Reading List
Laurence Leamer
Biographer and Journalist
Laurence Leamer has written more than a dozen books of narrative nonfiction, several of them about the Kennedys, along with Capote’s Women, on the socialites Truman Capote befriended and then betrayed in print. Earlier in his career he worked in a coal mine and in a Bolivian factory for material. He is drawn to writers who wrote something that cost them, and his picks are organised almost entirely around that idea.
01
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In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote · 1966 · Nonfiction
“But he went there and wrote a masterpiece about the two killers who wiped out a farm family. In Cold Blood created a whole new kind of nonfiction as well as the true crime genre.” — via Article
02
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The Executioner’s Song
by Norman Mailer · 1979 · Nonfiction
“He steps back and lets the story tell itself. With the most sensitive, intimate details, he writes about the murderer Gary Gilmore, whose execution in 1977 was the first in the U.S. in almost a decade.” — via Article
03
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1984
by George Orwell · 1949 · Fiction
“An obvious choice but an inevitable one. Is there any other modern book of such prescience with such relevance to our time? Great writers are daring writers, and book after book, Orwell showed the way.” — via Article
04
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The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe · 1979 · Nonfiction
“Wolfe was a conservative in a liberal intellectual age, and he often stood alone. But nobody wrote about his era better than he did.” — via Article
05
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The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton · 1920 · Fiction
“The Age of Innocence is a savage portrait of the elite world that was her home, and is no less savage for being written in such a subtle manner.” — via Article
06
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Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman · 1980 · Fiction
“Set during World War II in Stalingrad, Grossman's novel is a paean to Russian courage as well as a devastating portrait of Communist totalitarianism. Grossman had the courage to write his opus while living in the Soviet Union.” — via Article