FAMOUS NONFICTION AUTHORS

JAMES BALDWIN
• James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a writer and civil rights
activist who is best known for his semi-autobiographical
novels and plays that center on race, politics, and sexuality.
James Baldwin was born in HARLEM , New York, in 1924.
James Baldwin , the grandson of a slave. The oldest of nine
children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled
relationship with his strict, religious stepfather. As a child, he
cast about for a way to escape his circumstances. As he
recalls, “I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was
smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I
could, but that was the only thing I had to use.” By the time
he was fourteen, Baldwin was spending much of his time in
libraries and had found his passion for writing.
 NOTES OF A NATIVE SON (1955)

• Notes of a Native Son is a collection of ten

essays by James Baldwin, published in 1955,
mostly tackling issues of race in America and
Europe. The volume, as his first non-fiction
book, compiles essays of Baldwin that had
previously appeared in such magazines as
Harper's Magazine, Partisan Review, and The
New Leader.
 NO NAME IN THE STREET (1972)

• Baldwin recounts the Harlem childhood that

shaped his early consciousness and the later
murders of his friends Martin Luther King Jr.
and Malcolm X, along with his stay in Europe
and in Hollywood and his return to the American
South to confront a violent America.
 THE FIRE NEXT TIME (1963)

• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin was first

published in 1963 amid the emerging civil rights
movement. The work explores religion and
racial injustice in mid-century America.
 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME
(1961)

• Told with Baldwin's characteristically

unflinching honesty, this collection of
illuminating, deeply felt essays examines topics
ranging from race relations in the United
States to the role of the writer in society, and
offers personal accounts of Richard Wright,
Norman Mailer and other writers.
 NOTHING PERSONAL
(1964)
• The nothing personal is Baldwin’s deep probe
into American condition.Considering the Black
Lives Matter protest in the summer of 2020-
which were met tear gas and rubber bullets the
same year white supremancist entered the US
Capitol with little resistance,openly toting flags
of the Confederacy- Baldwin’s documentation of
his own troubled times cuts to the core of
where we find ourselves today.
MALCOLM CLADWELL
• Malcolm Gladwell, (born September 3, 1963, London , England),
Canadian journalist and writer best known for his unique perspective
on popular culture. He adeptly treads the boundary between
popularizer and intellectual. As a teen, he immersed himself in 
conservative politics: he idolized American pundit William F. Buckley,
and, during his time at Trinity College, University of Toronto, he
displayed a poster of U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan on his wall. He was
hired (1987) as a business and science writer for the Washington Post
 newspaper and then served (1993–96) as the Post’s New York bureau
chief before catching the eye of The New Yorker editor Tina Brown,
who in 1996 offered him a position as a staff writer for that magazine.
 THE TIPPING POINT(2000)

• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a book

about how small actions at the right time, in the
right place, and with the right people can create a
"tipping point" for anything from a product to an
idea to a trend. Gladwell is not a sociologist, but he
relies on sociological studies, and those from other
disciplines within the social sciences to write
articles and books that both the general public and
social scientists find fascinating and worthwhile.
According to Gladwell, the "tipping point" is "that
magic moment when an idea, trend, or social
behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like
wildfire."
 BLINK (2005)

• Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand

the world around us. Now, in Blink, he
revolutionizes the way we understand the world
within. Blink is a book about how we think
without thinking, about choices that seem to be
made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that
actually aren't as simple as they seem
 OUTLIERS (2008)

• Outliers is a book all about individuals who do

things that go beyond the realm of the
ordinary. From programmers to business
tycoons, geniuses to rock stars, Malcolm
Gladwell uncovers the secrets that separate the
best from the rest.
 WHAT THE DOG SAW (2009)

• Gladwell initially covered business and

science in The Washington Post before joining
the staff at The New Yorker in 1997.[2] Each of
the articles first appeared in The New
Yorker and was handpicked by Gladwell. The
stories share a common theme, namely that
Gladwell tries to show us the world through
the eyes of others, even if that other happens
to be a dog, hence the title
 DAVID AND GOLIATH (2013)

• is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell

 and published by Little, Brown and Company on
October 1, 2013. The book focuses on the
probability of improbable events occurring in
situations where one outcome is greatly favored over
the other. The book contains many different stories
of these underdogs who wind up beating the odds,
the most famous being the story of 
David and Goliath. Despite generally negative
reviews, the book was a bestseller, rising to #4 on 
The New York Times Hardcover Non-fiction chart,[1]
 and #5 on USA Today's Best-Selling Books
FOSTER WALLACE
• David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short
story writer, essayist, and university professor of English
and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996
novel Infinite Jest, which Time magazine cited as one of
the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
 BOTH FLESH AND NOT
(2012)
• "Federer Both Flesh and Not" (written in 2006) is
considered one of Wallace's best essays. He describes
professional tennis at its pinnacle through an
examination of the talent of Roger Federer. The
essay was first published in The New York Times as
"Federer as Religious Experience" in 2006.
 THE DAVID FOSTER
WALLACE READER (2014)
• Wallace's explorations of morality, self-
consciousness, addiction, sports, love, and the
many other subjects that occupied him are
represented here in both fiction and nonfiction.
SIGNIFYING RAPPERS (1990)

• Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban

Present is a nonfiction book by Mark Costello and
David Foster Wallace. The book explores the music
genre's history as it intersected with historical
events, either locally and unique to Boston, or
in larger cultural or historical contexts.
 THIS IS WATER (2009)

• It is about the real value of a real education,

which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and
everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of
what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight
all around us, all the time, that we have to keep
reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.”
 A S U P P O S ED LY F U N TH I N G I ' LL
N EV ER D O A G A I N ( 1 9 9 7 )

• In the title essay, originally published in Harper's as

"Shipping Out", Wallace describes the excesses of his
one-week trip in the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship 
MV Zenith, which he rechristens the Nadir. He is
uncomfortable with the professional hospitality
industry and the "fun" he should be having, and
explains how the indulgences of the cruise cause
introspection, leading to overwhelming internal
despair. Wallace uses footnotes extensively for various
asides.