Report please.

May 27, 2007 6:26 AM

Bookfilter. I'm looking for recommendations on great nonfiction writing by reporters.

Browsing through amazon.com's non fiction list is a bit unsatisfactory, especially in the "true crimes" section. There's a lot of five starred books that are supposed to be great, but I'm not looking for gore, or macho tales by mobsters breathlessly written down by a Rent-A-Hack.

I'm looking for great reporting, a story that's been fleshed out to perfection. I promise I won't get upset if the author isn't the greatest stylist in the world.

Examples I've enjoyed: a few books by Mark Bowden ('Black Hawk Down', 'Doctor Dealer', to a lesser extent: 'Bringing the Heat'); Robert Caro's writing on Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses, David Simon's 'Homicide' and 'The Corner'. 'Fast Food Nation' by Schlosser.

I like crime writing, but will read anything if it's well done, even books on American sports that I don't understand (I hear good things about 'Paper Lion'). Recommendations, HiveMind?

posted by NekulturnY to media & arts (48 comments total)

Two great non-fiction books written by reporters are:

"War is the force that gives us meaning" (Chris Hedges)
"Among the Believers" (VS Naipaul)

The former may be bit too documentary for your liking (regards mainly the Balkan wars as a starting point), but the Naipaul is a really interesting first-hand account of the Iranian revolution.
posted by mateuslee at 6:33 AM on May 27, 2007

"Dispatches" by Michael Herr is a true classic - it's about Vietnam.

"The Bang Bang Club" by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva - brilliant. It's about the fall of Apartheid.

"We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch. One of the finest non-fiction books ever written. It's about the Rwandan Genocide - th only book to have ever made me cry on the Tube.

There are many more. I'll try to think of some.
posted by WPW at 6:43 AM on May 27, 2007

'Enron: Smartest Guys In The Room' by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind who I believe both worked at Fortune magazine.
posted by PenDevil at 6:45 AM on May 27, 2007

If you're looking for "true crime", look no further than Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which inspired the tv show and later led to the creation of, by the author, "The Wire".
posted by mkn at 6:50 AM on May 27, 2007

Did you read The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson? It's the story of the Chicago World's Fair entwined with the story of a serial killer working in the city at the same time.

Have you read any Jon Krakauer? Under the Banner of Heaven is an interesting look at Fundamental Mormonism, and Into Thin Air and Into the Wild were interesting, too.

Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, was a really bleak look at ten years in the life of a poverty-stricken extended family.

Courtroom 302, by Steve Bogira, looks at a year in a Chicago courtroom. Also pretty bleak.

You also might find Michael Lewis's Moneyball to be interesting, about building a professional baseball team with a relatively low amount of money.

Not by a reporter, but I found Mindhunter, by John Douglas, to be really fascinating. It's the story of the genesis of the FBI profiling program.

If I think of anything else, I'll add it. Happy reading!
posted by sugarfish at 6:52 AM on May 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Our Guys" by Bernard Lefkowitz is a classic. The story of a mentally handicapped young woman in a posh New Jersey town; the young woman was raped by high school athletes, and Lefkowitz covers the story very thoroughly.
posted by brina at 6:54 AM on May 27, 2007

Off the top of my head (I'm not near my bookshelf right now)

Joan Didion--We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live (a collection of her first seven volumes of nonfiction. If you want just one, get Slouching Towards Bethlehem.)
Michael Lewis--The New New Thing (about Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics)
Tracy Kidder--The Soul of a New Machine

Seconding Herr's Dispatches, which is part of the Library of America two-volume set Reporting Vietnam. The Library of America collections of journalism are far and away the best you can buy for the price. There are three, and each is a two-volume set: Reporting World War II, Reporting Civil Rights, and Reporting Vietnam.
posted by Prospero at 6:55 AM on May 27, 2007

John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce is a remarkable book, and it certainly involves crime. The focus is on the logging industry in British Columbia, as well as a bizarre crime committed in the Haida Gwaii.
posted by sindark at 6:55 AM on May 27, 2007

I'm particularly fond of Jon Ronson's THEM: Adventures With Extremists.
posted by melorama at 6:59 AM on May 27, 2007

John McPhee's Uncommon Carriers is terrific.
posted by nicwolff at 7:02 AM on May 27, 2007

Joan Didion is the queen. The volume recommended by Prospero is impossible to beat, compiling an immense cross-section of her most important nonfiction work for peanuts.

