Richard Powers Popular Books

Richard Powers Biography & Facts

Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory. Life and work Early life One of five children, Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois. His family later moved a few miles west to Lincolnwood, where his father was a local school principal. When Powers was 11, they moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok, which Powers attended through his freshman year, ending in 1972. During that time outside the U.S., he developed skills in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction primarily and classics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) with a major in physics, which he switched to English literature during his first semester. He earned a BA in 1978 and an MA in Literature in 1980. He decided not to pursue a PhD partly because of his aversion to strict specialization, which had been one reason for his early transfer from physics to English, and partially because he had observed in graduate students and their professors a lack of pleasure in reading and writing (as portrayed in Galatea 2.2). Professorships and awards In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight. Powers was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1989. He received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999. Powers was appointed the Swanlund Professor of English at UIUC in 1996, where he is currently an emeritus professor. On August 22, 2013, Stanford University announced that Powers had been named the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English. Novels Powers learned computer programming at Illinois as a user of PLATO and moved to Boston to work as a programmer. One Saturday in 1980, Powers saw the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and was so inspired that he quit his job two days later to write a novel about the people in the photograph. Powers spent the next two years writing the book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published by William Morrow in 1985. It comprises three alternating threads: a novella featuring the three young men in the photo during World War I, a technology magazine editor who is obsessed with the photo, and the author's critical and historical musings about the mechanics of photography and the life of Henry Ford. It was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and received Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. It also received a Special Citation from PEN Hemingway Awards. Powers moved to the Netherlands, where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma about The Walt Disney Company and nuclear warfare. He followed with The Gold Bug Variations about genetics, music, and computer science. It was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. In 1993, Powers wrote Operation Wandering Soul about an agonized young pediatrician. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1995, Powers published the Pygmalion story Galatea 2.2 about an artificial intelligence experiment gone awry. It was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. In 1998, Powers wrote Gain about a 150-year-old chemical company and a woman who lives near one of its plants and succumbs to ovarian cancer. It won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1999. 2000's Plowing the Dark tells of a Seattle research team building a groundbreaking virtual reality while an American teacher is held hostage in Beirut. It received Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Powers wrote The Time of Our Singing in 2003. It is about the musician children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson's famed 1939 concert on the Lincoln Memorial steps. Powers's ninth novel, 2006's The Echo Maker, is about a Nebraska man who suffers head trauma in a truck accident and believes his caregiver sister is an imposter. It won a National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist. Powers's tenth novel, 2009's Generosity: An Enhancement, has writing professor Russell Stone encountering his former student, Thassa, an Algerian woman whose constant happiness is exploited by journalists and scientists. In 2014, Powers wrote Orfeo about Peter Els, a retired music composition instructor and avant-garde composer who is mistaken for a bio-terrorist after being discovered with a makeshift genetics lab in his house. The Overstory, published in April 2018, is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the $75,000 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Bewilderment, published in September 2021, was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It is described as "an astrobiologist thinks of a creative way to help his rare and troubled son in Richard Powers’ deeply moving and brilliantly original novel." Bibliography 1985 Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, HarperCollins ISBN 0-688-04201-5 1988 Prisoner's Dilemma, McGraw Hill ISBN 0-07-050612-4 1991 The Gold Bug Variations, William Morrow ISBN 0-688-09891-6 1993 Operation Wandering Soul, HarperCollins ISBN 0-688-11548-9 1995 Galatea 2.2, Farrar Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-19948-5 1998 Gain, Farrar Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-312-20409-4 2000 Plowing the Dark, Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-23461-2 2003 The Time of Our Singing, Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-27782-6 2006 The Echo Maker, Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-14635-7 2009 Generosity: An Enhancement, Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-16114-3 2014 Orfeo, W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 978-0-393-24082-5 2018 The Overstory, W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 978-0-393-63552-2 2021 Bewilderment, W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 978-0-393-88114-1 2024 Playground Awards and recognition References External links Official website Richard Powers, Professor of English at UIUC Archived official website with extensive bibliography Kevin Berger (2002). "Richard Powers, The Art.... Discover the Richard Powers popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Richard Powers books.

Best Seller Richard Powers Books of 2024

  • Lysistrata and Other Plays synopsis, comments

    Lysistrata and Other Plays

    Aristophanes & Alan H. Sommerstein

    The Acharnians/The Clouds/Lysistrata'We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands'Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, the ancient Greek comic playwrig...

