Author Guide · Memoir, Addiction & Journalism
Books Written by
In 2005 David Sheff wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine called “My Addicted Son”. Three years later it was Beautiful Boy, a #1 bestseller about his son Nic and methamphetamine. By then Sheff had been publishing books for almost three decades: a Nintendo history, a report on China's early technology entrepreneurs, and a book-length interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono whose magazine version reached newsstands two days before Lennon was shot. This page has all eight David Sheff books in the order they were published, and which one to read first.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 books · 1 written with Nic Sheff · 1981–2025 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
David Sheff has written eight books, published between 1981 and 2025. He is best known for Beautiful Boy (2008), his #1 New York Times bestselling memoir about his son Nic's methamphetamine addiction, and Clean (2013), which reports on what the research says about treating addiction. His other books are All We Are Saying (1981), his interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Game Over (1993), a history of Nintendo; China Dawn (2002); High (2019), written with Nic Sheff for younger readers; The Buddhist on Death Row (2020); and Yoko: A Biography (2025). Start with Beautiful Boy.
Watch: David Sheff on NBC's Today
Quick facts about David Sheff
- Born
- 23 December 1955, Boston, Massachusetts
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley
- Lives
- Northern California
- Work
- Journalist and author; interviews for Playboy, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Wired
- Known for
- Beautiful Boy (2008) and his 1980 interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
- Books
- Eight, 1981–2025
- Co-author
- Nic Sheff, on High (2019)
- On film
- Beautiful Boy (2018), with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet
- Married to
- Karen Barbour, artist and illustrator
- Children
- Three, including the writer Nic Sheff
- Recognition
- Time 100, 2009
- Award
- Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for nonfiction, for Beautiful Boy
All 8 David Sheff Books, in Order
All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
In 1980 Sheff spent three weeks with John Lennon and Yoko Ono for Playboy, talking with them in their apartment, on the street, in coffee shops and in the recording studio. The interview reached newsstands on 6 December 1980; two days later Lennon was shot outside his building. It first came out as a book in 1981 as The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and has been in print as All We Are Saying since 2000.
Read this for Lennon in his own words at forty, talkative again after five years out of public life, including his commentary on his own songs. It is also where Sheff's much later biography of Yoko Ono begins.
— LisanneGame Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children
A history of Nintendo's rise to the top of the video game industry, reported through interviews with the people who built it, among them Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo of America's Howard Lincoln, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. The 1994 paperback was retitled How Nintendo Conquered the World, and a 1999 revised edition, Press Start to Continue, added new chapters by Andy Eddy.
Read this if you only know Sheff from Beautiful Boy: it is the same reporter's patience applied to a corporation, and later histories of the games industry still draw on its interviews.
— LisanneChina Dawn: The Story of a Technology and Business Revolution
Researched over three years, a portrait of the entrepreneurs bringing information technology to China at the turn of the century, told largely through two of them: the venture capitalist Bo Feng and Edward Tian, co-founder of AsiaInfo, the first private Chinese company to go public in the West. It also appeared under the subtitle Culture and Conflict in China's Business Revolution.
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Sheff's memoir of his eldest son Nic's addiction to methamphetamine: the 3 a.m. phone calls, the rehabs, the relapses, and a father's preoccupation with a problem he cannot solve. It grew out of his 2005 New York Times Magazine article “My Addicted Son”, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for nonfiction. Nic's side of the same years is told in his memoir Tweak, and the two books together became the 2018 film starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.
What distinguishes it from other addiction memoirs is the vantage point. Sheff has none of the addict's interior access that most addiction memoirs rely on, and has to write instead from helpless, informed love, which is its own kind of honesty.
— LisanneClean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy
The book Sheff wrote once the question changed from what had happened to his family to what actually works. He reports on the research into addiction and its treatment, and argues that addiction is an illness to be prevented and treated rather than a moral failing to be punished. Like Beautiful Boy, it became a New York Times bestseller.
