Kurt Andersen - Literary Works

Literary Works

Andersen is the author of three novels, including Turn of the Century (Random House, 1999), which was a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of the year, and the New York Times bestseller Heyday (Random House, 2007), which won the Langum Prize for the best American historical fiction of 2007. Random House published his third novel, True Believers, in the summer of 2012. His short fiction has been published in anthologies such as Stories: All-New Tales (HarperCollins, 2010).

Andersen has also published a book of humorous essays, The Real Thing (Doubleday, 1980; Holt, 1982; Bison Press, 2008), about quintessentialism, and co-authored two humor books, Tools of Power (Viking, 1980), a parody of self-help books on becoming successful, and Loose Lips (Simon & Schuster, 1995), an anthology of edited transcripts of real-life conversations involving celebrated people. Along with Carter and George Kalogerakis he assembled a history and greatest-hits anthology of Spy called Spy: The Funny Years, published in 2006 by Miramax Books.

He also wrote Reset (Random House, 2009), an essay about the causes and aftermath of the Great Recession, and he has contributed to many other books, such as Spark: How Creativity Works (HarperCollins, 2011) and Fields of Vision: The Photographs of John Vachon (Library of Congress, 2010).