Dave Eggers Popular Books

Dave Eggers Biography & Facts

Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal; a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia, co-founder of The Hawkins Project, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness; and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. Early life and education Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father, John K. Eggers (1936–1991), was an attorney, while his mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), was a school teacher. His father was Protestant and his mother was Catholic. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, where he attended public high school and was a classmate of actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers's elder brother William D. Eggers is a researcher who has worked for several conservative think tanks, doing research promoting privatization. Eggers's sister Beth died by suicide in November 2001. Eggers briefly spoke about his sister's death during a 2002 fan interview for McSweeney's.Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism. However, his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents: his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cancer. These events were chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the time, Eggers was age 21, and his youngest sibling, Christopher ("Toph"), was 8 years old. The two elder siblings, William and Beth, were unable to commit to caring for Toph; his oldest sibling, William, had a full-time job and his next-oldest sibling, Beth, was enrolled in law school. As a result, Eggers took responsibility. He left the University of Illinois and moved to Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend Kirsten and his brother. They initially moved in with Eggers' sibling, Beth, and her roommate, but eventually found a place in another part of town, which they paid for with money left to them by their parents. Toph attended a small private school, and Eggers did temp work and freelance graphic design for a local newspaper. Eventually, with his friend David Moodie, Eggers took over a local free newspaper called Cups. This gradually evolved into the satirical magazine Might. Literary work 1990s Eggers began writing as a Salon.com editor and founded Might magazine in San Francisco in 1994 with David Moodie and Marny Requa, while also writing a comic strip called Smarter Feller (originally Swell) for SF Weekly.Might evolved out of the small San Francisco-based independent paper Cups, and gathered a loyal following with its irreverent humor and quirky approach to the issues and personalities of the day. An article purporting to be an obituary of former 1980s child star Adam Rich (originally intended to be Back to the Future star Crispin Glover until Glover backed out) garnered some national attention. The magazine regularly included humour pieces, and a number of essays and non-fiction pieces by seminal writers of the 1990s, including "Impediments to Passion", an essay on sex in the AIDS era by David Foster Wallace. As Eggers later recounted in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that the magazine consistently struggled to make a profit, and it stopped publication in 1997. An anthology of the best of Might magazine's brief run, 'Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp' and Other Essays from Might Magazine, was published in late 1998. By this time, Eggers was freelancing for Esquire and continuing to work for Salon. 2000s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), Eggers's first book was a memoir with fictional elements, and it focused on his struggle to raise his younger brother in the San Francisco Bay Area following the deaths of both of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The memoir was praised for its originality, idiosyncratic self-referencing, and for several innovative stylistic elements. Early printings of the 2001 trade-paperback edition were published with a lengthy postscript entitled, Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.In 2002, Eggers published his first novel You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. An expanded and revised version was released as Sacrament in 2003. A version without the new material in Sacrament was created and retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity! for a Vintage imprint distribution. He has since published How We Are Hungry, a collection of short stories, and three politically themed serials for Salo.In November 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, a book of interviews with former prisoners sentenced to death and later exonerated. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, a specialist in the aftermath of major human rights abuses and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies.Eggers's 2006 novel What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Eggers also edits the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.Eggers was one of the original contributors to ESPN The Magazine and helped create its section "The Jump". He also acted as the first, anonymous "Answer Guy", a column that continued to run after he stopped working for the publication.On November 7, 2009, he was presented with the "Courage in Media" Award by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for his book Zeitoun. Zeitoun was optioned by Jonathan Demme, who considered an animated film-rendition of the work. To Demme, it "felt like the first in-depth immersion I'd ever had through literature or film into the Muslim-American family. ... The moral was that they are like people of any other faith, and I hope our film, if we can get it made, will also be like that." Demme, quoted in early 2011, expressed confidence that when the script was finished, he would be able to find financing, perhaps even from a major studio. However, in May 2014, The Playlist reported that the film was "percolat[ing] in development". Demme died in April 2017, and the project has not been heard of since. 2010s In the early 2010s, after going six years without publishing substantive literary fiction following What is the What, Eggers began a three-year streak of back-to-back novels, each broadly concerned with press.... Discover the Dave Eggers popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dave Eggers books.

Best Seller Dave Eggers Books of 2024

  • The Monk of Mokha synopsis, comments

    The Monk of Mokha

    Dave Eggers

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A gripping, triumphant adventure” (Los Angeles Times) from the bestselling author of The Circlethe incredible true story of a young Yemeni American man,...

  • Zeitoun synopsis, comments

    Zeitoun

    Dave Eggers

    »›Zeitoun‹ gehört zum Interessan testen, Packendsten und Aufregendsten, das man gerade lesen kann.« FAZDave Eggers erzählt in seiner vielfach ausgezeichneten literarischen Reportag...

  • Landpartie synopsis, comments

    Landpartie

    Gary Shteyngart

    Das populärste Buch des großen amerikanischen Erzählers: Ein Haus auf dem Land, acht Freunde, vier Romanzen und sechs Monate in IsolationEs ist März 2020, und eine uns wohlvertraut...

