What are Your Favorite Creative Nonfiction Books?

1776 by David McCullough, anything by Joseph Ellis, and even though I might be wrong it doesn't belong in narrative (or creative) nonfiction, I put The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger in that category, as well as Stephen Ambrose.

I'm not sure if this counts, but how about The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton? It's a novel, but based on actual events.

allen

Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

AND

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

On Whale Island, by Daniel Hayes
Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough
A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson

Stew21 said:

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

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I LOVE that book, Stew.

Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
The Lost Art of Steam Heating - Dan Holouhan
Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

Seabiscuit.

Tri

"The Coming Plague", by Laurie Garrett
"The Making of the Atom Bomb" and "Dark Sun", by Richard Rhodes

I do have a soft spot for "Seabiscuit" also
Anything by Steven J. Gould

I forgot one... In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick

One I like is aimed more at probably younger ages is Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman.

I kinda like Into Thin Air and Into The Wild. Those might not be creative non-fiction per se, but they're still pretty darn dramatic in the storytelling. John Adams worked for me more than 1776, though they're still great books.

And then there's always Steinbeck's Log From The Sea of Cortez or Travels With Charley. I wish I was half as good as that . . .

Devil Ledbetter said:

I LOVE that book, Stew.

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

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Brilliant choice! I love Dave Sedaris.

I'm a big fan of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, Catherine Newman's Waiting for Birdy, and Andrea Buchanan's It's a Boy and It's a Girl anthologies.

I like that essay-ish feel, I guess....

I inhale Sedaris books whenever I can. They are on the constant reread list!

Sunnyside said:

I kinda like Into Thin Air and Into The Wild. Those might not be creative non-fiction per se, but they're still pretty darn dramatic in the storytelling.

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In my mine Krakauer is definitely creative, or narrative nonfiction.

Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. He got both sides of a war story. He went into Mogadishu to get the story from the militia. Crazy. A wonderful book.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. The classic.

A History of the Senses -- observation, research, felt response, insight; sort of a grand investigation of the idea of creative non-fiction. At least, that's how it worked for me.

Dan Brown's, 'The Da Vinci code,' would be classed as creative (bleh) nonfiction to me, as the best ideas in his book were taken from, 'The holy blood and the holy grail', (nonfiction) by M. Baigent and H. Lincoln


Elodie

Miles From Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure by Barbara Savage.

Best travel book ever.

Recent favorite:

In Search of Captain Zero by Allan Weisbecker, an aging surfer's Odyssey-like travels by road through Central America in search of his best friend.

His follow-up book, Can't You Get Along With Anyone, is a bit bloated and self-indulgent, but the first several chapters have a lot of interesting and opinionated things to say about the art of creative non-fiction itself. He blasts Augusten Burroughs, Frank McCourt and other memoirists for writing semi-fiction and marketing it as memoir. You can actually read the book for free online at http://www.banditobooks.com/ezine/ebook

As one reviewer said: "Can't You Get Along With Anyone is a writer's book about writing." It's also the story of his dysfunctional relationship with a nymphomaniac girlfriend, but you can skip over those bits.

I dare any non-fiction writer to read the first three chapters of this book, and not come away full of outrage and provocative thoughts about their own writing.

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas!

Traveling Mercies Anne Lemmott

What, exactly, is creative non-fiction? I'd thought it more along the lines of life stories, like Angela's Ashes -- creative because one has to recreate scenes and conversations to structure the story. Can anybody clear this up for me, so I'll know what category my story fits into?

Chrisla, I suppose I write it and I'm not entirely sure what the definition of creative nonfiction is, except I think it's the same as "narrative nonfiction," a term I prefer. Creative nonfiction sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Narrative nonfiction describes honest storytelling that should be engaging and depict real-life events as opposed to objective, straight reporting. Best I can tell, it can be first-person or third-person and, yes, scenes and conversations and details are meticulously reconstructed so that the story lives and breathes. Ideally.

My choices, to name a few:

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (collection of essays but narrative/creative nonfiction)

King of the World by David Remnick

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

I would say that the Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote and Richard Marchinko's autobiography. You have to admire a man willing to go to prison to put his life story out there for you.