100 Best Nonfiction Books -- Three Lists

Prof. Graves’s Idiosyncratic List of Literary Nonfiction

(now with colored comments)


Hunter S. Thompson
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
-Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
-The Great Shark Hunt
-Hell’s Angels
**took reportage to places it had never been

Tom Wolfe
-Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby
-The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
-Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
-The Right Stuff
**the guy who both coined and embodied The New Journalism

Al Stump
-profile of Ty Cobb
**many people consider this the greatest sports profile ever written. It is.

Mikal Gilmore
-Shot in the Heart

Harry Crews
-Blood and Grits
-A Childhood
**I actually think Crews nonfiction is his best stuff. A Childhood may be the best autobiography I have ever read.

Charles Willeford
-A Guide for the Undehemorrhoided
-Something About A Soldier
**Willeford was a terrific writer of pulp crime thrillers, but these two books show a master craftsman at work.

Susan Orlean
-The Orchid Thief

Gay Talese
-Fame & Obscurity
-Honor Thy Father
-more
**Talese more or less made an ass of himself with his highly publicized book on sex. His early stuff, however, still sings.

Tom Piazza
-True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass
**I think the piece I wrote on the first Elvis impersonator, Bill Haney, may be my finest piece of nonfiction. It appeared in the same issue as this article in The Oxford American. But it wasn't my piece people talked about. It was Piazza's piece on Jimmy Martin, bluegrass pioneer and madman.

Kenneth Tynan
-Show People
**His piece on Louise Brooks has intimidated me from ever pushing forward with my own piece on her. His is a classic.

Truman Capote
-In Cold Blood
-Music for Chameleons
-various other
**work of genius.

Norman Mailer
-Armies of the Night
-The Executioner’s Song

Robert Mason
-Chickenhawk
**The best book I have read on the Vietnam experience.

Stanley Booth
-Rythm Oil
-Dance With the Devil
**some of the stories are, shall we say, apocryphal, but that doesn't stop them from being great.

Nick Tosches
-Hellfire
-Dino
-new book on opium trade
**Tosches can be very good, and he can be VERY bad. The bio of Dean Martin absolves him of many sins.

Jim Bouton
-Ball Four
**This book is about so much more than baseball. A touchstone of sorts about the American dream.

Hampton Sides
-Stomping Grounds

Robert Gordon
-It Came from Memphis

Jim Thompson
-Hardcore

Bob Greene
-Be True To Your School
-Billion Dollar Baby

Joe McGuinness
-Going To Extremes
-The Selling of the President

Joe Eszterhas
-Nark
-Charley Simpson’s Apocalypse
-American Rhapsody

A.J. Liebling
-anything

Joseph Mitchell
-The Old Hotel

Terry Southern
-Red Dirt Marijuana

James Conaway
-Memphis Afternoons

George Plimpton
-various

Joan Didion
-Slouching Towards Bethlehem
-The White Album

Michael Herr
-Dispatches

Rex Reed
-Do You Sleep In the Nude?
**Reed has fallen from the firmament and fallen hard. But some of these profiles show that this simpering former talk show mainstay had talent once upon a time.

Robert Sapolsky
-A Primate’s Memoir
**Sapolsky is a neuroscientist who has studied one troop of baboons in Kenya for over 20 years. Boy does he have stories to tell. What a gifted writer! All science writers should aspire to such literary heights.

Lucy Greely
-The Autobiography of a Face
**A haunting book about Lucy's lifetime ordeal with cancer of the jaw. Sad, wistful, and beautiful. She was a teacher of mine at Bennington. A few years ago when she learned her cancer had returned, she killed herself.

Kenneth Anger
-Hollywood Babylon I and II
Took Hollywood scandals to a bitchy, unforgettable, artistic high.

Criticism
-Reverse Angle by John Simon
-1001 Nights at the Movies by Pauline Kael
-The Castle of Indolence by Thomas M. Disch
-various by music critic Dave Marsh

Books on Writing
-The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
-The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick
-Paradigms Lost by John Simon

**Rolling Stone magazine probably published more creative journalism in its early heyday than any other publication. Worth getting, but hard to find, are various anthologies the magazine put together over the years. Especially worth seeking out are the Rolling Stone articles on Bobby Fischer and Mark Spitz.


