Nonfiction audiobooks cover the full range of real life, from memoir and science writing to history, politics, and investigative journalism. What makes them sing in audio format is the intimacy, hearing an author like Matthew McConaughey read his own “Greenlights” turns a book into something closer to a conversation than a text on a page.

If you are drawn to learning something true about the world, or just want a story that actually happened, this is where to start. Listeners who commute or exercise tend to devour this category fast.