William Knoedelseder Books in Order

If you want sharp investigative journalism: Stiffed → Bitter Brew
If you like show business history: I'm Dying Up Here → Stiffed
If you want the most personal true-crime story: In Eddie's Name
If you're curious about American industry and design: Fins → Bitter Brew

William Knoedelseder grew up in St. Louis and studied English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Before he became known for book-length narrative nonfiction, he learned how to chase a story the old-fashioned way, by reporting it out, staying with it, and following the people at the center until the larger system came into view.

That habit served him well at the Los Angeles Times, where he spent 12 years as a staff writer. Much of his work focused on the entertainment business, which gave him a front-row seat to the mix of glamour, money, ego, and quiet corruption that powers so many American industries.

One long investigation changed the course of his writing life. His reporting on payola and other corrupt practices in the record business helped spark federal grand jury investigations, and it became the basis for Stiffed, his first book. Readers still come to that one for its mix of hard digging, colorful characters, and the uneasy sense that the machinery behind pop culture is often rougher than the polished surface suggests.

He later moved into television news, producing programs and documentaries for Knight Ridder, Fox, USA Broadcasting, and others. He worked closely with Barry Diller, created the nightly Miami news program "The Times," and produced documentaries including Marilyn: Something's Got to Give and All the Presidents' Movies.

But books kept pulling him back.

Since 2000, his nonfiction has ranged widely without ever feeling random. In Eddie's Name, written with Bryn Freedman, stays close to one Philadelphia family's life after the murder of teenager Eddie Polec and the failures of the city's emergency response system. I'm Dying Up Here returns to 1970s Los Angeles, when Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams, and other young comics were still fighting for stage time, money, and a place on Johnny Carson's couch.

Then came Bitter Brew, which traces the Busch family and Anheuser-Busch across generations. It is part family drama, part business history, and part story about what money can hide. The book reached the New York Times bestseller list, and it shows what Knoedelseder does especially well: he writes about institutions, but he never lets the institutions crowd out the people.

That holds true in Fins too. Using car designer Harley Earl as his way in, he tells the story of General Motors, Detroit, and the rise of the American automobile as both industry and fantasy. Readers who like Knoedelseder usually seem to respond to the same things across these books, his feel for character, his reporter's patience, and his interest in the moment when success starts to curdle.

He writes about backstage America.

Record labels, comedy clubs, breweries, TV newsrooms, car companies, political image-making. Again and again, his subjects are places where ambition meets performance, and where public myth can hide a messier private reality. Even when the canvas is large, he tends to find a handful of people who make the whole thing feel personal.

He lives in Los Angeles. That feels fitting for a writer so interested in the gap between image and power, because much of his work lives right in that space.