20th-century American non-fiction writers

Miguel_Méndez

Miguel Méndez (June 15, 1930 – May 31, 2013) was the pen name for Miguel Méndez Morales, a Mexican American author best known for his novel Peregrinos de Aztlán (Pilgrims in Aztlán). He was a leading figure in the field of Chicano literature.

Chalmers_Johnson

Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973 and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization that promotes public education about Japan and Asia.Johnson wrote numerous books, including three examinations of the consequences of what he called the "American Empire": Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis; The Last Days of the American Republic. A former Cold Warrior, he notably stated, "A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship."

William_Humphrey_(writer)

William Humphrey (June 18, 1924 – August 20, 1997) was an American novelist, memoirist, short story writer, and author of literary sporting and nature stories. His published works, while still available in French translation, largely have been out of print until recently. Home from the Hill and The Ordways are available from LSU Press. In 2015, Open Road Media published the complete works of William Humphrey in digital form.
Of significant interest to readers of Humphrey are Wakeful Anguish, A Literary Biography of William Humphrey by Ashby Bland Crowder as well as Far From Home, Selected Letters of William Humphrey edited by Crowder, both available from Louisiana State University Press.

Helen_Andelin

Helen Berry Andelin (May 22, 1920 – June 7, 2009) was the founder of the Fascinating Womanhood Movement, beginning with the women's marriage classes she taught in the early 1960s. Controversial among feminists for its advice toward women's fulfilling traditional marriage roles, her writings are still supported and re-discovered as recently as 2016, with classes still being taught online and in seminars.

Rick_Steves

Richard John Steves Jr. (born May 10, 1955) is an American travel writer, author, activist, and television personality. His travel philosophy encourages people to explore less-touristy areas of destinations and to become immersed in the local people's way of life. From 2000 to 2020, he hosted Rick Steves' Europe, a travel series on public television. Steves also has a public radio travel show called Travel with Rick Steves (2005−present) and has authored numerous travel guides, the first of which was the popular Europe Through the Back Door. In 2006, he became a syndicated newspaper columnist, and in 2010, his company released a mobile phone application called "Rick Steves’ Audio Europe" containing self-guided walking tours and geographic information.

Tom_Wicker

Thomas Grey Wicker (June 18, 1926 – November 25, 2011) was an American journalist. He was a political reporter and columnist for The New York Times.

J._F._Powers

James Farl Powers (July 8, 1917 – June 12, 1999) was an American novelist and short story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of Catholic priests in the Midwest. Although not a priest himself, he is known for having captured a "clerical idiom" in postwar North America. His first novel, Morte d'Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.

Thomas_Parkinson

Thomas F. Parkinson (1920–1992) Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was a poet in his own right; an expert on the poetry of W. B. Yeats; and one of the first academic authorities to write about the Beat poets and novelists of San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s. A deeply thoughtful man of great integrity, he was a quiet political activist for much of his life, and survived a murder attempt in 1961 by a deranged former student who sought to "get someone who was associated with Communism." Though Parkinson survived being shot in the face (and bore the scars of the assault for the rest of his life), the teaching assistant who was with him at the time was killed. Thomas Parkinson died of an apparent heart attack in 1992, at age 72, after a long illness.