100 Major Works of Modern Creative Nonfiction

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

ThoughtCo, 100 Books

Essays, memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, travel writing, history, cultural studies, nature writing—all of these fit under the broad heading of creative nonfiction, and all are represented in this list of 100 major works of creative nonfiction published by British and American writers over the past 90 years or so. They're arranged alphabetically by author last name.

This list seems to have been created by 1 person: Richard Nordquist who is:
English and Rhetoric Professor
Education
Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
B.A., English, State University of New York

This list was originally published in 2018 and was added to this site over 3 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
2106 Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey 1968 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
1827 Experience Martin Amis 2000 British English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
3312 Growing Up Russell Baker 1982 American English
3155 Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 1955 American English
10450 Nothing to be Frightened Of Julian Barnes 2008 British English
11045 Untold Stories Alan Bennett 2005 British English
17120 Recollected Essays Wendell Berry 1981 American English
13941 Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson 1995 American English
17120 Little Wilson and Big God Anthony Burgess 1987 British English
2624 The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell 1949 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
17120 The Water Is Wide Pat Conroy 1972 American English
1996 A Childhood Harry Crews 1978 American English
6980 We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Joan Didion 2006 American English
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
17120 An American Childhood Annie Dillard 1987 American English
1557 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard 1974 American English
1204 Nickel And Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich 2001 American English
10169 The Solace of Open Spaces Gretel Ehrlich 1985 American English
2160 The Immense Journey Loren Eiseley 1957 American English
4736 Shadow and ACT Ralph Ellison 1964 American English
14984 Crazy Salad Nora Ephron 1975 American English
17120 Snobbery Joseph Epstein 2002 American English
1276 The Feynman Lectures on Physics Richard P. Feynman 1963 American English
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
3401 Great Plains Ian Frazier 1989 American English
2716 The Great War and Modern Memory Paul Fussell 1975 American English
17120 Ever Since Darwin Stephen Jay Gould 1977 American English
1621 Good-Bye to All That Robert Graves 1929 British English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
14984 A Drinking Life Pete Hamill 1994 American English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
13941 Unbroken Laura Hillenbrand 2010 American English
17120 The Edward Hoagland Reader Edward Hoagland 1979 American English
14848 The True Believer Eric Hoffer 1951 American English
9749 Anti-intellectualism in American Life Richard Hofstadter 1963 American English
17120 Farewell to Manzanar Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, James D. Houston 1973 American English
5861 The Big Sea Langston Hughes 1940 American English
2750 Dust Tracks on a Road Zora Neale Hurston 1942 American English
6704 Collected essays Aldous Huxley 1958 British English
14984 Reliable Essays Clive James 2001 British English
15899 A Walker in the City Alfred Kazin 1951 American English
10450 House Tracy Kidder 1985 American English
1037 The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston 1976 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
5754 Blue Highways William Least Heat-Moon 1982 American English
17120 Enthusiasms Bernard Levin 1983 British English
4982 Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez 1986 American English
4507 Truman David McCullough 1992 American English
15899 Masscult and Midcult Dwight Macdonald 1962 American English
17120 Coming into the Country John McPhee 1977 American English
17120 Whoredom in Kimmage Rosemary Mahoney 1993 American English
3072 The Armies of the Night Norman Mailer 1968 American English
1224 The Snow Leopard Peter Matthiessen 1978 American English
14788 Mencken Chrestomathy H. L. Mencken 1949 American English
3278 Up in the Old Hotel Joseph Mitchell 1992 American English
2518 The American Way of Death Jessica Mitford 1963 American English
17120 The Names N. Scott Momaday 1976 American English
4454 The City in History Lewis Mumford 1961 American English
514 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
17120 Parliament of Whores P. J. O'Rourke 1991 American English
5727 My Kind of Place Susan Orlean 2004 American English
1245 Down and Out in Paris and London George Orwell 1933 British English
941 Collected Essays of George Orwell George Orwell 1968 British English
17120 Metaphor and Memory Cynthia Ozick 1989 American English
634 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
14232 Hunger of Memory Richard Rodriguez 1982 American English
15899 Picture Lillian Ross 1952 American English
1895 Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris 2000 American English
17120 Taking the World in for Repairs Richard Selzer 1986 American English
5598 Changing My Mind Zadie Smith 2009 British English
7663 Against Interpretation Susan Sontag 1966 American English
13518 Travels with Charley John Steinbeck 1962 American English
7624 Hard Times Studs Terkel 1970 American English
3195 The Lives of a Cell Lewis Thomas 1974 American English
1663 The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 British English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
5861 My Life and Hard Times James Thurber 1933 American English
1363 The Liberal Imagination Lionel Trilling 1950 American English
1588 The Guns of August Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 1962 American English
17120 Self-Consciousness John Updike 1989 American English
10628 United States Gore Vidal 1993 American English
14984 The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell 2008 American English
5924 In Search Of Our Mother’s Gardens Alice Walker 1983 American English
1565 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again David Foster Wallace 1997 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
3075 One Writer's Beginnings Eudora Welty 1984 American English
993 Essays of E. B. White E. B. White 1977 American English
15899 One Man's Meat E. B. White 1942 American English
909 The Warmth Of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson 2010 American English
540 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 1968 American English
3618 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
2669 This Boy's Life Tobias Wolff 1989 American English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
640 Black Boy Richard Wright 1945 American English