Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

by David Foster Wallace

This exuberantly praised--and uproariously funny--first collection of nonfiction pieces by one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time--the author of "Infinite Jest"--"reconfirms Mr. Wallace's stature as one of his generation's preeminent talents" ("New York Times") 5-city author tour. Print ads .

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

by Joan Didion

Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. These essays, keynoted by an extraordinary report on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, all reflect that, in one way or another, things are falling apart,... (more)

The Vintage Mencken (Vintage)

by H. L. Mencken

The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page."

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

by James Agee, Walker Evans

A passionate literary innovator, eloquent in language and uncompromising in his social observation and his pursuit of emotional truth, James Agee (1909- 1955) excelled as novelist, critic, journalist, and screenwriter. In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit. This volume collects his fiction along with his... (more)

In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

by Lee Gutkind

Twenty-five arresting selections from the groundbreaking journal that defined a genre. Creative nonfiction, also known as narrative nonfiction, liberated journalism by inviting writers to dramatize, interpret, speculate, and even re-create their subjects. Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished on this new ground, all originally published in the journal he founded, Creative Nonfiction , now... (more)

Tell It Slant

by Brenda Miller

Breathe life into your nonfiction writing using the wisdom and advice in this inspirational guide every writer should own When the poet Emily Dickinson wrote, "Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant," she provided today’s writers of creative nonfiction some sound advice: tell the truth but don’t become mere transcribers of day-to-day life. Artistic truth offers a depth and vibrancy that goes beyond the... (more)

A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton

A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton

by John McPhee

When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are , McPhee’s first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone... (more)

Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America

Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America

by Dan Savage

In Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Dan Savage eviscerates the right-wing conservatives as he commits each of the Seven Deadly Sins himself (or tries to) and finds those everyday Americans who take particular delight in their sinful pursuits. Among them: Greed: Gamblers reveal secrets behind outrageous fortune. Lust: "We're swingers!"-you won't believe who's doing it. Anger: Texans shoot off some rounds and... (more)

The White Album

by Joan Didion

First published in 1979, The White Album is a mosaic of the late sixties and seventies. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a Balck Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty's museum, the romance of water in an arid landscape, and the swirl and confusion of the sixties. With commanding sureness of mood and... (more)

Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How... (more)

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

by Hunter S. Thompson

The author's harrowing and critically acclaimed first book chronicles his year riding with the Hell's Angels and other motorcycle gangs, an "experiment" that ended when he was beaten nearly to death by a group of Angels. 20,000 first printing. NYT.

The John McPhee Reader

by John McPhee

The John McPhee Reader , first published in 1976, is comprised of selections from the author’s first twelve books. In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are ; a decade later, he had published eleven others. His fertility, his precision and grace as a stylist, his wit and uncanny brilliance in choosing subject matter, his crack storytelling skills have made him into one of our best... (more)

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

by Anne Fadiman

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction When three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong,... (more)

In Cold BloodTruman Capote

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Capote's riveting re-creation of events surrounding the 1959 murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, covers the subsequent police investigation and the capture, trial, and execution of the two young murderers. 2 cassettes.

Hiroshima

by John Hersey

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. This book tells what happened on that day, told through the memoirs of survivors.

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Susan Orlean

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. From Florida’s swamps to its courtrooms, the New Yorker writer follows one deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man’s possibly criminal pursuit of an endangered flower. Determined to clone the rare ghost orchid, Polyrrhiza lindenii,... (more)

Nickel and Dimed

On (Not) Getting by in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Ni ckel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let... (more)

Encounters with the Archdruid

by John McPhee

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a... (more)

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

by John McPhee

This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors.

Fraud: Essays

by David Rakoff

From This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to. In his debut... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: literary journalism

by David Foster Wallace

by Joan Didion

by H. L. Mencken

by James Agee, Walker Evans

by Lee Gutkind

by Brenda Miller

by John McPhee

by Dan Savage

by Joan Didion

by Jon Krakauer

by Hunter S. Thompson

by John McPhee

by Anne Fadiman

by Truman Capote

by John Hersey

by Susan Orlean

On (Not) Getting by in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

by John McPhee

by John McPhee

by David Rakoff