Like Good Non-Fiction? This Quiz is For You

Answer: Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1930. He began his career writing for newspapers, after graduating from Yale University. His first book (1965) was about California's hot rod culture, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby", a collection of essays which eventually became a best-seller.

Tom Wolfe went on to publish "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in 1968. The subject was the writer Ken Kesey and a group of his friends, calling themselves the Merry Pranksters. The book described their rather insane travels around the country during the 60's. The book was very successful and very entertaining, great fun to read.

Tom Wolfe also wrote about the US space program and the astronauts. His book, "The Right Stuff", was published in 1979, and was a huge best-seller which was later made into a movie.

Answer: Joan Didion

Didion was born in Sacramento, California in 1934. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1956. She has written several novels, the best-known is probably "Play It As It Lays", published in 1970. She has also written several non-fiction books. "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and "The White Album" contain essays about California in the 60's; life in the Haight-Asbury District in San Francisco, essays concerning driving on California's freeways, and other observations of life and culture in California. She published "The Year of Magical Thinking" in 2005.

The book tells the story of her husband John Gregory Dunne's death after 40 years of marriage, and the illness of her daughter Quintana, who eventually died as well. The book won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2005.

Answer: Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer was born in Massachusetts in 1954. He is a mountaineer and began his career as a writer for Outside magazine.

His first book, "Into the Wild" (1996), tells the true story of a young man who took an adventure trip from which he mysteriously never returned.

Krakauer participated in a climb to the summit of Mount Everest in 1996. Although the climb was successful, it ended in disaster, as several people died on the descent. Krakauer wrote about the climb for Outside magazine, and later turned his controversial article into a best-selling book, "Into Thin Air", published in 1997. The controversy stemmed from his criticism of guides on the Everest climb; several survivors of that ordeal didn't agree with his view of events.

He is also the author of "Under the Banner of Heaven" (2003), which deals with polygamy and certain elements of the Mormon church.

Answer: Wounded Knee

The town of Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, was occupied by AIM members for 71 days, as a protest against poor living conditions on the reservation. Although AIM eventually left peacefully, in the aftermath there were several incidents between AIM members and the US government, including some unsolved murders. In 1975, an armed confrontation between government agents and residents of Pine Ridge took place on the reservation. Two FBI agents were killed, and AIM member Leonard Peltier was charged with their murders. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1977. There were alleged irregularities in Peltier's trial, and many people believe he's innocent.

Matthiessen's book chronicles the history of the Lakota Sioux, the story of Leonard Peltier's life, and the dismal conditions at the Pine Ridge reservation, as he attempts to uncover the truth regarding the Pine Ridge Incident. It is a masterful book, a great read.

Peter Matthiessen was born in New York in 1927. He's a prolific author, an environmentalist, a Buddhist priest, and was one of the founders of "The Paris Review", a literary magazine.

Answer: Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) lived with the writer Dashiell Hammett on and off for 30 years. Hammett was the creator of detective Sam Spade. Her relationship with him is an important part of her autobiographical work. There is a portion of the book "Pentimento" entitled "Julia".

It was made into a movie with Jane Fonda playing Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave playing Julia. There's been some question about how true some of her autobiographical work is, but nobody can dispute what happened when Lillian Hellman was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunt.

She refused to answer any questions that would incriminate anyone, at great risk to her career and livelihood. She told her version of these events in "Scoundrel Time". Dashiell Hammett was sent to jail for his refusal to cooperate with McCarthy's committee.

Answer: Lewis and Clark

Subtitled "Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West", this book is a fascinating chronicle of the events surrounding the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the expedition itself. The book tells the story of their attempt to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, and of Thomas Jefferson's involvement in their undertaking. I think it's a brilliant book.
Steven Ambrose (1936-2002) was an American historian, who also wrote biographies of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Answer: Computers

It takes real talent to write an entire book about the construction of a house, and make it so captivating you don't want it to end. Tracy Kidder did just that with his book "House", published in 1985. The same goes for his book about computers, "The Soul of a New Machine" (1981), which won a Pulitzer Prize.

It's the story of a group of engineers racing to design a new generation of computers, under tremendous pressure. Tracy Kidder was born in New York City in 1945, and has written several other fine non-fiction books on various subjects.

Answer: James Baldwin

James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) was born in Harlem, New York. He was a novelist and a non-fiction writer. He left the United States to live and work in Paris as a young man. He returned to the US in the sixties, at the time of the civil rights movement, and became very active in that struggle. "Notes of a Native Son" was published in 1955 and "The Fire Next Time" in 1963.

They were both very well-received and quite prophetic. Baldwin spoke of the black experience in America, of his very difficult childhood, and he warned Americans of the anger in the African-American community in the mid-20th century.

Answer: William Shirer

William Shirer (1904 - 1993) was one of the best known-war correspondents during WWII. He was hired by Edward R. Murrow to report on the storm brewing over Europe in the late 1930's. From his vantage point in Vienna and later in Berlin he reported events in Nazi Germany as they happened. His radio broadcasts from Europe during that era are considered to be a crowning achievement in broadcast journalism.
Shirer was able to slip his reports by the Nazi censors for a long time, but eventually had to leave the country, when he received word that the Nazis were planning to arrest him.
After the war he published "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (1960). This is the definitive history of the war-time era in Nazi Germany, and even though it runs over 1000 pages, it's hard to put down. He wrote several other books about those years, as well as a fine biography of Mohandas Gandhi. Concerning his relationship with Gandhi, Shirer wrote: "I count the days with Gandhi the most fruitful of my life. No other experience was as inspiring and as meaningful and as lasting."

Answer: Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1923. He attended Harvard University, and began writing there. Mailer fought in the South Pacific in WWII. In 1948 he wrote "The Naked and the Dead", based on his war experiences. The book is considered to be one of the finest novels written about that war. But his non-fiction work is truly remarkable. "Armies of the Night" (1968) (which won Mailer the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award,)" "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" (1968) are both about Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the 1960's. "Of a Fire on the Moon" (1970) dealt with the US space program, and "The Executioner's Song" (1979) had as its subject one Gary Gilmore, who was the first man executed in the US after a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty. That book was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.