  • Where They Wait synopsis, comments

    Where They Wait

    Scott Carson

    “Where They Wait is so readable, you’ll be a couple of hundred pages in before you realize you’re terrified…and then you can’t put it down. Mesmerizing.” Stephen King“Tense and twi...

  • Ihr werdet noch merken, wie schnell wir sind synopsis, comments

    Ihr werdet noch merken, wie schnell wir sind

    Dave Eggers

    Zwei junge Amerikaner auf Weltreise – »Ein wunderbar schwebendes, neurotisches, atemloses Buch« FAZ Warum verreist man? Um neue Orte zu sehen, den Horizont zu erweitern, aber doch ...

  • Toggle synopsis, comments

    Toggle

    Florian Felix Weyh

    Droht uns der digitale GAU?Wer die Daten hat, hat die Macht – ein packender Thriller, der die Möglichkeiten digitalen Datenmissbrauchs zu Ende denktDer international agierende Comp...

  • The Finder synopsis, comments

    The Finder

    Will Ferguson

    From the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novelist of 419 comes a spellbinding literary adventure novel about precious objects lost and found.The world is filled with wonders, lost ...

  • The Shoe on the Roof synopsis, comments

    The Shoe on the Roof

    Will Ferguson

    Meet Thomas Rosanoff: med student and researcher. Meet his subjects: three homeless men who believe they are God.Ever since his girlfriend ended things, Thomas’s life has been on a...

  • Fire Hawk synopsis, comments

    Fire Hawk

    Geoffrey Archer

    Sam Packer of the British Secret Service knows a mission to Iraq is dangerous. But none more dangerous than this one.A whispered secret in a Baghdad hotel lobby leads to his kidnap...

  • Un reino de olivos y ceniza synopsis, comments

    Un reino de olivos y ceniza

    Ayelet Waldman, Mario Vargas Llosa, Geraldine Brooks, Colm Tóibín, Jacqueline Woodson, Ala Hlehel, Madeleine Thien, Rachel Kushner, Dave Eggers, Lars Saabye Christensen, Raja Shehadeh, Emily Raboteau, Taiye Selasi, Assaf Gavron, Eimear McBride, Hari Kunzru, Lorraine Adams, Helon Habila, Eva Menasse, Anita Desai, Porochista Khakpour, Frida Jiryis, Arnon Grunberg, Colum McCann & Maylis de Kerangal

    Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Mario Vargas Llosa, Colm Tóibín, Ayelet Waldman, Maylis de Kerangal, Graldine Brooks, Jacqueline Woodson, Ala Hlehel, Madeleine Thien, Rachel Kusher, R...

  • They Know Not What They Do synopsis, comments

    They Know Not What They Do

    Jussi Valtonen & Kristian London

    Winner of the 2014 Finlandia PrizeA FAMILY UNDER THREAT. A FATHER'S WORST NIGHTMARE...On the surface, Joe Chayefski has it all. A great job, a beautiful wife and two perfect daught...

  • Weit Gegangen synopsis, comments

    Weit Gegangen

    Dave Eggers

    »Ein herzzerreißendes Werk von umwerfendem Mitgefühl« Felicitas von Lovenberg, FAZMit sieben Jahren verliert Valentino alles, seine Familie, seine Freunde und seine Heimat, den Sud...

  • Oliven und Asche synopsis, comments

    Oliven und Asche

    Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman

    Die israelische Besatzungspolitik: International gefeierte Autorinnen und Autoren machen sich vor Ort ein Bild.Diese aufsehenerregende Anthologie vereint Essays, Reportagen und Kur...

  • The Lifters synopsis, comments

    The Lifters

    Dave Eggers

    Journey to an underground world where adventure awaits and heroes are made in this middle grade novel from the bestselling, Pulitzernominated author of The Monk of Mokha and Her Ri...

  • Score synopsis, comments

    Score

    Martin Burckhardt

    Wir schaffen das Paradies auf ErdenIn einer nicht allzu fernen Zukunft: Regierungen sind abgeschafft, Geld, Gewalt, Krankheiten, Umweltverschmutzung, Ungerechtigkeit ebenso. Nollet...

  • Fight of the Century synopsis, comments

    Fight of the Century

    Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman

    The American Civil Liberties Union partners with awardwinning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that b...

  • NSA - Nationales Sicherheits-Amt synopsis, comments

    NSA - Nationales Sicherheits-Amt

    Andreas Eschbach

    Weimar 1942: Die Programmiererin Helene arbeitet im NSA, dem NationalenSicherheitsamt, und entwickelt dort KomputerProgramme, mit deren Hilfe alle Bürger überwacht werden. Erst als...

  • A Hologram for the King synopsis, comments

    A Hologram for the King

    Dave Eggers

    From the bestselling author of The Circlea taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel that takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering fam...

  • Foreign Soil synopsis, comments

    Foreign Soil

    Maxine Beneba Clarke

    “Clarke is the real deal…” Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“A tremendous new voice; a writer of immense talent and depth.” Kirkus Reviews (starred r...

  • Connect synopsis, comments

    Connect

    Julian Gough

    "Ein überwältigender Technothriller absolut fesselnd." The GuardianNevada, in naher Zukunft: Colt ist der clevere Sohn einer Wissenschaftlerin und eines Geheimdienstlers. Als er h...

