Joseph Ellis

Joseph Ellis received The 1997 National Book Award for Nonfiction for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

The four 1998 National Book Award Winners pictured at a reception following the Foundation's annual Evening with the Winners event at the New York Public Library. From left to right: Joseph Ellis, Charles Frazier, William Meredith, and Han Nolan (seated).
Photo Credit: Sandra Wavrick

Here is a short list of some books that changed my life, or at least the way I thought about life:

Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson
Dispatches by Michael Herr
The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan
The Face of Battle by John Keegan
White Over Black by Winthrop Jordan

If I had to pick one book that influenced my own writing, it would be The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Woodham-Smith. She taught me two things: first, you can switch to the present tense inside a paragraph and thereby bring the reader into the consciousness of a character without announcing that you are doing so; second, if you trust the story and create a narrative flow, the cadences will carry the analysis invisibly, and with much greater fluency.

Sincerely,

Joseph J. Ellis