alphabetically, are some of the most compelling works of creative nonfiction published since the fifties.
1.
And the Band Played On
by Randy Shilts, 1987 – Chilling, infuriating and heartbreaking, Shilts’ exhaustive account of the early days of the AIDS crisis weaves disparate storylines into a masterly narrative. Tragically, Shilts would later die of AIDS in 1994. ONLINE DETAILS2.
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History
by Norman Mailer, 1968 – Mailer scored a one-two punch, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction novel about the anti-Vietnam War movement. Such real-life figures as Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Benjamin Spock and Mailer himself play prominent roles in Armies of the Night. ONLINE DETAILS3.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
by Mark Bowden, 1999 – Grueling and unforgettable, Bowden’s pulse-pounding chronicle of the U.S. Army’s ill-fated, 1993 mission into the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia thrusts you headlong into the eighteen-hour firefight between U.S. soldiers and Somalis. ONLINE DETAILS4.
The Children
by David Halberstam, 1998 – A giant of post-war American journalism, Halberstam wrote classic books on the Vietnam war, media tycoons, and baseball. With The Children, Halberstam immerses readers in the early days of the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow-era South. An exceptional achievement from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.ONLINE DETAILS
5.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson, 1971 – Fueled by alcohol and prodigious amounts of drugs, Thompson and his lawyer zoomed off to Las Vegas to attend a narcotic officers’ convention. The father of “gonzo journalism” later transformed their experiences into the freewheeling acid trip of book that’s a surreal meditation on the “American Dream.” ONLINE DETAILS6.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe, 1968 – Wolfe’s indelible record of his psychedelic bus ride with Ken Kesey and his LSD-swilling Merry Pranksters into hippiedom is a superlative example of “new journalism.” ONLINE DETAILS7.
Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics
by Misha Angrist, 2010 — As the fourth participant in the Personal Genome Project, Angrist gained an unusual window into modern science and the cataloguing of the entire human genome. Both informative and entertaining, this surprising account asks all the right — thought-provoking — questions.ONLINE DETAILS
8.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris, 2000 — This side-splitting collection of stories wittily depicts the humans to communicate with one another. (The title is transliterated from the author’s mangling of the French language.) The New York Times Book Review referred to Sedaris’humor as something that would result if Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had had a love child.
At turns silly and sophisticated, Me Talk Pretty One Day will leave you breathless with laughter.
ONLINE DETAILS
EXCERPT: ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY:
The agent came for me during a geography lesson. She entered the room and nodded at my fifth-grade teacher, who stood frowning at a map of Europe. What would needle me later was the realization that this had all been prearranged. My capture had been scheduled to go down at exactly 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon. The agent would be wearing a dung-colored blazer over a red knit turtleneck, her heels sensibly low in case the suspect should attempt a quick getaway.
“David,” the teacher said, “this is Miss Samson, and she’d like you to go with her now.”
No one else had been called, so why me? I ran down a list of recent crimes, looking for a conviction that might stick. Setting fire to a reportedly flameproof Halloween costume, stealing a set of barbecue tongs from an unguarded patio, altering the word ‘hit’ on a list of rules posted on the gymnasium door; never did it occur to me that I might be innocent.
9.
Picture
by Lillian Ross, 1952 – A regular contributor to The New Yorker , Ross got permission from director John Huston to watch him direct The Red Badge of Courage in 1950. First published in serial form in The New Yorker , Picture is widely considered the best book ever written about Hollywood — a revealing, warts-and-all portrait of movie studio politics, hubris and Machiavellian intrigue. ONLINE DETAILS10.
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx
by Adrien Nicole LeBlanc, 2003 – For ten years, LeBlanc followed the lives of two, working-class Latina women and their extended families in the Bronx. The result is a stunning and sympathetic chronicle of resilience in the midst of squalor, rampant crime, and lives gone to drugs. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. ONLINE DETAILS11.
Salvador
by Joan Didion, 1983 – Didion brings her clinical eye to this mesmerizing account of her two-week visit to El Salvador in 1982, when the country was torn apart by nightmarish civil war. ONLINE DETAILS12.