  • Country Hardball synopsis, comments

    Country Hardball

    Steve Weddle

    After more than a decade spent in and out of juvenile detention, halfway houses, and jail, Roy Alison returns to his rural hometown determined to do better, to be better. But what ...

  • The Circle synopsis, comments

    The Circle

    Dave Eggers

    INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our livesa “compulsively readable parable...

  • Small Odysseys synopsis, comments

    Small Odysseys

    Hannah Tinti & Neil Gaiman

    “Lovers of the short story, rejoice! There’s something for everyone in this anniversary collection . . . The collection makes the argument that time and again, it is stories that s...

  • What Is the What synopsis, comments

    What Is the What

    Dave Eggers

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children the socalled Lost Boyswas forced to leave his vill...

  • Hark synopsis, comments

    Hark

    Sam Lipsyte

    An “extremely funny...brilliantly alive” (The New York Times Book Review) social satire of the highest order from bestselling author Sam Lipsyte, centered around an unwitting mindf...

  • Bei den wilden Kerlen synopsis, comments

    Bei den wilden Kerlen

    Dave Eggers

    Der Klassiker von Maurice Sendak als herrlich anarchischer Romanp.Bei den wilden Kerlen, der hinreißende AllAgeRoman von Dave Eggers, entstand auf Wunsch von Maurice Sendak, dem Au...

  • The Parade synopsis, comments

    The Parade

    Dave Eggers

    From the bestselling author of The Circle comes a taut, suspenseful story of two foreigners' role in a nation's fragile peace. With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this ...

  • How We Are Hungry synopsis, comments

    How We Are Hungry

    Dave Eggers

    In this "tour de force" (New York Times Book Review), the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Circle demonstrates his mastery of the short story.“These tales rein...

  • The Every synopsis, comments

    The Every

    Dave Eggers

    From the awardwinning, bestselling author of The Circle comes an exciting new followup. When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with th...

  • Meltdown synopsis, comments

    Meltdown

    Ben Elton

    For amiable City trader Jimmy Corby money was the new Rock n' Roll. His whole life was a party, adrenaline charged and cocaine fuelled. If he hadn't met Monica he would probably h...

  • Wie hungrig wir doch sind synopsis, comments

    Wie hungrig wir doch sind

    Dave Eggers

    Das neue Buch des amerikanischen Literaturstars Dave EggersJunge Amerikaner, die sich in ihrem Vaterland alles andere als zu Hause fühlen, bevölkern die Geschichten in Dave Eggers'...

  • The Boy on the Beach synopsis, comments

    The Boy on the Beach

    Tima Kurdi

    An intimate and poignant memoir about the family of Alan Kurdithe young Syrian boy who became the global emblem for the desperate plight of millions of Syrian refugeesand of the ma...

  • The Books That Changed My Life synopsis, comments

    The Books That Changed My Life

    Bethanne Patrick

    One hundred of today’s most prominent literary and cultural icons talk about the books that hold a special place in their heartsthat made them who they are today.Leading authors, p...

  • Understanding Dave Eggers synopsis, comments

    Understanding Dave Eggers

    Timothy W. Galow

    Understanding Dave Eggers surveys the work of one of the most celebrated American authors of the twentyfirst century and is the first booklength study incorporating Eggers's novels...

  • While Mortals Sleep synopsis, comments

    While Mortals Sleep

    Kurt Vonnegut

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER  Foreword by Dave EggersThese previously unpublished, beautifully rendered works of fiction are a testament to Kurt Vonnegut’s unique blend of observation ...

  • You Shall Know Our Velocity synopsis, comments

    You Shall Know Our Velocity

    Dave Eggers

    An “entertaining and profoundly original” (San Francisco Chronicle) moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free th...

  • They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky synopsis, comments

    They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky

    Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng & Judy A. Bernstein

    The inspiring story of three young Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, facing lifethreatening perils, ultimately find...

  • Appliance synopsis, comments

    Appliance

    J. O. Morgan

    Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 From the Costa Award winner, a highly inventive and and humane novel about our relationship with technology and our addicti...

  • The Futilitarians synopsis, comments

    The Futilitarians

    Anne Gisleson

    A memoir of friendship and literature chronicling a search for meaning and comfort in great books, and a beautiful path out of grief. Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had b...

  • Quicksand synopsis, comments

    Quicksand

    Steve Toltz

    This fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy about two lifelong friends is “a delightful literary novel…extraordinarily imaginative” (Psychology Today) from Man Booker...

  • Everything About You synopsis, comments

    Everything About You

    Heather Child

    'Black Mirror meets Gone Girl' Rosamund Lupton, Richard and Judy and Sunday Times bestseller'Amazing, creepy, twisty and clever' Karen Dionne, author of The MarshKing's DaughterThi...

  • Unsafe Attachments synopsis, comments

    Unsafe Attachments

    Caroline Oulton

    Unsafe Attachments explores the relationships of a loosely interlinked group of Londoners. Caught off guard at key points, they face moments of sudden temptation in their busy, est...