FLC Staff Picks Blog

Holden's Picks: Long-Form Journalism

M. Holden Andrews, Coordinator of the Digital Scholarship Gurus, has selected an amazing collection of long-form journalism books by Joan Didion, Randy Shilts, the Watergate duo of Woodward and Bernstein, and Truman Capote, who broke new ground with his masterpiece, In Cold Blood.  Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, masters of the new [long-form] journalism are indeed included; although, they apparently were not enamored of this "new" term. As Brendan Fitzgerald noted in his piece titled "What does 'Longform' Journalism really mean?" for LitHub:

“I have no idea who coined the term ‘the New Journalism’ or when it was coined,” wrote Tom Wolfe in a 1972 feature article in New York. “I have never even liked the term.” Neither did Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote to Wolfe and threatened to “have your goddamn femurs ground into bone splinters if you ever mention my name again in connection with that horrible ‘new journalism’ shuck you’re promoting.” (Wolfe still included Thompson in his 1973 anthology,The New Journalism.) (para. 5)

Nevertheless, long-form journalism is the idea of breaking out of word limits and giving journalism the space it needs to tell a story.  Brendan started the article with the declaration, "Writers are preoccupied with limits: temporal and physical and metaphysical, the divisions between self and other, the mind’s inability to reconstruct the subject of its fascination" and later continued, "stories often assume the shape of their limitations" (para. 1).  There are no limits in the journalist rides below—wear your helmets!

Fitzgerald, Brendan. (2016, Nov. 21). "What Does 'Longform' Journalism Really Mean?"  Lit Hub.  Retrieved from https://lithub.com/what-does-longform-journalism-really-mean/

note: Follow the title links to get a full description or to the "place a hold". We'll pull it for you!

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Call Number: 629.1 W855r, 1979

Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers.

 

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe

Call Number: 306.0973 W855k, 1965

 

In his first book (1965) Wolfe introduces us to the sixties, to extravagant new styles of life that had nothing to do with the "elite" culture of the past.

 

 

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

Call Number: 362.1 S556a, 1987

By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments.

 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Call Number: PS 3554 .I33 S56 2008

An essential portrait of America--particularly California--in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

 

 

The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson

Call Number: 973.924 T472g, 1979

The first volume in Hunter S. Thompson's bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style. Originally published in 1979, The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.

 

The Final Days by Bob Woodward; Carl Bernstein

Call Number: 973.924 W899f, 1976

The behind-the-scenes account of Richard Nixon's dramatic last months as president. Moment by moment, Bernstein and Woodward portray the taut, post-Watergate White House as Nixon, his family, his staff, and many members of Congress strained desperately to prevent his inevitable resignation. This brilliant book reveals the ordeal of Nixon's fall from office--one of the gravest crises in presidential history.

 

All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein; Bob Woodward

Call Number: E 860 .B47 A45 1974

• Investigation and report of the burglary at Watergate that climaxed with a President's resignation.

 

 

 

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Call Number: 364.1523 C246i, 1965

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged from the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas. In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people.

 

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Call Number: 362.29 W8552e, 2008

 

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ushered in an era of New Journalism, "An American classic" (Newsweek) that defined a generation. "An astonishing book" (The New York Times Book Review) and an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, LSD, and the 1960s.

note: unless otherwise stated, descriptions were edited from publisher information.