A genre recommendation (featuring an extensive yet excellent list of its own): Creative nonfiction.
posted by mykescipark at 7:02 AM on May 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Another amazing, can't-put-it-down book is Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford (linked review is by famed security and crypto expert, Bruce Schneier).
posted by melorama at 7:08 AM on May 27, 2007

If you can stand another recommendation about genocide, I'd suggest "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Power. It's about the US and the concept of Genocide in the 20th century (starting with the Armenian).
posted by piratebowling at 7:11 AM on May 27, 2007

Common Ground and Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas are sprawling, gripping stories that wrestle with Big Issues in American History; race and schools in Boston for the former, the war between labor and capital and the taming of the West in the latter. (Big Trouble also starts with a murder, for your true crime fix.) As for true crime full stop, I've got to recommend Helter Skelter, the story of the Manson murders. Not as highbrow as Lukas, but one of the best books of its genre, I think.
posted by escabeche at 7:27 AM on May 27, 2007

Anything by Mike Sager.
posted by quentiniii at 7:44 AM on May 27, 2007

Anything by Janet Malcolm.
posted by jayder at 7:47 AM on May 27, 2007

I'm not sure how strictly you classify 'reporter' because there are some fine writers whose writing is mostly reporting, and who have already been mentioned above, so:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes about, uh, the making of the atomic bomb.
Cadillac Desert about water in the American west, by Marc Reisner.
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder is about Paul Farmer's attempts to build of a health care system in Haiti. In Among Schoolchildren, Kidder follows a 4th grade school teacher around for a year, and he does the same for a cop in Hometown. I don't think you can go wrong with anything else by Tracy Kidder.
The Curve of Binding Energy, Encounters With the Archdruid, The Control of Nature, Giving Good Weight, A Sense of Where You Are, and anything else by John McPhee.
Blind Man's Bluff, about submarine espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew.
posted by Killick at 8:09 AM on May 27, 2007

Dispatches by Michael Herr is an obvious choice. Add my voice to the chorus.

Classic Crimes by William Roughead is excellent. The book is a little uneven as the stories were written for publication over a number of years, however the first one is the best true crime story I have read.

A great book on Rwanda is Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld. This is a collection of interviews with members of one of the more industrious squads that worked a rural area of Rwanda. It deserves more attention than it has received.

This might not be the best choice for you so I mention it with that provision. In my opinion the best book on the Manson murders is The Family by Ed Sanders. He is a former member of the Fugees and founded Fuck You: A Journal of the Arts. He is a poet and the style that he uses to tell the Manson story is great. If you choose to read it, look around and get the older publication that has the chapter on the Process church. They sued him and the publisher. Editions after that law suit no longer include it. Be warned though, some think the style is highly annoying. Bugliosi, by virtue of his position, knows more of the actual facts of the case. Personally, I found his book was boring.
posted by BigSky at 8:10 AM on May 27, 2007

John Pilger.
posted by humblepigeon at 8:37 AM on May 27, 2007

Seconding "The Family," though a small quibble: Sanders was in the Fugs...
posted by AJaffe at 9:04 AM on May 27, 2007

Anything by A. J. Liebling, especially The Earl of Louisiana.

Wendell Steavenson's Stories I Stole, a fascinating subjective account of living and drinking in post-Soviet Georgia.

Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown, about a widely unreported Wild West phase in the history of telecommunications. This might satisfy your taste for crime reporting.

posted by aws17576 at 9:14 AM on May 27, 2007

Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God - Jonah Blank. Journalist, author and anthropologist.
posted by adamvasco at 9:19 AM on May 27, 2007

Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death and Kind and Usual Punishment are very good.
posted by goo at 9:34 AM on May 27, 2007

AJaffe,

Thank you for pointing that out. I will be shaking my head over that more than once today.

It's been a few years, you know?
posted by BigSky at 9:39 AM on May 27, 2007

Here's a bit more which is dated but extremely good - New Journalism by Tom Wolfe opened my eyes about this type of writing in 1974. A little more about "New Journalism" as it was then called. And also seconding Michael Herr and John Pilger.
posted by adamvasco at 9:48 AM on May 27, 2007

A Civil Action
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Gideon's Trumpet
posted by alms at 10:14 AM on May 27, 2007

I just finished First Into Nagasaki by George Weller. These are the censored dispatches he in 45 and 46. He thought they were long lost, but his son found them after George died.
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 10:20 AM on May 27, 2007

Seconding the John McPhee. He's great.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:34 AM on May 27, 2007

I have a real fondness for Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, even though it is half-ethnography, half-reportage about a subculture that organizes around a board game.
posted by yellowcandy at 12:09 PM on May 27, 2007

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran Xue. The author was basically the first talk radio host in China - talking about yourself, especially women talking about themselves, was completely radical. There's a lot of stuff about the censorship she was under, and the book contains some of the stories she couldn't air at the time (she now lives in England). It's a bit uneven, but completely fascinating.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:42 PM on May 27, 2007

Apologies if she's been mentioned, but Salon.com reporter Mary Roach writes TERRIFIC non-fiction. In particular, "Stiff" is one to check out. She has a very approachable, intelligent style, highlighed by her incisive dry wit.

Though it may seem unsavory, "Stiff" is about what happens to our bodies after we die. Not just the science of decomposition, though that's in there, but where exactly you might end up if you donate your body to science, and more. Cracking good read, handled with the exactly appropriate amount of both humor and reverence.
posted by Lieber Frau at 12:50 PM on May 27, 2007

1) John McPhee, John McPhee, John McPhee. One of my personal favorites is In Control of Nature, but that's kind of like trying to pick your favorite niece or nephew.
2) Anything by Tracy Kidder, especially House or Hometown, for me.
3) I'm kind of astonished that no one's recommended Hunter S. Thompson, yet. Sure, he can be over the top, but some of his earlier stuff, like Hell's Angels, did as much to redefine journalistic non-fiction as much as anything Wolfe wrote. (Not to diminish what Wolfe did--I'm just sayin').
posted by LairBob at 12:52 PM on May 27, 2007

THis is great. I'm learning a lot. I like Ryszard Kapuscinky's books on Africa, and Imperium. But I love travel writing. Annie Dillard is always a good bet, too.

I also recommend McMillian's history of 1919. Oh, and a very odd but interesting book on Envir Hoxha's double, but I can't think of the name or the author. Anyone?
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 1:55 PM on May 27, 2007

Charlie Wilson's War, George Crile

The Men Who Stare At Goats, Jon Ronson

Stasiland, Anna Funder

The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman

Seconding Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air
posted by the duck by the oboe at 2:50 PM on May 27, 2007

Damn mateuslee, I was gonna come with the VS Naipaul. Instead, I'll second it. Among the Believers is a fantastic book, and not just about the Iranian revolution. He goes to Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, all in the early 80s. It's pretty fascinating.
posted by autojack at 4:44 PM on May 27, 2007

Up in the Old Hotel and My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell.
posted by zadcat at 5:49 PM on May 27, 2007

It's a thick one, but Gwynn Dyer's War (updated in 2004) is the most amazing thing I have read about violence and human nature. Fantastic insights into personal and national psychology as well as a thorough explanation of the technology of war and how each new development affected how wars were fought.
posted by saucysault at 7:12 PM on May 27, 2007

This post linked to, um, lots of stuff, but among it a book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins about the partition of India.