100 Best Nonfiction Books
As Chosen by The Modern Library


**These are some moldy oldies. I suppose it is good that someone has created a pantheon of great nonfiction writing, but these lean far more towards historical than literary importance, in my judgment.



1. THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams*

2. THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James*

3. UP FROM SLAVERY by Booker T. Washington*

4. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf

5. SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson

6. SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot

7. THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson

8. SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov

9. THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by H. L. Mencken

10. THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes

11. THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas

12. THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Frederick Jackson Turner

13. BLACK BOY by Richard Wright
**I agree with this one.

14. ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL by E. M. Forster

15. THE CIVIL WAR by Shelby Foote*
**Local boy makes good. It doesn't hurt that he also happens to be on the Modern Library selection committee.

16. THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara Tuchman

17. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Isaiah Berlin

18. THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr

19. NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin
**Baldwin was a terrific essayist. He deserves deeper reading than the obligatory gestures in college lit. classes.

20. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein*
**Brownies anyone?

21. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by William Strunk and E. B. White

22. AN AMERICAN DILEMMA by Gunnar Myrdal

23. PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell

24. THE MISMEASURE OF MAN by Stephen Jay Gould

25. THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP by Meyer Howard Abrams

26. THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE by Peter B. Medawar

27. THE ANTS by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson

28. A THEORY OF JUSTICE by John Rawls

29. ART AND ILLUSION by Ernest H. Gombrich

30. THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by E. P. Thompson

31. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W.E.B. Du Bois*

32. PRINCIPIA ETHICA by G. E. Moore

33. PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION by John Dewey

34. ON GROWTH AND FORM by D'Arcy Thompson*

35. IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein*

36. THE AGE OF JACKSON, Arthur Schlesinger by Jr.

37. THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes

38. BLACK LAMB and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West

39. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by W. B. Yeats

40. SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA by Joseph Needham

41. GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves

42. HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell

43. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain
**Seems to me there ought to be more Twain here.

44. CHILDREN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles

45. A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee

46. THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY by John Kenneth Galbraith

47. PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson

48. THE GREAT BRIDGE by David McCullough

49. PATRIOTIC GORE by Edmund Wilson

50. SAMUEL JOHNSON by Walter Jackson Bate

51. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
**A great, important book, but highly credible biographers dispute much of the mythmaking here.

52. THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe

53. EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey*

54. WORKING by Studs Terkel

55. DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron

56. THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION by Lionel Trilling

57. THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston Churchill

58. OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen*

59. JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME by Dumas Malone

60. IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN by William Carlos Williams

61. CADILLAC DESERT by Marc Reisner

62. THE HOUSE OF MORGAN by Ron Chernow

63. THE SWEET SCIENCE by A. J. Liebling
**The classic on boxing.

64. THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES by Karl Popper

65. THE ART OF MEMORY by Frances A. Yates

66. RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM by R. H. Tawney

67. A PREFACE TO MORALS by Walter Lippmann

68. THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE by Jonathan D. Spence

69. THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas S. Kuhn

70. THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW by C. Vann Woodward

71. THE RISE OF THE WEST by William H. McNeill

72. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels

73. JAMES JOYCE by Richard Ellmann

74. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE by Cecil Woodham-Smith

75. THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY by Paul Fussell

76. THE CITY IN HISTORY by Lewis Mumford

77. BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson

78. WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King by Jr.

79. THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris

80. STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY by Erwin Panofsky

81. THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan

82. THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND by George Dangerfield

83. VERMEER by Lawrence Gowing

84. A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan

85. WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham

86. THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff
**This book, like The Duke of Deception by his brother Geoffrey Wolff, is wildly overrated. A good, proficient journeyman book, but not one of the top 100 nonfiction books of the English language.

