Creative Nonfiction (Course Guide / Lisa Heise)

Erik Larson is an acclaimed journalist and the author of numerous well- regarded nonfiction works In his book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Larson explores the experiences of William E. Dodd and his daughter, Martha. Dodd was the U.S. ambassador to Germany. He arrived there in 1933, just as Adolf Hitler was rising to power. In a Christian Science Monitor interview, Larson told Randy Dotinga that he was inspired to learn more about 1930s Germany while reading “William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. About a third of the way through, I suddenly finally caught up to the fact that Shirer had been there in Berlin, from 1934 on, and was finally kicked out when the U.S. entered the war.” Larson added: “He had met all these people, Hitler and Goebbels and all those we know to be absolute monsters, before they became monsters. I began to wonder what that would have been like to be in Berlin, early in Hitler's reign, and to have met these people. What would you have thought if you hadn't known how things would have turned out?” | Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2022. | Gale Literature Resource Center (Library Database)

A GOOD WRITER IS a good seducer, hooking the reader from the start with the promise of a rewarding adventure ahead. Writers of long narrative nonfiction, like Erik Larson, face the added challenge of captivating readers who may know little of nothing of the subject and justifiably ask, "Why should I care to read 400 pages about this?" How Larson makes his readers care from the outset about the elements of his superb historical bestseller, The Devil in the White City, is masterful. The book is also a primer on how a good storyteller uses a sharp eye for color and detail, fictional tools and tight writing to keep a book-length narrative moving briskly. | The Writer, vol. 116, no. 9, Sept. 2003, pp. 20+. | Literature Resource Center (Gale) (Library Database

"On Wednesday, July 20, 1910, as a light fog drifted along the river Scheldt, Captain Henry George Kendall prepared his ship, the SS Montrose, for what should have been the most routine of voyages, from Antwerp, Belgium, direct to Quebec City, Canada. At 8:30 in the morning, the passengers began streaming aboard. The ship's manifest showed 266 in all. Captain Kendall had a strong jaw and a wide mouth that bent easily into a smile, a trait that made him popular among all passengers, but especially women. To be successful, he knew, a captain needed more than skill at navigation and ship handling. He had to dress well, be charming, and possess a knack for conversation." (An excerpt from the book "Thunderstruck") | Vanity Fair. Nov2006, Vol. 48 Issue 11, p250-258. 8p. | MasterFILE Complete (EBSCO) (Library Database)

"During the Great Plague of London in 1665, houses where the infection appeared were painted with a red cross and sealed, condemning the occupants to death. Now the idea of visibly identifying the infected is being turned on its head as governments around the world look at how to reopen economies shattered by the coronavirus crisis." | Bloomberg Businessweek. 4/13/2020, Issue 4652, p37-38. 2p.| MasterFILE Complete (EBSCO) (Library Database)

"Once I was a gun guy. Or at least I tried to be. In 1992 and 1993, while researching a book on the forces that propelled guns into the hands of killers, I immersed myself in America's gun culture. I learned to shoot, haunted gun shows and went so far as to get myself a gun dealer's license just to see how easily such licenses could be obtained. The deeper I ventured into the culture, the more it seemed to me that the nation had bent over backward to ensure a brisk flow of guns to felons, wife killers and assorted other lunatics." | TIME Magazine. 8/9/1999, Vol. 154 Issue 6, p32. 5p | MasterFILE Complete (EBSCO) (Library Database)