  • Confronting the Presidents synopsis, comments

    Confronting the Presidents

    Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

    Every American president, from Washington to Biden: Their lives, policies, foibles, and legacies, assessed with cleareyed authority and wit.Authors of the acclaimed Killing books, ...

  • Goliath synopsis, comments

    Goliath

    Matt Stoller

    “Every thinking American must read” (The Washington Book Review) this startling and “insightful” (The New York Times) look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism has t...

  • The Gay Science synopsis, comments

    The Gay Science

    Friedrich Nietzsche & Walter Kaufmann

    The book Nietzsche called "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of Godto which a large part of the book is devotedand his doctrin...

  • King Richard synopsis, comments

    King Richard

    Michael Dobbs

    ONE OF USA TODAY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A riveting account of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a presidentfro...

  • If the Allies Had Fallen synopsis, comments

    If the Allies Had Fallen

    Dennis E. Showalter, Harold C. Deutsch & William R. Forstchen

    What if Stalin had signed with the West in 1939? What if the Allies had been defeated on DDay? What if Hitler had won the war?From the Munich crisis and the dropping of the first a...

  • Wrestling With His Angel synopsis, comments

    Wrestling With His Angel

    Sidney Blumenthal

    The “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...

  • Bold synopsis, comments

    Bold

    Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler

    “A visionary roadmap for people who believe they can change the worldand invaluable advice about bringing together the partners and technologies to help them do it.” President Bill...

  • The Arrogance of Power synopsis, comments

    The Arrogance of Power

    Anthony Summers

    The controversial New York Times–bestselling biography of America’s most infamous president written by a master of investigative political reporting.   Anthony Summers’s tower...

  • Emerald Green synopsis, comments

    Emerald Green

    Kerstin Gier & Anthea Bell

    Gwen has a destiny to fulfill, but no one will tell her what it is. She's only recently learned that she is the Ruby, the final member of the timetraveling Circle of Twelve, an...

  • Lincoln synopsis, comments

    Lincoln

    Richard Carwardine

    As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents. But the story of his rise...

  • The Whole Language synopsis, comments

    The Whole Language

    Gregory Boyle

    Gregory Boyle, the beloved Jesuit priest and author of the inspirational bestsellers Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir, returns with a call to witness the transformativ...

  • Operation White Rabbit synopsis, comments

    Operation White Rabbit

    Dennis McDougal

    A search for the truth behind the DEA’s life imprisonment of acid's most famous martyr.  Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and falland rise and fall againof the psychedel...

  • Lessons synopsis, comments

    Lessons

    Ian McEwan

    NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER  A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ  From the bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across ...

  • The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner synopsis, comments

    The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Two representative and important works in one volume by one of the greatest German philosophers.The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was Nietzsche's first book. Its youthful faults were exp...

  • The Deluge synopsis, comments

    The Deluge

    Stephen Markley

    A New York Times Notable Book “This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.” Stephen KingFrom the bestselli...

  • Tattoos on the Heart synopsis, comments

    Tattoos on the Heart

    Gregory Boyle

    “Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” (Los Angeles Times)Tattoos on the Heart is a series of parables about kinship and redemption fr...

  • A Visit from the Goon Squad synopsis, comments

    A Visit from the Goon Squad

    Jennifer Egan

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER  NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of selfdestruction and redemption "fea...

  • Power to Save the World synopsis, comments

    Power to Save the World

    Gwyneth Cravens

    An informed look at the myths and fears surrounding nuclear energy, and a practical, politically realistic solution to global warming and our energy needs. Faced by the world's oil...

  • Power Curve synopsis, comments

    Power Curve

    Richard Herman

    A shrewd, efficient and popular politician, Madeline O'Keith Turner was eminently qualified to fulfill he duties as America's first woman Vice President. But Fate elevated her to C...

  • The Omen Machine synopsis, comments

    The Omen Machine

    Terry Goodkind

    In The Omen Machine, #1 New York Timesbestselling author Terry Goodkind returns to the lives of Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnellin a compelling tale of a new and sinister threat to...

  • King synopsis, comments

    King

    Ben Kane

    The thrilling adventure story about history's greatest warrior: Richard the Lionheart Autumn 1192. At the end of the Third Crusade Jerusalem remains in the Saracens' hands, and a p...

