David Shields Popular Books
David Shields Biography & Facts
David Shields is an American author who has published twenty-four books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2019, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (a New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022. The film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017. Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch's use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance. A new film, How We Got Here, which argues that Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of (Allan) Bloom times Žižek (squared) equals Bannon, is forthcoming in January 2024, as is a companion volume of the same name. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, the PEN/Revson Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields—a senior contributing editor of the literary journal Conjunctions—has published fiction and nonfiction in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. Early life Shields was born in Los Angeles in 1956 to a lower-middle-class Jewish family. He has an older sister, a half-brother, and a half-sister. Both of Shields's parents were journalists. His mother, the West Coast correspondent for the Nation for many years, was a political activist; his father worked as a speechwriter for progressive politicians. In 1962, the family moved to San Francisco, where Shields's parents were deeply involved in the local anti-war and civil rights community, frequently opening up their home to those in need of short- or long-term shelter. In 1978, Shields graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, from Brown University, with a Bachelor of Arts, with Honors, in British and American Literature. In 1980, he received a Master of Fine Arts, with Honors in Fiction, from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Career Shields's debut novel, Heroes, about a Midwestern sportswriter's fascination with a college basketball player, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1984. From 1985 to 1988, he was a visiting assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. In 1989, Knopf published Shields's second novel, Dead Languages, a semi-autobiographical novel about a boy growing up with a severe stutter. Dead Languages is a work of fiction, but it incorporates significantly larger shards of reality than Shields's first book, marking the initial phase of Shields's transition toward nonfiction, which would ultimately lead him to employ the literary collage and ‘anti-novel’ forms for which he is most well-known. In 1992, his novel-in-stories, Handbook for Drowning, was published by Knopf. In 1996, Shields became a faculty member in the Warren Wilson College low-residency MFA Program for Writers, a position he still holds. That same year, his fourth book, Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, Shields's first work of literary collage, was published by Knopf. Between 1997 and 2009, Shields published five books: Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (Random House, 1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA award; Baseball Is Just Baseball: The Understated Ichiro (TNI Books, 2001), which achieved bestseller status in Japan; Enough About You: Notes toward the New Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 2002); Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine (Simon & Schuster, 2004); and The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), a New York Times bestseller. In 2001, Shields became a visiting instructor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has taught there ever since. In 2010, Shields's tenth book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, was published by Knopf. In Vanity Fair, Elissa Schappell called Reality Hunger an “arousing call to arms for all artists to reject the laws governing appropriation, obliterate the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and give rise to a new modern form for a new century.” Reality Hunger was recently named one of the 100 most important books of the 2010s by LitHub. In 2011, Norton published The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, an anthology Shields co-edited with Brad Morrow. In 2012, New Harvest published Jeff, One Lonely Guy, a collage co-written by Shields, Jeff Ragsdale, and Michael Logan. Later that year, an anthology co-edited by Shields and Matthew Vollmer, Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts, was published by Norton. In 2013, Knopf published How Literature Saved My Life, a blend of confessional criticism and cultural autobiography. Also in 2013, Simon & Schuster published Salinger, an “oral biography” of J.D. Salinger by Shields and Shane Salerno. Salinger was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2015, Hawthorne Books published Life Is Short — Art is Shorter: In Praise of Brevity, which Shields co-edited with Elizabeth Cooperman. In 2015, Shields also published That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as told to David Shields (McSweeney's); I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, co-written with Caleb Powell; and War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict (powerHouse) a deconstruction of that newspaper's front-page war photography. Other People: Takes & Mistakes was published by Knopf in 2017. That same year, First Pond Entertainment released the film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, written by Shields and Powell, starring Shields and Powell and James Franco, and directed by Franco. The trio debate the value of life versus art; art wins, barely. The film is available now on Vudu. In 2018, Shields's book Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention was published by Thought Catalog Books. In 2019, The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power was published by Mad Creek Books. Later the same year, Shields's debut documentary, Lynch: A History, an ode to Marshawn Lynch’s use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival. The film, which Shields wrote, produced, and directed, was named one of the five best films at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam and has won numerous awards, including the Golden SunBreak Award for Best Documentary and the End of Cinema Award for Best Nonfi.... Discover the David Shields popular books. Find the top 100 most popular David Shields books.
Best Seller David Shields Books of 2024
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Wrestling With His Angel
Sidney BlumenthalThe “magisterial” (The New York Times Book Review) second volume of Sidney Blumenthal’s acclaimed, landmark biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, reveals the future pre...
