Authors Like George Plimpton

Reading List

Authors Like George Plimpton

In 1963 George Plimpton, the editor of The Paris Review, turned up at the Detroit Lions' training camp as a rookie quarterback and ran a handful of plays in a scrimmage before being thrown for a loss. Paper Lion (1966) made him famous. He had already pitched to major-league hitters at Yankee Stadium; he went on to box with the light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, play on the professional golf tour and keep goal for the Boston Bruins. He also wrote two oral biographies, of Edie Sedgwick and Truman Capote, and a famous April Fools' hoax about a pitcher called Sidd Finch. He died in 2003. The ten below were chosen on two counts: each joined a professional world as an amateur, and each made their own inadequacy part of the subject.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Participatory journalism · Sport and obsession · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love George Plimpton, the closest match is Stefan Fatsis, who spent a summer as a placekicker with the Denver Broncos. For kitchens instead of stadiums, read Bill Buford; for a year of training that ends in a championship, Joshua Foer; for wine, Bianca Bosker; and for the amateur he interviewed, Ernest Hemingway. Tom Wolfe is the reporter who watched instead of playing. Each entry below says what world they joined and how they come off.

Every book by George Plimpton →

Where to start if you loved George Plimpton

If you want the closest match, read Stefan Fatsis.

A Few Seconds of Panic. A sportswriter in an NFL training camp.

If you want the kitchen version, read Bill Buford.

Heat. A writer learns to cook, badly, then well.

If you want the happy ending, read Joshua Foer.

Moonwalking with Einstein. From reporter to memory champion.

If you want where it began, read Ernest Hemingway.

Death in the Afternoon. The serious amateur.

If you want the observer's version, read John McPhee.

Levels of the Game. One tennis match, every stroke.

If you want more books about obsession

My list of books about obsession has the rest.

10 authors like George Plimpton

01
The heir, in the NFL · Closest match

Stefan Fatsis

American · Word Freak (2001), A Few Seconds of Panic (2008)

For Word Freak Fatsis became a tournament Scrabble player; for A Few Seconds of Panic he spent a summer as a placekicker in training camp with the Denver Broncos. His newest book, Unabridged (2025), is about the making of the dictionary.

Joined:A summer as a placekicker in the Denver Broncos' training camp, and years of tournament Scrabble.

Own inadequacy:A middle-aged sportswriter among professionals, honest about every miss.

A Few Seconds of Panic is the most direct descendant of Paper Lion: a writer in an NFL camp forty years later, with the same mix of comedy and awe. Fatsis is more of a reporter and less of a performer than Plimpton.

— Lisanne

Every book by Stefan Fatsis → Authors like Stefan Fatsis →

02
Kitchens instead of stadiums

Bill Buford

American · Among the Thugs (1991), Heat (2006), Dirt (2020)

Buford travelled with English football hooligans for years while editing Granta, then joined a New York restaurant kitchen as an unpaid helper for Heat and moved his family to Lyon to train as a chef for Dirt.

Joined:A New York restaurant kitchen, Italian butchers and the kitchens of Lyon.

Own inadequacy:Always the least competent person in the room.

Buford is the clearest modern Plimpton, and also a literary editor, at Granta, who left the desk to join a trade. Heat does for professional cooking what Paper Lion did for football.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bill Buford → Authors like Bill Buford →

03
From observer to champion

Joshua Foer

American · Moonwalking with Einstein (2011)

Foer went to the US Memory Championship as a reporter, was taken on by a British memory champion as a pupil, and a year later won it, setting a national record. Moonwalking with Einstein is about that year and the history of memory techniques.

Joined:A year of memory training, ending at the US Memory Championship.

Own inadequacy:He expected to fail and won.

Foer reverses Plimpton's usual ending: he went in as an amateur and came out the national champion. Moonwalking with Einstein is the participatory book with the happiest outcome.

— Lisanne

Every book by Joshua Foer → Authors like Joshua Foer →

04
A year and a half to turn professional

Bianca Bosker

American · Cork Dork (2017), Get the Picture (2024)

For Cork Dork Bosker left her job as a journalist and spent a year and a half training as a sommelier in New York restaurants; for Get the Picture she worked her way into the art world as a gallery assistant and studio helper.

Joined:Training as a sommelier in New York restaurants.

Own inadequacy:Her own untrained palate, set against experts'.

Bosker's Cork Dork applies Plimpton's method to wine, with the difference that she sticks with it until she passes the exam.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bianca Bosker → Authors like Bianca Bosker →

05
The experiment on himself

A.J. Jacobs

American · The Know-It-All (2004), The Year of Living Biblically (2007)

Jacobs builds books out of year-long experiments on himself: reading the whole Encyclopædia Britannica, following every rule in the Bible as literally as he could, and, in 2024, living by the original meaning of the US Constitution.

Joined:A year following the Bible as literally as possible.

Own inadequacy:The comedy of failure, made into a method.

Jacobs makes the same kind of joke Plimpton made — the writer in over his head — but about rules rather than sport.

