Is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men one of the All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books? TIME thinks so. Check it out.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

By Glen Levy | August 30, 2011 | +

Author: James Agee

Year Released: 1941

Former TIME magazine movie critic James Agee (who reviewed films, in the memorable words of writer David Thompson, “like someone who had not just viewed the movie but been in it — out with it, as if it were a girl; drinking with it; driving in the night with it”) may be best known for writing a book that sprang from a FORTUNE assignment that, ironically, never ran. In 1936, Agee and photographer Walker Evans were sent to the Deep South to document the travails of sharecropping cotton farmers, three years into Roosevelt’s New Deal.

By turns captivating and exhausting (the third sentence lasts 16 lines), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men tells the story of three families. Agee states that his mission is to “pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings,” and pry he does, but he also ruminates about poverty, farming, animals and racism, all supplemented by Evans’ stark black-and-white images.

Hardly anyone read the book on its original publication in 1941. It wasn’t until 1960, when it was reissued after Agee’s death, that it garnered recognition and its stylistic influence rubbed off on the likes of Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson. In 2001 the New York Public Library declared it one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

Next: The Nature and Destiny of Man

Related Topics: James Agee, Let us Now Praise Famous Men

Melissa

Reblogged this on Swamp of Boredom and commented:
I’m reblogging this for my own reference and also to share with my readers (all 34 of you;)). Since the release of the 1001 Books App on Tuesday, I’ve been book list crazy. Since I like non-fiction – especially non-fiction centered on historical events and people, not so much current people – and have read a couple of excellent non-fiction books in the last year (Only Yesterday, Empire of the Summer Moon) I wondered if there was a list of recommended non-fiction books. Of course there is. I found one from the Guardain (UK) that is, obviously, geared towards British readers and that, unlike Time’s list, encompasses all non-fiction ever written. This list from Time consists of books only since Time began publishing, 1923. There are a few that don’t interest me at all and the biography choices focus too heavily on women and African Americans, IMO, but overall the list is excellent.
Enjoy!