiberal, anti-democratic government they can find. And after decades of success in installing dictator after dictator, and in tilting American policy in the process, some of these lobbyists have now begun trying to end America’s democratic experiment, once and for all.