Best Non-Fiction of 2005

Here are the updated "power rankings" for the best non-fiction books of the year. For those of you just joining the party, I update both the fiction list and the non-fiction list weekly to account for anyplace these books have been listed as a favorite. A book must have been listed at a minimum of two places to be included.

1. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
2. Bury the Chains - Adam Hochschild
3. (tie) 1776 - David McCullogh
3. (tie) The Assassin's Gate - George Packer
3. (tie) Matisse the Master - Hilary Spurling
4. (tie) Collapse - Jared Diamond
4. (tie) A Great Improvisation - Stacy Schiff
4. (tie) Mao: The Unknown Story - John Halliday
4. (tie) The Tender Bar - J.R. Moehringer
5. (tie) American Prometheus - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman
5. (tie) The Beatles: A Biography - Bob Spitz
5. (tie) Becoming Justice Blackmun - Linda Greenhouse
5. (tie) Big Bang - Simon Singh
5. (tie) Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
5. (tie) Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary - Henry Hitchings
5. (tie) The Disappointment Artist - Jonathan Lethem
5. (tie) Epileptic - David B.
5. (tie) Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt
5. (tie) Girl Sleuth - Melanie Rehak
5. (tie) I Didn't Do It for You - Michela Wrong
5. (tie) The Lady and the Panda - Vicki Constantine Croke
5. (tie) Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War - Anthony Shadid
5. (tie) Teacher Man - Frank McCourt
5. (tie) Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel - Jane Smiley
5. (tie) Two Lives - Vikram Seth
5. (tie) The World Is Flat - Thomas Friedman