Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like
By Lisanne Swart · 6 authors · Investigative Journalism · Updated July 2026
Brooke Kroeger has spent her career as a journalist and biographer documenting the history of undercover reporting itself, most notably in Undercover Reporting, tracing how journalists have used disguise and deception in pursuit of stories institutions would rather keep hidden. Her work on Nellie Bly and other pioneering reporters treats journalism's own methods and ethics as a subject worth serious historical study. The writers below share her interest in the mechanics and ethics of getting the story, whether as historical subjects or contemporary practitioners.
Readers who enjoy Brooke Kroeger often turn to Nellie Bly for the pioneering undercover reporter whose life and methods Kroeger herself documented, Studs Terkel for oral history that lets ordinary voices carry the historical record, Ronan Farrow for contemporary investigative journalism built on similarly persistent, methodical reporting, Gay Talese for narrative nonfiction elevating journalism to literary craft, Susan Sontag for rigorous essayistic thinking about ethics and representation, and Lawrence Wright for long-form investigative journalism examining institutions from the inside.
Similar Voice & Approach
Nellie Bly
Bly is the pioneering subject of much of Kroeger's own historical work, having gone undercover into a mental asylum in 1887 to expose its abuses, establishing the undercover investigative method Kroeger later documented and historicized in Undercover Reporting. Reading Bly directly shows the origin of the tradition Kroeger studies.
Read Bly for the primary-source origin of the undercover investigative tradition Kroeger writes about as a historian. Ten Days in a Mad-House is short and remains startling.
→ Read more about Nellie BlyStuds Terkel
Terkel shares Kroeger's conviction that the journalist's job is to get out of the way and let the actual voices of a story carry it, though his method is extended interview and oral history rather than undercover disguise, compiling ordinary people's own accounts of work and hardship.
Read Terkel for a different but related method of getting past institutional gatekeeping to the real story underneath. Working is his essential collection.
→ Read more about Studs TerkelRonan Farrow
Farrow's contemporary investigative reporting, particularly his work exposing systematic abuse and institutional cover-up, shares Kroeger's interest in the specific methods and persistence required to get a story that powerful people are actively working to suppress.
Read Farrow for a contemporary continuation of the persistent, methodical investigative tradition Kroeger studies historically. Catch and Kill is the essential entry point.
Gay Talese
Talese, a pioneer of the New Journalism movement, shares Kroeger's interest in journalism as a craft with its own history and internal ethics worth studying, elevating reportage into genuinely literary narrative nonfiction while remaining rigorously attentive to reporting method.
Read Talese for journalism treated as literary craft, in the same tradition of serious attention to method that Kroeger brings to her own historical subjects.
Susan Sontag
Sontag shares Kroeger's rigorous attention to the ethics of representation and witness, examining photography's own methods and moral obligations with the same seriousness Kroeger brings to journalism's methods of getting the story, including the ethical questions undercover reporting raises.
Read Sontag for the ethical and philosophical questions underneath methods like the ones Kroeger documents historically. Regarding the Pain of Others is the closest match.
→ Read more about Susan SontagLawrence Wright
Wright shares Kroeger's methodical, deeply researched approach to investigating institutions from the inside, whether religious organizations or terrorist networks, bringing the same patient, evidence-based rigor to long-form investigative journalism that Kroeger brings to the history of the field itself.
Read Wright for a contemporary practitioner of the meticulous, institution-focused investigative journalism Kroeger studies as a historian and biographer.
More from the shelf
Frequently asked questions about authors like Brooke Kroeger
Who should I read if I like Brooke Kroeger?
Readers who enjoy Brooke Kroeger often turn to Nellie Bly for the pioneering undercover reporter whose life and methods Kroeger herself documented, Studs Terkel for oral history that lets ordinary voices carry the historical record, Ronan Farrow for contemporary investigative journalism built on similarly persistent, methodical reporting, Gay Talese for narrative nonfiction elevating journalism to literary craft, Susan Sontag for rigorous essayistic thinking about ethics and representation, and Lawrence Wright for long-form investigative journalism examining institutions from the inside.
Did Brooke Kroeger write about Nellie Bly?
Yes, Kroeger's biography of Nellie Bly documents the pioneering undercover reporter who went into a mental asylum in 1887 to expose its abuses, establishing the undercover investigative method that became a central subject of Kroeger's later book Undercover Reporting, which traces the broader history of journalists using disguise and deception to get stories institutions would rather keep hidden.
What should I read after Brooke Kroeger's Undercover Reporting?
Nellie Bly's own Ten Days in a Mad-House offers the primary-source origin of the tradition Kroeger writes about historically. Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill shows a contemporary continuation of persistent, methodical investigative journalism. For institutions examined from the inside with similar rigor, Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower is essential.
Is Studs Terkel similar to Brooke Kroeger?
Both share a conviction that the journalist's job is to get out of the way and let the real voices of a story carry it, though their methods differ: Terkel used extended interview and oral history to compile ordinary people's accounts of work and hardship, while Kroeger's central subject is the history of undercover disguise as an investigative method.