87. A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY by G. H. Hardy

88. SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman

89. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard

90. THE GOLDEN BOUGH by James George Frazer

91. SHADOW AND ACT by Ralph Ellison

92. THE POWER BROKER by Robert A. Caro

93. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION by Richard Hofstadter

94. THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY by William Appleman Williams

95. THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE by Herbert Croly

96. IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote*

97. THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm

98. THE TAMING OF CHANCE by Ian Hacking

99. OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS by Anne Lamott

100. MELBOURNE by Lord David Cecil


100 Best Nonfiction Books
As Chosen by The Modern Library's Reader Poll

1. THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS by AYN RAND
**Ballot stuffing, pure and simple.

2. DIANETICS:THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH by L. RON HUBBARD
**How much money did it cost the Scientologists for this?

3. OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND by LEONARD PEIKOFF

4. 101 THINGS TO DO TIL THE REVOLUTION by CLAIRE WOLFE

5. THE GOD OF THE MACHINE by ISABEL PATERSON

6. AYN RAND: A SENSE OF LIFE by MICHAEL PAXTON

7. THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE by JULIAN SIMON

8. ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON by HENRY HAZLITT

9. SEND IN THE WACO KILLERS by VIN SUPRYNOWICZ

10. MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME by JOHN R. LOTT

11. PSYCHIATRY: THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL by BRUCE WISEMAN

12. FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS by G. HANCOCK

13. CLASSICAL INDIVIDUALISM: THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF EACH HUMAN BEING by TIBOR MACHAN

14. FREE TO CHOOSE by MILTON AND ROSE FRIEDMAN

15. AIN'T NOBODY'S BUSINESS IF YOU DO by PETER MCWILLIAMS

16. THE ROAD TO SERFDOM by F. A. HAYEK

17. FREEDOM IN CHAINS by JAMES BOVARD

18. AMERICA'S GREAT DEPRESSION by MURRAY N. ROTHBARD

19. THE ROOSEVELT MYTH by JOHN T. FLYNN

20. THE TRUE BELIEVER by ERIC HOFFER

21. VINDICATING THE FOUNDERS by THOMAS WEST

22. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE by CARL L. BECKER

23. COGNITIVE THERAPY AND THE EMOTIONAL DISORDERS by AARON T. BECK

24. DEATH BY GOVERNMENT by R. J. RUMMEL

25. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by VIRGINIA WOOLF

26. LONGITUDE by DAVA SOBEL

27. ORDINARILY SACRED by LYNDA SEXSON

28. SPEAK, MEMORY by VLADIMIR NABOKOV

29. THE ART OF MEMORY by FRANCES YATES

30. DUMBING US DOWN by JOHN TAYLOR GATTO

31. THE GOLDEN BOUGH by JAMES FRAZER

32. UNDAUNTED COURAGE: MERIWETHER LEWIS, THOMAS JEFFERSON, AND THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN WEST by STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

