PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: nonfiction
English poet, pamphleteer, and historian
John Milton was an English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare. Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest...
prime minister of United Kingdom
Winston Churchill was a British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940â45, 1951â55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory....
French philosopher and author
Voltaire was one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and...
American statesman
Alexander Hamilton was a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention (1787), major author of the Federalist papers, and first secretary of the treasury of the United States (1789â95), who was the...
English writer
D.H. Lawrence was an English author of novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters. His novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), and Women in Love (1920) made him one...
French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian, one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period. The son and grandson of a physician, Michel Foucault was...
Austrian-German poet
Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austro-German poet who became internationally famous with his lyric poems and such works as Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). Since his death in 1926, he has...
Irish dramatist and critic
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. (Read George Bernard Shawâs 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.)...
French philosopher and scientist
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascalâs...
Irish-born author and scholar
C.S. Lewis was an Irish-born scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting...
American poet
Ezra Pound was an American poet and critic, a supremely discerning and energetic entrepreneur of the arts who did more than any other single figure to advance a âmodernâ movement in English and American...
American attorney and law enforcement official
During his career as a federal prosecutor, acting attorney general, and FBI director, James Comey has found himself lauded and reviled by members of both U.S. political parties. A polarizing figure known...
American novelist
John Steinbeck was an American novelist best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers....
American author
Tillie Olsen was an American writer and social activist known for her powerful fiction about the inner lives of the working poor, women, and minorities. Her interest in long-neglected women authors inspired...
American Roman Catholic priest and author
On June 12, 2016, a mass shooter in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killed 49 people, most of whom were members of the local LGBTQ community. The next day James Martin, a Roman Catholic priest based in...
British essayist and historian
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish historian and essayist, whose major works include The French Revolution, 3 vol. (1837), On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), and The History of Friedrich...
English religious leader
William Penn was an English Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom, who oversaw the founding of the American Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities...
German general [1800â1891]
Helmuth von Moltke was the chief of the Prussian and German General Staff (1858â88) and the architect of the victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1871). Moltkeâs father, a man of...
American author
James Baldwin was an essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him one of the most important voices of the 20th century. A writer of exceptionally...
Canadian-born British author
Author Rachel Cusk began her career writing traditional novels that won high praise and awards. Then she published a series of raw, unsentimental memoirs about motherhood, family life, and divorce that...
Canadian author
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer best known for her prose fiction and for her feminist perspective. Among Atwoodâs many acclaimed works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, her most celebrated is the...
German author
Heinrich Heine was a German poet whose international literary reputation and influence were established by the Buch der Lieder (1827; The Book of Songs), frequently set to music, though the more sombre...
American civil rights activist, lawyer, and writer
Pauli Murray was a key figure who helped define the intellectual foundations of the 20th-century civil rights and womenâs rights movements. The legal analysis and research by the activist, lawyer, nonbinary...
American chef, television personality, and author
Ina Garten is an American chef, entrepreneur, author, and television personality. She is best known as the founder of the Barefoot Contessa brand, which began as a gourmet food store that she owned and...
Indian author and activist
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who is best known for the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her advocacy of environmental and human rights issues....
American author
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born American novelist and critic and the foremost of the post-1917 émigré authors. He wrote in both Russian and English, and his best works, including Lolita (1955), feature...
Indian-born writer
Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-born writer whose ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and Southeast Asia....
Indian writer
Khushwant Singh was one of the best-known writers of India. He wrote novels such as Train to Pakistan (1956) and I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959), several essays and short stories, and a definitive...
American author
Michael Lewis is an American author and long-form journalist who uses compelling personalities to explain complicated and arcane subjects. Lewis is popularly known for his books of nonfiction, three of...
Journalist who made sure that the women abused by Jeffrey Epstein were heard
Julie K. Brown is an award-winning investigative journalist for the Miami Herald who was described in a 2026 profile as âthe woman who brought down Jeffrey Epstein.â But before she became one of the most...
American sociologist, historian, and activist
W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. He shared...
American spiritual leader
Ram Dass was an American spiritual leader, psychologist, and writer who was influential in the New Age movement. Born Richard Alpert, he spent much of his early career developing a reputation as an academic...
Peruvian author
Mario Vargas Llosa was a Peruvian Spanish writer who was one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature, particularly as a leading figure in the boom of 20th-century Latin American literature....
writer, film producer, and director
A poet, writer, lyricist, scriptwriter, film producer, and director, Gulzar has been one of the most influential contributors to Indian cinema since the 1960s. He is widely known for his blank-verse poetry,...
American political scientist and diplomat
Henry Kissinger was an American political scientist, who, as adviser for national security affairs and as secretary of state, was a major influence in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy from 1969 to 1976...
American author
Viet Thanh Nguyen is an American writer known for his novel The Sympathizer (2015), which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into a television miniseries in 2024. Nguyenâs work frequently...
American writer and mountaineer
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer widely known for his bestselling non-fiction books Into the Wild (1996) and Into Thin Air (1997), both of which have been adapted into movies. He was...
American pastor, speaker, and author
Paula White is an American Pentecostal pastor, speaker, and author associated with the controversial prosperity gospel message, which teaches that faithâexpressed through positive thoughts, positive declarations,...
American journalist and novelist
From 1985 to 2021 Carl Hiaasen wrote a popular syndicated opinion column for The Miami Herald. Hiaasenâs acerbic, often humorous columns tackled both Florida-specific and national issues. A lifelong Florida...
American activist and author
Michael Harrington was an American socialist activist and author, best known for his book The Other America (1962), about poverty. He was also chairman of the Socialist Party of America from 1968 to 1972....
American poet
When American poet Terrance Hayesâs children were young, he gave them a fun assignment: memorize a poem. For his five-year-old son he selected Gwendolyn Brooksâs âWe Real Coolâ (1959). After Hayes and...
British author and scientist
Arthur C. Clarke was an English writer, notable for both his science fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space...
English author and television personality
Sarah Ferguson is the former wife (1986â96) of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York). After they divorced in 1996, Sarah became a prolific author, television personality, entrepreneur,...
American televangelist, author, and speaker
Joyce Meyer is a prominent American televangelist, author, and speaker known for her dynamic teaching style and practical approach to Christian living. Her ministry grew in popularity throughout the 1990s...
American author
Isabel Wilkerson is known for chronicling the lives of unsung African Americans and exposing deeply embedded systems of social injustice in her reporting for The New York Times and in her celebrated works...
Chilean American writer
Isabel Allende is a Chilean American writer in the magic realist tradition who is considered one of the finest contemporary novelists from Latin America. Her best-known works include The House of the Spirits...
American poet
Langston Hughes was an American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and made the African American experience the subject of his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to...
American naturalist, botanist, and artist
William Bartram was an American naturalist, botanist, writer, and artist. The son of naturalist John Bartram, he described the abundant river swamps of the southeastern United States in their primeval...
American author
Wendell Berry was an American author whose nature poetry, novels of Americaâs rural past, and essays on ecological responsibility grew from his experiences as a farmer. His best-known nonfiction work is...
Japanese author
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and translator whose deeply imaginative and often ambiguous books became international bestsellers. His famous works include the novels Hard-Boiled...