What Do These Four Non-Fiction Books Have In Common?

Over the years I’ve many times mulled over the question as to why so many people watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Or why people read tabloids. The answer to that question is at the end of this brief read. Basically, it’s the answer you get when find what these four books have in common.

Reporter: A Memoir 

by Seymour Hersh

I’ll Be Back Right After This: My Memoir 

by Pat O’Brien

The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife 

Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

by Rebecca Musser

Dylan and Me: 50 Years of Adventures 

by Louie Kemp

* * * *

The first book is a memoir of a hardworking journalist with a determined work ethic and insatiable hunger to get at the truth, who unveiled significant stories like My Lai and Abu Ghraib. His books and journalism cover everything from Camelot to the war on Terrorism.

The next is the memoir of a kid from a broken home who rubbed shoulders with many of the most well-known people of the last half century including Oprah, Muhammed Ali, Mickey Mantle, the Beatles, the Stones, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Timothy Leary and many more. A radio and TV announcer who rubbed shoulders (and sometimes more) with the rich and famous.

Third in the list is an inside account of what its like inside the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons censored polygamy in 1890, but the “true believers” in this Fundamentalist sect went underground, much like the bootleggers during Prohibition. What was it like to be wife 19 for an 84 year old leader who takes 46 more wives afterwards?

The last is a book by Louie Kemp who became fast friends with young Bobby Zimmerman at a Jewish summer camp with they were breaking into their early teens. Their friendship of several decades includes many remarkable phases in the life of this kid who would grow up to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

* * * * 

Did you catch the common denominator”

It’s not that complicated.

The common denominator is not “great writing.” By this I mean carefully crafted and beautiful sentences, such as those penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. No, rather, it’s this: each book takes readers places they would never get to see or experiences in their normal lives. 

Hersh brings us inside the halls of Washington, Hanoi during the Vietnam War, to Abu Ghraib, the Washington Press Room, to meetings with influential editors for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Washington Post. We meet Lt. William Calley of My Lai and many more familiar names from the front page news stories of our lifetimes.

Pat O’Brien’s book is a string of stories as well, populated by a different set of characters. His stories are insider stories about people we know, have heard about, as the appear and recede in his own life story.

Rebecca Musser’s book became a tedious read, but her life circumstances were so unusual that you feel compelled to keep turning the pages. The lifestyle of this group of people was so foreign to our “normal” lives that it was hard to get your head around. 

Louie Kemp’s book is not yet out, but it appears to promise new stories not yet covered in the dozens of other bios of one of the most analyzed and written about songwriters of the past 100 years. Of the four, this likely has a narrower target audience. Nevertheless, its many readers will be motivated by the same drive that attracts readers to these other books, stories about people and places we ourselves have never been. (EdNote: Louis Kemp will be in the Twin Cities at four events in Mid-August. Details Here.)

They’re all about storytelling, stories that take us places we’ve never been or could never go. We’re curious creatures by nature and these kinds of books whet our appetite, entice us, and promise to give us something in return for having invested time turning the pages. 

What do you think?