I had nearly finished reading Jon Krakauer’s INTO THIN AIR on the way to work this morning and I had to resist walking down the street with my nose in the book. This proved to be a wise choice when I was nearly plowed over in a crosswalk by an SUV inattentively making a right hand turn, and was saved by a quick leap backwards and a loud shout. Drivers of San Francisco — please be careful when there are literary agents in the crosswalk! California’s car cell phone ban cannot come soon enough.
But in any event, INTO THIN AIR is an amazing book!! I’m sure many of you have read it, but Krakauer’s step by step chronicle of his team’s ill-fated 1996 Everest expedition is one of the most perfect combinations of subject matter and incredible writing I have ever come across. Not only that, I have it on good authority that Krakauer is an extremely nice person and a pleasure to work with.
Krakauer really proves that it is not enough to have witnessed incredible events, you have to be a tremendous writer. Check and check.
So now I’m wondering: what is your favorite work of nonfiction based on actual events? This rules out general nonfiction, so I guess we’re looking at history, memoir, biography, journalism…. you get the idea.
Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl”
THE TENDER BAR by JR Moehringer. This Pulitzer winner is a very nice person and by all accounts a joy to work with.
California’s car cell phone ban cannot come soon enough.
YES!!!!
I can never remember my favorite anythings, so I don’t have a book to suggest, but I had to second that cell phone sentiment.
It’s not necessarily my favorite, but I wonder if Capote’s “In Cold Blood” would fall into this category? I suppose that is the debate about the book: is it fiction or nonfiction?
Another book that doesn’t quite fit the category but is amazing is “All Quiet On the Western Front.” Although it’s clearly not a memoir (or Remarque wouldn’t have been alive to write it), I don’t think there is a better (meaning heartbreaking and poignant) war book out there.
Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel. It’s a collection of the profiles he wrote when he worked for The New Yorker and a few of his short stories. (The profiles are stronger than the short stories.) I’ve probably read it twenty times.
“Surgeon on Iwo” by James Vedder. A first-hand account of Iwo Jima from a doctor with the 27th Marines. Grisly, but fascinating.
. . . your favorite work of nonfiction based on actual events?
Wait a minute. Isn’t all nonfiction based on actual events? Do you mean harrowing events? I think I see what you mean, and if I do, my book doesn’t fit.
I shall switch my vote to Angela’s Ashes. But I’m leaving the Joseph Mitchell one up ’cause it’s a book worth reading!
YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN and AKE by Wole Soyinka. I love him, and I love both stories. AKE is a childhood memoir and DAWN is regarding the whirlwind life he led writing and being in activist while studying in London, his being imprisoned, exile, Nigerian government (which…ahem has had its moments). Can’t help but grin to know that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature the same year I was born (’86). He’s a professor in Las Vegas and Los Angeles at the minute. OK, enough gushing.
You were walking? I thought people never walked in California Nathan. Just like how people in Toronto or Manhattan barely drive unless they must (too packed in).
The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France by Eric Jager
It reads well and provides lots of tangential history without slowing down the plot. More history should be written like this–stories of small events that capture the mundane details and larger political landscapes of their times.
“The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet’s Sacred Hidden Paradise” by Maichael McRae (an early writer for Outside magazine, as Krakauer was) is excellent and there’s a snarky cameo from David Breashears in it. For travel memoir, “Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia” was also very good. And, for anyone mildly obsessed with hermits as I am, “Cave in the Snow” is spectacular.
WILL THERE REALLY BE A MORNING by Frances Farmer
I love memoirs. There’s a lot of press right now about memoirs and where the line should be between fiction and non-fiction. I hated James Frey’s “memoir”, mainly because his writing sucked and he was so obviously full of himself. Augusten Burroughs also brought me to a state of boredom and disbelief. But I just started Pentimento, by Lillian Hellman, and, although I’d venture to say that this memoir is about as true as Frey’s, I have already forgiven her because of the great writing.
