I’m forever making lists of books I love. I have a long list of creative nonfiction books that I recommend my students look at. But lately I’ve been getting into reading theory and commentary on nonfiction as a form, so I’ll also start a running list of those “books on books.” I feel a bit behind in learning about this stuff, so my list is a bid rudimentary, and I’d love suggestions!

Leigh Gilmore. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Cornell University Press, 2001.

Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Writing a Woman’s Life. Ballantine, 1988.

Carl H. Klaus. The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay. University of Iowa Press, 2010.

Thomas Larson. The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading & Writing Personal Narrative. Ohio University Press, 2007.

Dan Lehman. Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction Over the Edge. Ohio State University Press, 1997.

Susan Sontag. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador, 2003.

Ned Stuckey-French. The American Essay in the American Century. University of Missouri Press, 2011.

Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson, eds. Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Jean-Guy Goulet & Bruce Granville Miller, eds. Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Blakey Vermeule. Why Do We Care About Literary Characters? Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Jennifer Jensen Wallach. Closer to the Truth than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow. University of Georgia Press, 2008.

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Nonfiction in a few categories that I don’t regularly have my students read but that I find drawn to…

Narrative Nonfiction on Science

• Douglas Hofstadter. I Am A Strange Loop.
• Evelyn Fox Keller. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. Freeman, 1983.
• Atul Gawande. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science