Literary nonfiction.

When Susan Orlean's editor at Esquire asked her to write a profile of actor Macaulay Culkin and proposed a title, "The American Man at Age Ten," the topic didn't inspire her, but the title did. She asked if she could write about a "typical" 10-year-old boy instead. Unsure of how to conduct her research, Orlean (who some years later became known for The Orchid Thief and its self-referential movie version, Adaptation) asked friends for names of appropriate boys who would allow an adult reporter to follow them around for weeks. Orlean finally settled on a youngster in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Here is how she opened the magazine story:

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If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching

superhero notebooks. We would wear shorts, big sneakers and long,

baggy T-shirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in

the winter. ... We would eat pizza and candy for all of our meals.

We wouldn't have sex, but we would have crushes on each other and,

magically, babies would appear in our home. ... For fun, we would

load a slingshot with dog food and shoot it at my butt. We would have

a very good life.

When the story about this ordinary 10-year-old came out in Esquire in December 1992, writers and editors praised the story as an exemplar of a genre. Today, "The American Man at Age Ten" is widely anthologized in volumes that bring together the best practitioners of a craft called literary journalism--or literary nonfiction.

Defining literary nonfiction is a tricky proposition. Not everyone agrees on exactly what it is, and there is little consensus about the best (and most representative) books of the genre. However, a few elements unite practitioners of the craft. First, literary nonfiction adopts the techniques of fiction (character development, plot, setting, dialogue, verbal pyrotechnics, and so forth) and applies them to nonfiction. The form often allows the "I" of the writer to shape and personalize the telling of the event. Literary journalists tend to accept that they often affect what they observe and write about--and, in the process, bring the subject and the reader closer together. Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, two early pioneers of the craft, tried to penetrate their subjects' minds; those of the newer generation of literary journalists immerse themselves in their subjects' daily lives, as did Orlean with Colin Duffy. Walt Harrington, a Washington Post literary journalist who came on the book scene in 1992 with Crossings: A White Man's Journey Into Black America, calls the genre "intimate journalism" for this very reason. Finally, literary journalists seek out the extraordinary in quite ordinary stories--including the daily life of a typical 10-year-old boy.

In his introduction to his anthology, New Kings of Nonfiction (2007), Ira Glass, best known for his public radio program This American Life, explores the craft further. A self-styled radio journalist who tells stories by filtering his interviews and impressions "through a distinctive literary imagination, an eccentric intelligence and a sympathetic heart," Glass relates what his favorite nonfiction writers do. They "find a new angle on something we all know about already or, more often, they take on subjects that nobody else has figured out are worthy of reporting." More specifically, they use big-picture thinking to entertain while educating; even when they approach serious topics, their words and ideas sparkle. "They try to get inside their protagonists' heads with an empathy that's unusual," Glass comments. "Theirs is a ministry of love, in a way we don't usually discuss reporters' feelings toward their subjects."

Many of these writers in Glass's anthology took inspiration from pioneers of the field. Capote influenced future generations of literary nonfiction authors with In Cold Blood, his 1966 account of a murder in rural Kansas. Capote liked to call the book a "nonfiction novel," which blew many people's minds at that time. Although the book reached iconic status, some of it may have been made up, which places it in dangerous territory intellectually and possibly disqualifies it as literary nonfiction. Despite Capote's questionable methods, In Cold Blood nonetheless inspired other masters of the craft. Madeline Blais, author of In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle (included on our list below), explained how Capote's book innovated with "his use of cinematic devices, the way he enters a scene as late as possible and gets out of it as early as possible, the cross-cutting, and especially the agonizing slow motion when he finally gets around to describing the crime itself" (Chicago Tribune, 12/25/05).

Capote's work also influenced Tom Wolfe, probably the longest-practicing, most visible living progenitor of literary nonfiction today. Decades ago Wolfe, a former newspaper feature writer, started to use fictional techniques to write true magazine stories and books about race, class, architecture, stock car racing, astronauts, and other topics that captured his interest. In his The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), the "subjective reality" of the Merry Pranksters' cross-country road trip made it a classic of the genre.

Wolfe and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in turn, influenced another generation of literary nonfiction writers. Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (1999), recalled that the book "was so thrilling that for weeks I wanted to read it out loud to everyone I met. ... I knew after the first 10 pages what I wanted to do with my life" (The New York Observer, 1/2/06). Also a former newspaper reporter, Bowden switched to magazines and then started writing books. As a high school and college student during the late 1960s and early 1970s he discovered what Wolfe labeled "New Journalism." Bowden relates how in a small Maryland suburb he visited the local drugstore, "waiting to pounce on each new issue of Esquire, Harper's and Rolling Stone. No one I knew shared my addiction."

Not at that time, anyway. Literary nonfiction may not have reached the masses when Bowden was scouring the shelves, but it certainly attracts a much wider audience now. Below, I provide a personal list, though certainly not arbitrary, of literary nonfiction books, separated into thematic categories. Some of the authors mentioned have multiple books of literary nonfiction; in those cases, I have chosen the book that I think is the highest quality or most representative of the genre. In some instances, I have included more than one book by the same author because I am nearly certain readers will find that oeuvre addictive.

CRIMES AND COURTS

Courtroom 302

A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse

By Steve Bogira (2005)

Bogira, a staff writer for the weekly Chicago Reader, won special access from the judge of a courtroom in Cook County, Illinois, and immersed himself in observing the proceedings for about year. The result is an unsurpassed understanding of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, jurors, and the entire messy system of criminal justice that sometimes passes as the world's finest. (**** July/Aug 2005)

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Newjack

Guarding Sing Sing

By Ted Conover (2000)

* NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD; PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST

Before writing Newjack, Conover was already legendary for placing himself in danger to research his narratives. The titles tell all: Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens and Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes. In Newjack, Conover topped himself by entering New York State prison guard training. He successfully completed the certification and then spent about a year as a corrections officer with no protection from any journalism organization.

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The Prosecutors

A Year in the Life of a District Attorney's Office

By Gary Delsohn (2003)

As a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, Delsohn negotiated unprecedented access to the normally secret operations of a local district attorney's operation. For a year, he listened in on plea bargains and trial strategy sessions, and saw firsthand how discussion about freedom versus incarceration--and sometimes even life versus death--played out for defendants and victims. (**** Nov/Dec 2003)

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A Civil Action

By Jonathan Harr (1995)

* NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD; NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE

Harr, a former staff writer at New England Monthly, began researching a 1981 court case in which families from Woburn, Massachusetts, sought damages against gigantic corporations for allegedly releasing carcinogens into the groundwater. The contaminants led to high incidences of leukemia and the deaths of six children. After spending years trying to figure out how to construct a compelling narrative, Harr built the story around an idealistic, unconventional plaintiff's attorney.

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Killings

By Calvin Trillin (1984)

Many readers probably know Trillin primarily for his writing about food, his rhymed political satire, or his comic novels. But as a staff writer for the New Yorker, Trillin traveled around the nation writing narratives about "ordinary" murders and trials--from the story of a Knoxville girl who predicted her own death to the account of a Laotian family's attempted suicide in Iowa. The 16 stories in Killings "are meant to be more about how Americans live than about how some of them die," Trillin writes.

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SPORTS

In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle