Literary Journalism: A Reader

Wadsworth, 2000

Click on the cover to search for a copy. It’s hard to find.

This was another book that grew from a class reader, this one prepared for my literary journalism course.

When Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism went out of print, we went scrambling for a suitable replacement. Finding none, we created our own.

The other half of this “we” was my colleague Jean Chance. We shared teaching duties on our literary journalism courses (undergraduate and graduate versions) and did our best to pull together some of the best writing we could find by some of the greatest journalists of the century.

Here’s the table of contents:

I. Prologue: Two Stories of War

Ernie Pyle The Story of Captain Waskow
John Hersey The Unforgettable Fire

II. Readings in Literary Journalism, 1960-2000

John Updike Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
Terry Southern Twirling at Ole Miss
Tom Wolfe King of the Status Dropouts
Truman Capote Confession
George Plimpton Series of Downs
Gay Talese Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
Norman Mailer The Theater of Ideas
Michael Herr Hell Sucks
Joan Didion A California Dream
Hunter S. Thompson Chitty and the Boo-Hoo
Nora Ephron The Littlest Nixon
Gail Sheehy Redpants and Sugarman
Roger Angell The Sixth Game
Jessica Mitford Checks and Balances
Selwyn Raab A Good Little Girl
Edna Buchanan Husbands of the Widow Elkin
Randy Shilts Patient Zero
Maria Vesperi The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Leigh Montville You are Always a Kid
Molly Ivins Soap Opera City
P.J. O’Rourke Accepting Chaos
Marie Brenner I Never Sang for My Mother
Rick Bragg Prisoners of Age
Nancy Shulins Tender Mercies