21st-century American non-fiction writers

Elmer Kelton (April 29, 1926 – August 22, 2009) was an American author, known for his Westerns. He was born in Andrews County, Texas.
He graduated from the University of Texas in 1948. Kelton worked as the farm and ranch editor of the San Angelo Standard-Times from 1948 to 1963. He served as the associate editor of Livestock Weekly from 1968 to 1990. Kelton's memoir, Sandhills Boy, was published in 2007.
Kelton's novels have won seven Spur Awards, from the Western Writers of America, and three Western Heritage Awards, from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. He also received a Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement.

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."

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.

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.

Carleton Upham Carpenter Jr. (July 10, 1926 – January 31, 2022) was an American film, television and stage actor, magician, songwriter, and novelist.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of queer theory, and her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies, in which she was one of the most influential figures. Sedgwick's essays became the framework for critics of poststructuralism, multiculturalism, and gay studies.In her 1985 book Between Men, she analyzed male homosocial desire and English literature. In 1991, she published "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl", an article that received attention as part of an American culture war and criticism for associating the works of Jane Austen with sex. She coined the terms homosocial and antihomophobic.Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition. Drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of Michel Foucault, Sedgwick analyzed homoerotic subplots in the work of writers like Charles Dickens and Henry James. Her works reflected an interest in a range of issues, including queer performativity, experimental critical writing, the works of Marcel Proust, non-Lacanian psychoanalysis, artists' books, Buddhism and pedagogy, the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein, and material culture, especially textiles and texture.

Marella Agnelli (Italian pronunciation: [maˈrɛlla aɲˈɲɛlli]; born Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto [ˈdɔnna maˈrɛlla kaˈrattʃolo di kastaɲˈɲeːto]; 4 May 1927 – 23 February 2019) was an Italian noblewoman, art collector, socialite, style icon, and wife of Fiat S.p.A. chairman Gianni Agnelli. She often appeared in the fashion magazine Vogue. She was named to the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List in 1963.

Michael Stephen Palmer, M.D. (October 9, 1943 – October 30, 2013), was an American physician and author. His novels are often referred to as medical thrillers. Some of his novels have made The New York Times Best Seller list and have been translated into 35 languages. One, Extreme Measures (1991), was adopted into a 1996 film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gene Hackman.

Stanley Bruce Herschensohn (September 10, 1932 – November 30, 2020) was an American conservative political commentator, author, film director, and senior fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy in Malibu, California.Herschensohn quickly rose to prominence in the Republican Party, becoming a consultant to the Republican National Convention in 1972 and joining the Nixon administration on September 11, 1972. He served primarily as a speech writer. He left following Nixon's resignation, but served on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Transition Team and as an official in the Reagan administration.
Previously, Herschensohn had been a Distinguished Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had taught politics at the University of Maryland, Whittier College and at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

Christine Costner Sizemore (April 4, 1927 – July 24, 2016) was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her case was depicted in the 1950s book The Three Faces of Eve, written by her psychiatrists, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, upon which the film of the same name, starring Joanne Woodward, was based. She went public with her identity in the 1970s.