Recommend a non-fiction author who has a style like Anthony Bourdain?

June 17, 2013 8:53 AM

Recommend a non-fiction author who has a style like Anthony Bourdain?

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain had to be one of the most entertaining non-fiction books which I've recently read. Bourdain was able to bring the reader into the world of the New York restaurant business in an enthralling way. He did this with intelligence, humor, and deep insight into his fellow human beings.

Are their any other non-fiction authors who have the same style as Anthony Bourdain describing their working lives?

posted by jacobean to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Oliver Sacks -- totally different, he's a neurologist, but he brings a similar feel to Kitchen Confidential and for me at least it scratches the same itch.
posted by pie ninja at 8:56 AM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I highly recommend "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford. It reminded me very much of Kitchen Confidential in both subject matter and writing style. Loved it!
posted by scottatdrake at 8:59 AM on June 17, 2013 [11 favorites]

Also: Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. The author's working life isn't the focus, but it is part of the story he's telling, and he gets into the working lives of many of the people he's interviewing and working with.
posted by pie ninja at 9:04 AM on June 17, 2013

George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:05 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Undertakings, by Thomas Lynch, is the most engaging account of the mortuary that you'll ever read.

In the same vein, don't discount Mary Roach's oeuvre -- I think Stiff is her best, but you basically can't go wrong with her.

Pulphead, by John Jeremiah Sullivan, while not specifically workplace related, will delight you.

And you'll be surprised and pleased when you read Chuck Palahniuk's collection of essays, Stranger Than Fiction, which I think surpasses his fiction by far.
posted by janey47 at 9:29 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think you'd like Class by Paul Fussell
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:31 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Jacob Tomsky wrote a book called Heads in Beds about his work in the hotel industry, which owes very much to Bourdain in its writing style. You can read an excerpt at Salon.com.
posted by matildaben at 9:44 AM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I love Oliver Sacks too. For more writing about work, I liked Gig as a glimpse into a whole host of different kinds of work. Bill Bryson's work has the autobiographical quality of dipping into a particular cultural experience that you may enjoy. You also might like some of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction essays, which tend to take on observing a particular cultural experience as kind of an outsider, but in the most wonderfully quirky, intelligent metacognitive way imaginable. You might also like Tracy Kidder's work, particularly House and Among School Children focusing on everything that goes into building a house, and teaching one classroom, respectively.
posted by goggie at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2013

Paul Theroux is a travel writer among other things. I think his style is very similar to Bourdain's... but maybe darker and more critical of humanity.
posted by matty at 10:15 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Chuck Thompson is worth a look. Smile When You're Lying was my introduction to him.
posted by Atom12 at 11:02 AM on June 17, 2013

Seconding Heads in Beds -- it also struck me as very Bourdain-esque.
posted by Mo' Money Moe Bandy at 1:09 PM on June 17, 2013

Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It.
Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster.
P. J. O'Rourke's Holidays in Hell.
Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places.
Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Will Self's Junk Mail.
Francis Tapon's The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.
Jill Lawless's Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia.
Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:00 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year is Esme Raji Codell's memoir of her first year of teaching--she gets hired with her freshly earned degree to work in an inner city elementary school. It's a funny, engaging look inside the classroom; Codell makes some newbie mistakes and has to learn on the job, but she also has good instincts, and she's quite the fierce advocate for her students when dealing with a screwy school system.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:28 PM on June 17, 2013

Positively Fifth Street by James McManus--could NOT put it down! He goes to Las Vegas to cover some kind of murder thing and ends up entering the World Series of Poker.

Also, though it doesn't have the same sort of rascally Bourdain feel, I was completely enthralled by The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr (I remember reading it right after The Da Vinci Code and thinking TEOS was WAY more of a pageturner!)
posted by exceptinsects at 1:32 PM on June 18, 2013