Some of the ones I liked were: Color of Water,
Ice Castles,
Out of Africa,
The Woman Warrior,
Lucky,
The Unreliable Truth,
Jill Ker Conway’s memoirs
My favorites, though, are:
Autobiography of a Face and Truth and Beauty, which must be read together in that order.
Out of Africa, because I adore Isak Dinesen.
Living to Tell the Tale by Garcia Marquez. Either his memoir is a total fabrication or all of his fantastic fiction is based on his real life. I can read any paragraph in that book and see a wholly developed story within it. He’s the man!
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a memoir for people who love books. I read it and Lolita and The Ambassador and The Great Gatsby as part of the journey, and it was a wonderful experience.
These memoirists are all people to whom I feel gratitude for the way they’ve shared themselves with me, whether the events of the story are fact or not.
Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place.
Truley amazing and inspiring!
Ship of Gold In the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder.
I don’t think I slept for three days.
Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, And the Modern World.
Yeah, I know; it’s a mighty long title.
But Johnson makes the dry facts of stopping an epidemic read like a mystery novel. It was fascinating.
I love “Colors of the Mountain” by Da Chen. This is from his web page…
“Colors of the Mountain is a classic story of triumph over adversity, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love, and a welcome introduction to an amazing young writer.
Da Chen was born in 1962, in the Year of Great Starvation. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution engulfed millions of Chinese citizens, and the Red Guard enforced Mao’s brutal communist regime. Chen’s family belonged to the despised landlord class, and his father and grandfather were routinely beaten and sent to labor camps, the family of eight left without a breadwinner. Despite this background of poverty and danger, and Da Chen grows up to be resilient, tough, and funny, learning how to defend himself and how to work toward his future. By the final pages, when his says his last goodbyes to his father and boards the bus to Beijing to attend college, Da Chen has become a hopeful man astonishing in his resilience and cheerful strength.”
Mr. Chen is a local author located in NY’s Hudson Valley. This has given me more than one opportunity to hear him speak. Like his book he is intelligent, humorous and very moving.
My favorite is probably Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. I’m a Russian history buff and Massie’s blend of fact and narrative are outstanding.
Also, everything I’ve ever read by David McCullough is excellent. I’m not a big American history guy, but McCullough is amazing, particularly in audiobook format. When you hear that voice from Ken Burn’s Civil War series, you feel compelled to listen.
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS and DRY both really got to me. I don’t write memoir or non-fiction, but reading these two back to back made me commit to writing.
Three Cups of Tea by David Oliver Renin and Greg Mortensen
The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg.
THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls
and
THE TENDER BAR by JR Moehringer
Couldn’t put either down.
Good one, Nathan. I’m getting all kinds of reading ideas.
Cam
I second The Hiding Place. It has been an inspiration to me through tough times.
Six Frigates, Ian Toll. Imagine if Patrick O’Brian had taught your U.S. history class in high school.
I’m not one much for history or memoir. This may be a failing.
However, I recently read Pierre Burton’s excellent “The Arctic Grail,” a history of the search for the North-West Passage and the North Pole.
He has a way of making characters come to as much life as the best fiction author.
Erik Larson’s, “The Devil in the White City,” a hybrid of the actual and the actual imagined. A story about when the World’s Fair shared a city with a serial killer. For those, like me, who thought the serial killer part would be the most interesting, be prepared to be surprised. The architecture of great minds behind this World’s Fair is fascinating, the birth of the ferris wheel and the zipper more awesome in the end than any force of evil.
I really enjoyed THE RAPE OF NANKING by the late Iris Chang. I met her after she’d written the book, when she came to the bookstore I’d worked at in San Francisco. She was this tiny but terrifically strong woman who broke the silence about one of the ugliest chapters of WWII, and the book itself is incredibly powerful. I highly recommend it.
(The typo in the previous post was unintentionally hilarious: The Rap of Nanking. Once I finished laughing, I corrected it.)