— Lisanne

Every book by A.J. Jacobs → Authors like A.J. Jacobs →

06
The participant who took over

Hunter S. Thompson

American · Hell's Angels (1966), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

For Hell's Angels Thompson rode with the motorcycle club for about a year, until some of its members beat him badly. He went on to make himself the central character of his journalism, a style he called gonzo.

Joined:About a year with the Hell's Angels.

Own inadequacy:He made himself the subject, and paid for it.

Thompson joined in, like Plimpton, but made himself the hero rather than the fall guy. Reading Hell's Angels after Paper Lion shows how much depends on the writer's posture.

— Lisanne

Every book by Hunter S. Thompson → Authors like Hunter S. Thompson →

07
Older than the genre · The serious amateur

Ernest Hemingway

American · The Sun Also Rises (1926), Death in the Afternoon (1932)

Before Plimpton made participatory sportswriting a form, Hemingway wrote about bullfighting, boxing and fishing as a devoted amateur. Death in the Afternoon is his long study of the bullfight. Plimpton interviewed him for The Paris Review in 1958.

Joined:Bullfighting, boxing and deep-sea fishing, as a devoted amateur.

Own inadequacy:None: he wanted to be taken for an expert.

Hemingway is the amateur Plimpton admired and interviewed, but his tone is the opposite: deadly serious where Plimpton is self-mocking. Death in the Afternoon is where the participatory sports book really begins.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ernest Hemingway → Authors like Ernest Hemingway →

08
Not American · Older than the genre

George Orwell

British · Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

Before the novels that made him famous, Orwell washed dishes in Paris hotel kitchens and lived among tramps in England for Down and Out in Paris and London, and travelled through the mining towns of the north for The Road to Wigan Pier, whose second half is an argument about class and socialism.

Joined:Months as a dishwasher in Paris and on the road with tramps.

Own inadequacy:An Etonian learning the bottom of the ladder.

Orwell did the serious version of what Plimpton later did for fun: joined a world below his own and wrote about how badly he fitted. Down and Out in Paris and London is the ancestor.

— Lisanne

Every book by George Orwell → Authors like George Orwell →

09
The observer of sport

John McPhee

American · Levels of the Game (1969), Coming into the Country (1977), Annals of the Former World (1998)

McPhee has written for The New Yorker since the 1960s, on subjects from tennis and basketball to geology and freight trains, in pieces built on long immersion and careful structure. Annals of the Former World won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

Joined:Long portraits of athletes, from Bill Bradley to the tennis players of Levels of the Game.

Own inadequacy:None: he watches closely and never plays.

McPhee wrote some of the best sports journalism of Plimpton's era without ever stepping on the court. Levels of the Game is the observer's answer to Paper Lion.

— Lisanne

Every book by John McPhee → Authors like John McPhee →

10
The reporter who watched

Tom Wolfe

American · The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), The Right Stuff (1979), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

Wolfe named and championed the New Journalism, editing the 1973 anthology of that name and setting out its devices: scene-by-scene construction, full dialogue, point of view and the details that mark a person's status. His reporting is loud, inventive and full of his own voice. In the 1980s he turned to novels.

Joined:Months with test pilots and astronauts for The Right Stuff.

Own inadequacy:None: the voice is confident, never in over its head.

Wolfe and Plimpton were both New York figures of the same years, and Wolfe chose to report on the heroes rather than try to be one. The Right Stuff is the other way to write about extreme competence.

— Lisanne

Every book by Tom Wolfe → Authors like Tom Wolfe →

Frequently asked questions about authors like George Plimpton

Who should I read if I love George Plimpton?

Stefan Fatsis is the closest match: he spent a summer as a placekicker with the Denver Broncos. Bill Buford, Joshua Foer, Bianca Bosker and A.J. Jacobs use the same participatory method on cooking, memory, wine and religion. Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell are the older participants, and John McPhee and Tom Wolfe wrote about sport and heroes from the outside.

What books are similar to Paper Lion?

A Few Seconds of Panic by Stefan Fatsis (2008) is the closest. After it come Heat by Bill Buford (2006), Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (2011) and Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker (2017).

What is participatory journalism?

Journalism in which the writer takes part in the activity they are describing, usually as an amateur, and makes their own experience part of the story. Plimpton is its best-known practitioner, though the method is older.

Who was Sidd Finch?

An invented baseball pitcher who could throw at 168 miles an hour, the subject of an article Plimpton wrote for Sports Illustrated's April 1985 issue, published on 1 April. Many readers believed it. He later expanded it into a novel, The Curious Case of Sidd Finch (1987).

Where should I start with George Plimpton?

Paper Lion (1966), his book about the Detroit Lions. My guide to all seventeen George Plimpton books covers the rest.

Nothing here was suggested by a machine. I picked these ten myself, and the reasons are on the page.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. See more on her personal bookshelf.

More from the shelf

Author guide

Books Written by George Plimpton

All seventeen, in order.

Reading list

Authors Like Stefan Fatsis

The closest match.

Reading list

Authors Like Bill Buford

More writers who joined in.

Reading list

Books About Obsession

People who could not stop.

From the bookshelf

If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.

Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations
Start Typing
Dummy Image

Hi, there.

Home

About

My Bookshelf

Weekly’s

Stay tuned: sign up for the newsletter!