I haven't read that book, but I did read their "Is Paris Burning?", which was a comprehensive report on how the uprising in Paris happened in 1945, how the Germans and Allies reacted, over the span of under one week. Loads and loads of interviews with resistance members, American generals, German generals, ordinary Parisians, are spun into a truly thrilling story. It was made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas in the 1960s.
posted by ibmcginty at 7:17 PM on May 27, 2007

Jacob Riis: How the Other Half Lives
John Hersey: Hiroshima
Neil Sheehan: A Bright Shining Lie
posted by rob511 at 10:48 PM on May 27, 2007

Does Seabiscuit count? It wasn't the greatest stylistically, but it was a page turner.
posted by small_ruminant at 12:21 AM on May 28, 2007

A Cold Case by Philip Gourevitch has the crime element that you are looking for and is brilliantly written. Even better is that it can be easily read in a few hours.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:37 AM on May 28, 2007

Love this thread...there's always so much more to explore. Here's my three cents:

Charlie Wilson's War - The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, by George Crile (in Australia and the UK it's published as My Enemy's Enemy)
A ripping yarn, although at first I was a bit suspicious of Crile having been a 60 minutes producer and all, but he truly delivers a mind (and back) blowing story.

Dangerous Waters - Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas by John S. Burnett
Who knew that supertankers, cargo vessels, passenger ferries, and cruise ships are attacked regularly? I certainly didn't at the time. Great writing, and excellent reporting. The book actually came about because Burnett, who had been an investigative reporter, was attacked by pirates himself while sailing alone across the South China Sea. And it's not just the cheap thrill of modern-day piracy, but the sneak peaks through detailed descriptions of everyday life onboard of enormous tankers (run by only a handful of people) of this whole "naval industry" out there that really fascinated me.

The Ends of the Earth - A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan. Well, that's my copy, Amazon has The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
After I'd read The Coming Anarchy a couple of years ago (first published in The Atlantic of February 1994) I was scared and intrigued. Kaplan argues that the Hobbesian circumstances in third-world countries: overpopulation, environmental degradation, and social chaos will find their way to comfy, air-conditioned first-world countries sooner or later. The Ends of the Earth expounds on that.
According to Wikipedia, one of my favourite authors Andrew Bacevich said about him: "If Kaplan is a romantic, he is also a populist and a reactionary." and I can't argue with that, but that doesn't mean he's not a great read and you shouldn't pay attention to what he says.
posted by ponystyle at 3:24 AM on May 28, 2007

Anything by William Langeweische or John McPhee.
posted by MarkAnd at 6:04 AM on May 28, 2007

Taylor Branch's three-volume America in the King Years: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge.

Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:08 AM on May 28, 2007

40+ comments in, and no mention of Capote's In Cold Blood?
posted by boombot at 5:08 PM on May 28, 2007

¤ This month's History Book Club catalog offers Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story by Ruth Gruber. I'm considering ordering a used copy through Amazon.com.
¤ I second the recommendation of adding Hunter S. Thompson to the reading list, particularly Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72.
¤ You might also enjoy works from cultural anthropologists like The Yanomamo (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology) by Napoleon Chagnon.
posted by bonobo at 6:30 PM on May 28, 2007

I. F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates.

Seriously.
posted by merelyglib at 8:56 AM on May 29, 2007

Philip Gourevitch's A Cold Case is a great (though quite short) read. Ideal for a a Saturday afternoon or a few hour flight or train journey, it delves behind the headlines of just another mob murder in 60s New York and becomes much more than the sum of it's parts. Gourevitch's book on the Rwandan Genocide, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed along with our families is also a fantastic, though deeply depressing, read.

Andrew O'Hagan's The Missing which is basically about people who have gone missing in Britain is fantastic. My mediocre description really does not do the book justice. I would urge you to seek it out.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 3:50 AM on July 7, 2007