  • Forbidden Vow synopsis, comments

    Forbidden Vow

    Diana Cosby

    "A beautiful synthesis of Robin Hood legends” from the national bestselling author of the Blood & Bone series (Marion Zimmer Bradley, New York Times–bestselling author).With he...

  • Night Watch synopsis, comments

    Night Watch

    Jayne Anne Phillips

    LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR  From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daug...

  • Perestroika in Paris synopsis, comments

    Perestroika in Paris

    Jane Smiley

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER  From the Pulitzer Prizewinning and bestselling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animalsand a young boywhose liv...

  • Heart of Black Ice synopsis, comments

    Heart of Black Ice

    Terry Goodkind

    Heart of Black Ice is the climactic conclusion to Terry Goodkind's New York Times bestselling Nicci Chronicles.In the wake of the brutal war that swept the Old World in Siege of St...

  • Firestarter synopsis, comments

    Firestarter

    Stephen King

    Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestsellernow a major motion picture!Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson were once college students looking to mak...

  • The Virgin Elizabeth synopsis, comments

    The Virgin Elizabeth

    Robin Maxwell

    Now available again, the third book in Robin Maxwell's acclaimed Elizabethan quartet, a Los Angeles Times bestseller called "Tense, absorbing, highly enter...

  • Velocity synopsis, comments

    Velocity

    Ajaz Ahmed & Stefan Olander

    How can you win when the only certainty is change? Highly accessible, lively and inspiring, Velocity draws upon the authors’ unique perspectives and experiences to present seven ti...

  • The Fall of Richard Nixon synopsis, comments

    The Fall of Richard Nixon

    Tom Brokaw

    Bestselling author Tom Brokaw brings readers inside the White House press corps in this upclose and personal account of the fall of an American president. In August 1974, after his...

  • All the Powers of Earth synopsis, comments

    All the Powers of Earth

    Sidney Blumenthal

    Lincoln’s incredible ascent to power in a world of chaos is newly revealed in this “compelling, original, and elegantly written” (Michael Beschloss, New York Times bestselling auth...

  • In the Wars synopsis, comments

    In the Wars

    Dr Waheed Arian

    AS HEARD ON DESERT ISLAND DISCSAS SEEN ON THE CHANGEMAKERS, a Paramount+ docuseries profiling activists fighting for changeA WATERSTONES PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR'A riveting story of l...

  • First in Line synopsis, comments

    First in Line

    Kate Andersen Brower

    “An intimate, compulsively readable account of the dynamics that have shapedand sometimes destroyedrelations at the top of the American political hierarchy.... [and] a valuabl...

  • Warheart synopsis, comments

    Warheart

    Terry Goodkind

    Terry Goodkind's New York Times bestseller, Warheart, is the direct sequel to, and the conclusion of, the story begun in The Omen Machine, The Third Kingdom, and Severed Souls. All...

  • Shrines of Gaiety synopsis, comments

    Shrines of Gaiety

    Kate Atkinson

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The awardwinning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great Wara city bursting with money, glamour, and corrup...

  • Destiny and Power synopsis, comments

    Destiny and Power

    Jon Meacham

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  In this “illuminating” (USA Today) biography, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush.“Destin...

  • Takeover synopsis, comments

    Takeover

    Timothy W. Ryback

    From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler’s Private Library, a dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teete...

  • Virtue, Valor, and Vanity synopsis, comments

    Virtue, Valor, and Vanity

    Eric Burns

    Washington, Adams, Henry, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton: their ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of the nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfec...

  • The Garden of Lost and Found synopsis, comments

    The Garden of Lost and Found

    Harriet Evans

    Don't miss the STUNNING new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author, Harriet Evans THE BELOVED GIRLS is available to buy now!'Spellbinding' Independent'My top book of 2019' DI...

  • Shroud of Eternity synopsis, comments

    Shroud of Eternity

    Terry Goodkind

    Shroud of Eternity picks up where Terry Goodkind’s New York Times bestseller Death’s Mistress left off, promising a thrilling brew of bloodshed, sex, deception, and sorcery.The for...

  • The White Queen synopsis, comments

    The White Queen

    Philippa Gregory

    The inspiration for the critically acclaimed Starz miniseries The White Queen, #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings to life the extraordinary story of Eliza...