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Avedon
Norma Stevens & Steven M. L. AronsonAn intimate biography of Richard Avedon, the legendary fashion and portrait photographer who “helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture” (The New York Times), by h...
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That Thing You Do With Your Mouth
David Shields & Samantha MatthewsIn That Thing You Do With Your Mouth, actress and voiceover artist Samantha Matthews offersin the form of an extended monologue, prompted and arranged by New York Times bestselling...
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J. Michael David v. Bache Halsey Stuart Shields
Supreme Court of TexasAppellant, Michael David, went to work on August 1, 1979 for appellee, Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, Incorporated (Bache). He signed an employment contract that contained the follow...
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The Revolution Was Televised
Alan SepinwallA phenomenal account, newly updated, of how twelve innovative television dramas transformed the medium and the culture at large, featuring Sepinwall’s take on the finales of Mad Me...
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All Due Respect . . . The Sopranos Changes Everything
Alan Sepinwall"The Sopranos is the one [show] that made the world realize something special was happening on television. It rewrote the rules and made TV a better, happier place for thinking vie...
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North Star Guide Me Home
Jo SpurrierA complex, adult epic fantasy from a new Australian author... original, dramatic, unputdownable...Some things are broken beyond mending... Grievously wounded in battle, Isidro's li...
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Sepinwall On Mad Men and Breaking Bad
Alan SepinwallFrom the updated edition of The Revolution Was Televised, Alan Sepinwall’s analysis of Breaking Bad and Mad Men, featuring new commentary and insights on the complete series and co...
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The Shield of David
Vidda CrochettaWhen Petros, the leader of the disciples of Joshua, began a secret journey up the Jordan River, he is not certain who he will meet along the way. He does know some of the players o...
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Empower
Tareq Azim & Seth DavisFrom finding common ground with warlords, introducing the Taliban to change, and working with NFL greats such as Marshawn Lynch, this uplifting and inspirational memoir from coach ...
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The Brown Reader
Judy Sternlight“To be up all night in the darkness of your youth but to be ready for the day to come…that was what going to Brown felt like.” Jeffrey EugenidesIn celebration of Brown University’s...
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Black Sun Light My Way
Jo SpurrierA complex, adult epic fantasy from a new Australian author ... original, dramatic, unputdownable ... Sierra has always battled to control her powers, but now her life and Isidro's ...
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Willowman
Inga SimpsonSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKPEOPLE ADULT FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE ACT NOTABLE BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023'Willowman may well be the perfect Australian novel' Re...
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Winter Be My Shield
Jo SpurrierA complex, adult epic fantasy from a new Australian author ... original, dramatic, unputdownable ...Sierra has a despised and forbidden gift she raises power from the suffering of...
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Salinger
David Shields & Shane SalernoAn instant New York Times bestseller, this “explosive biography” (People) of one of the most beloved and mysterious figures of the twentieth century is “as close as we’ll ever get ...
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Luke Lancelot and the Golden Shield
Giles AndreaeWhen Luke's brother Arthur is given an ancient and magnificent sword for his birthday, Luke is crushed. He is the one who dreams of being a knight it's not fair! But as promised b...
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To Name the Bigger Lie
Sarah Viren“Has the pageturning quality of a thriller.” NPR “Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.” The New York Times Book Review “Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.” Publishers Week...
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David M. Shields v. State Texas
Tenth District, Waco Court of Appeals of TexasThis opinion discusses the procedure for a Batson hearing. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Appellant, who is black, contends the State us...
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The Harp and the Shield of David
Shulamit EliashEliash examines the relationship between Ireland and the Zionist movement, and the state of Israel from the context of Palestine’s partition and the delay in Ireland’s recogni...
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Siebert Oxidermo v. Hershell David Shields
Court Of Appeals Of KentuckyAppellant Siebert Oxidermo (hereinafter "Oxidermo") petitions for rehearing in this case. On December 7, 1982, this Court handed down an opinion in this case dismissing the appeal ...
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Footnotes
Peter FiennesThrough past and present, the country and the city, Peter Fiennes takes a literary journey through the British Isles‘As enjoyable a guide to the relationship of writers to the land...
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Reality Hunger
David ShieldsA landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fastforwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from th...
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Find Fix Finish
Ben McKelveyThe new book from the bestselling author of The Commando and Mosul.It was Australia's longest war, and also our most secretive.In the craggy mountains, green belts and digital batt...
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The Gifts of Reading
Robert MacfarlaneFrom the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its r...