Book Bag: Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd on The Art of Nonfiction

Colorful stylists, whatever their other virtues, make dangerous models. Aspiring writers might look instead to the pure. Here are six works of nonfiction to cleanse the palate of the reader dining on too-rich prose.

Reporting
By Lillian Ross

This is the collection in which Ross’s classic profile of Hemingway appears—as fresh as it was in 1950 and more valuable, especially for its preservation of the literary manners of a disappeared era. It offers reassuring evidence that good journalism doesn’t date.

The Duke of Deception
By Geoffrey Wolff

In his portrait of a con-man father, Wolff writes a memoir of perfect integrity. Wolff is honest about the limitations of memory, eschews invented scenes and dialogue, and produces a completely trustworthy and very entertaining book.

Better
By Atul Gawande

It may be disconcerting that a gifted writer spends much of his working day performing endocrine surgery. But here is the remarkable thing: Gawande, without disowning his medical knowledge, manages in his lucid prose to assume the essential role of the essayist: not expert but eternal student.

Encounters With the Archdruid
By John McPhee

With this extended profile of the late environmentalist David Brower, McPhee creates story out of what might seem mere conversation, and gives us not only a deep and nuanced portrait but an illumination of issues that, with different players, persist 40 years later.

A Civil Action
By Jonathan Harr

As he describes a lawyer in whom virtue becomes obsession, Harr demonstrates how a writer, with intensely intimate and patient reporting, can earn the right to inhabit the mind of his subject.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
By Anne Fadiman

The beautifully observed story of a Hmong immigrant family in its encounter with Western doctors, as each community struggles to help an epileptic child. A reflective compassion, more powerful for its restraint, informs this account of tragic cultural misperceptions.