33. A MODERN PROPHET by HAROLD KLEMP

34. THE FLUTE OF GOD by PAUL TWITCHELL

35. REAL PRESENCES by GEORGE STEINER

36. OUT OF AFRICA by ISAK DINESEN

37. WAYS OF SEEING by JOHN BERGER

38. THE SHADOW UNIVERSITY: THE BETRAYAL OF LIBERTY ON AMERICA'S CAMPUSES by ALAN CHARLES KORS

39. PROPERTY MATTERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE by JAMES V. DE LONG

40. STORMING HEAVEN by JAY STEVENS

41. THE TEXAN by C. S. BARRIOS

42. HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by GEORGE ORWELL

43. THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM JAMES

44. HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS by DARRELL HUFF

45. BUT IS IT TRUE? by AARON WILDAVSKY

46. A MATHEMATICIAN READS THE NEWSPAPER by JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

47. ANATOMY OF CRITICISM by NORTHROP FRYE

48. THE MAINSPRING OF HUMAN PROGRESS by HENRY GRADY WEAVER

49. MODERN TIMES by PAUL JOHNSON

50. MEN TO MATCH MY MOUNTAINS by IRVING STONE

51. THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by HENRY ADAMS

52. THE GREAT BRIDGE by DAVID MCCULLOUGH

53. AMERICAN GAY by STEPHEN O. MURRAY

54. THE DOUBLE HELIX by JAMES D. WATSON

55. THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by FRANK KERMODE

56. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by ELAINE PAGELS

57. EROS THE BITTERSWEET by ANNE CARSON

58. THE WESTERN CANON by HAROLD BLOOM

59. THE WHITE GODDESS by ROBERT GRAVES

60. HEALING OUR WORLD by MARY RUWART

61. SILENT SPRING by RACHEL CARSON

62. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by ANNIE DILLARD

63. SEXUAL PERSONAE by CAMILLE PAGLIA
**I enjoy tinkering around with her ideas, but as a writer Paglia frequently simply bores.

64. THINK AND GROW RICH by NAPOLEON HILL

65. A LIFE OF ONE'S OWN by DAVID KELLEY

66. DOORS OF PERCEPTION by ALDOUS HUXLEY

67. THE DISCOVERY OF FREEDOM by ROSE WILDER LANE

68. MORE LIBERTY MEANS LESS GOVERNMENT by WALTER WILLIAMS

69. LIBERTARIANISM: A PRIMER by DAVID BOAZ

70. BEYOND LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE by WILLIAM MADDOX AND STUART LILIE

71. A CONFLICT OF VISIONS: IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF POLITICAL STRUGGLES by THOMAS SOWELL

72. PARLIAMENT OF WHORES by P. J. O'ROURKE

73. SEPARATING SCHOOL AND STATE: HOW TO LIBERATE AMERICA'S FAMILIES by SHELDON RICHMAN

74. THE FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES by VIRGINIA POSTREL

75. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by WILLIAM STRUNK AND E. B. WHITE

76. ORIENTALISM by EDWARD SAID

77. ECOTERROR by RON ARNOLD

78. WHY GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK by HARRY BROWNE

79. OUT OF THE CRISIS by W. EDWARDS DEMING

80. NOT OUT OF AFRICA by MARY LEFKOWITZ

81. THE END OF RACISM by DINESH D'SOUZA

82. BEHIND THE MASK by IAN BURUMA

83. IN A DARK WOOD by ALSTON CHASE

84. PRIVATE PARTS by HOWARD STERN
**I confess, I read this. And it's not bad. The movie, however, is downright good.

85. THE TELEPHONE BOOK by AVITAL RONELL

86. THE MINUTEMAN: RESTORING AN ARMY OF THE PEOPLE by GARY HART

87. WAKING AND DREAMING by JOSEPH HART

88. THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD by LANA CANTRELL

89. RADICAL SON by DAVID HOROWITZ
**This goofball!!!!??????

90. UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN by SUSAN SONTAG
**Sominex between two covers.

91. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by ALEX HALEY AND MALCOLM X

92. A FEELING FOR BOOKS by JANICE RADWAY

93. THE HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES by JOSEPH CAMPBELL

94. THE JOB by WILLIAM BURROUGHS
**I am shocked this made it. I have the book, like it, but Burroughs is such an outrageously out there thinker, that this will only appeal to lunatics like me.

95. SILENT INTERVIEWS by SAMUEL R. DELANY

96. SLATS GROBNIK AND SOME OTHER FRIENDS by MIKE ROYKO
**Read this and understand why he had such a devoted following.

97. RISE OF THE UNMELTABLE ETHNICS by MICHAEL NOVACK

98. REVERSE ANGLE by JOHN SIMON
**How did this make it? I thought I was the only person who admitted liking John Simon.

99. PLACING MOVIES by JONATHON ROSENBAUM

100. RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING by PATRICK J BUCHANAN
**Read it. Liked it. Like him. Disagree violently with much of his social agenda. He hit a new low in trying to discredit the war record of John Kerry. Newsflash for Pat: He served, you didn't. Shut up.