All Time 100 Nonfiction Books / No 004 / A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers XLISTO

 

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books

 No 004

Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there's a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME ... magazine

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

By Erin SkardaAug. 17, 2011

It may seem arrogant to refer to one’s first published book as a Work of Staggering Genius, but in Dave Eggers’s case, the truth is in the pages. The Pulitzer Prize nominated memoir, published in 2000, is easy to get lost in with its conversational narrative that’s at once paranoid and adept, casual yet sincere. And while it is heartbreaking to witness the deterioration of an otherwise unremarkable suburban family, as both Eggers’ parents succumb to cancer within a span of 32 days, the book is also undeniably uplifting and succeeds as an honest (if partly fictionalized) portrayal of the strength of family in the face of adversity. Eggers excels at conveying the weight of the burden laid upon him when, at age 21, he accepts the role of parent to his 8-year-old brother Toph. Though his “new model” parenting methods might not be considered normal by society’s standards, Eggers doesn’t hide from the fact that nothing about his and his brother’s situation is “normal.” Instead, he demands that the universe repay him and Toph for the heartache they’ve endured. Eleven years, six books, a successful publishing imprint and numerous nonprofits later, it seems that Eggers has been repaid in full.

TIME

All Time 100 Nonfiction Books / No 003 / Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

 

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books 

No 003

Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there's a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME ... magazine

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

By Susanna SchrobsdorffAug. 17, 2011

Much like its author, Barack Obama’s first memoir defies easy categorization. In some stores, it’s shelved with autobiographies, while others place it in African-American history. Of course, now it’s simply American history. First published in 1995, it is one of the few presidential memoirs written before the subject was burdened with the self-consciousness of a man aiming for the nation’s highest office, or the completion of a presidency, when every word is subject to the tint of political hindsight.

But even if Obama hadn’t ended up in the White House, Dreams from My Father would still be a compelling and beautifully written American story about the son of a black man and a white woman, his search for his African father and how he found a “workable meaning for his life as a black American.” It’s a portrait of a man who breaks the mold yet reveres the rules. We see the boldness of someone who could walk away from a career as a well-paid financial analyst in New York City for a low-paid and often frustrating community-organizer job in Chicago. But we also get a sense of Obama’s other, more passive side, the guy who got a contract to write a book about race while still at Harvard Law School and who then chose to become an academic rather than an activist — a professor of constitutional law, rather than, say, a civil rights lawyer. In the end, whether you read this book through the prism of politics or as a coming-of-age tale, it’s important and illuminating.

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All Time 100 Nonfiction Books / No 2 / Black Boy by Richard Wright

 

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books 

No 002

Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there's a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME ... magazine

Black Boy by Richard Wright

By Megan GibsonAug. 17, 2011

One of the most prominent African-American writers of the 20th century, Richard Wright illuminated and defined midcentury discussions of race in America. Black Boy, his coming-of-age autobiography published in 1945, is divided into two parts: “Southern Night” traces his violent childhood in the segregated South as he grapples with religion, bigotry and family tragedy; “The Horror and the Glory” follows him through young adulthood, his move to Chicago and his initiation into the Communist Party during the Great Depression. Wright soon became disenchanted with the party’s inertia and interparty politics, and he left the fold in 1942. But he held onto his idealistic belief in writing as a vehicle for change — a belief that powers Black Boy, which uses novelistic techniques to chart a young writer’s journey into manhood.

TIME

All Time 100 Nonfiction Books / No 001/ The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

 

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books 

No 001

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

By Feifei SunAug. 17, 2011

Writing her lover’s “autobiography” proved a witty way for American author Gertrude Stein to detail her own life as Parisian writer, salon host and arts patron. Ostensibly, readers can take in the book, published in 1933, as Stein writing about Alice B. Toklas (which is what the title suggests) or as Toklas “writing” about Stein (which is what the book actually is). Either way, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was groundbreaking in its experimentation with form: an autobiography written by another person. Many modernist masters make an appearance in Stein’s tome — among them Picasso, Hemingway and Matisse — and their influence on Stein is recounted through vivid anecdotes. For example, Stein’s first major publication, Three Lives, was written under the “stimulus” of a Cézanne painting. Although it became the author’s best-selling book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was mainly notable for its easier-to-read narrative style (a departure from Stein’s favored monologue form), making it a sort of Stein for Beginners.

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