Useful paired with Beautiful Boy: where the first book shows what addiction feels like from inside a family, Clean explains what the research says should be done about it.
— LisanneHigh: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction
Written with Nic for younger readers: what drugs and alcohol do to the body, how to handle peer pressure and stress, and what can happen when you experiment, alongside testimony from young people and families who have lived through addiction.
The one to hand to a teenager, or to read before talking to one. If you have already read Beautiful Boy and Clean, much of the ground will be familiar.
— LisanneThe Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place
The story of Jarvis Jay Masters, who grew up in foster care, was sent to San Quentin for armed robbery and was later sentenced to death for the murder of a prison guard, a conviction whose evidence has been strongly disputed. Held in solitary confinement before his trial, he kept refusing an investigator's offer to teach him breathing exercises, until he finally accepted. Sheff draws on research and personal correspondence to follow Masters's turn to Buddhism.
Read this if Beautiful Boy left you wondering how anyone changes. It is about suffering and transformation, and it is the least expected book on this shelf.
— LisanneYoko: A Biography
A life of Yoko Ono, from a wealthy childhood in pre-war Tokyo and the bombing of the city, through the avant-garde art scenes of Tokyo, London and New York, to her marriage to John Lennon and the decades after his murder. Sheff met Ono during the 1980 interview and became close to her afterwards; he draws on his own conversations with her and on interviews with her family, friends and collaborators. His case is that the woman blamed for breaking up the Beatles has been judged through racism and misogyny rather than through her work.
Read All We Are Saying first if you can. This biography is the long answer to a conversation that began in 1980.
— LisanneDavid Sheff's Books About Addiction
Three of Sheff's eight books are about addiction, and they were written for three different readers. Nic Sheff's own memoirs cover the same years from the other side.
- Beautiful Boy (2008) — for parents and families: what it is like to love someone who is using, told from inside one family. Read the entry →
- Clean (2013) — for anyone who wants the evidence: prevention, treatment and why addiction should be treated as an illness. Read the entry →
- High (2019) — for teenagers and younger readers, written with Nic. Read the entry →
- Nic Sheff's side — Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (2008), published alongside Beautiful Boy, and its sequel We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction (2011).
How David Sheff Writes: A Reporter Inside His Own Story
Sheff was a magazine interviewer long before he was a memoirist, and his books are built the way interviews are. The Lennon book is three weeks of tape. Game Over rests on conversations with the people who ran and designed Nintendo. When he came to write about his own son, he did what he had always done: gathered the record, talked to the people involved, and reported what he found, even when the person being reported on was himself.
That is why Beautiful Boy and Clean belong together. The first is the father's account. The second is what happened when the reporter took over. In a 2013 interview with NPR, Sheff said that once he understood Nic was ill rather than weak, he could look at him with compassion instead of anger, and start asking how to help. Clean is that question, researched for a book's length.
The later books widen the lens without changing the method. The Buddhist on Death Row is built from research and correspondence with a man Sheff could rarely sit across from, and Yoko returns to someone he first interviewed in 1980 and knew for decades afterwards.
David Sheff's Books in Order of Publication
Journalism and business: The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (1981; in print since 2000 as All We Are Saying), Game Over (1993) and China Dawn (2002).
Addiction: Beautiful Boy (2008), Clean (2013) and High (2019, with Nic Sheff).
Lives: The Buddhist on Death Row (2020) and Yoko: A Biography (2025).
You can read them in any order. None of the books depends on another, although Clean means more after Beautiful Boy, and Yoko means more after All We Are Saying.
Where to Start with David Sheff
If you have never read him
→ Beautiful Boy (2008). The book that made his name, and the one most readers mean when they say “the David Sheff book”.
If someone you love is struggling with addiction
→ Beautiful Boy for company, then Clean for what the research says about treatment.
If you are a parent of a teenager
→ High (2019), written with Nic for younger readers.
If you came for John Lennon and Yoko Ono
→ All We Are Saying, then Yoko: A Biography (2025).
If you want something with no drugs in it at all
→ Game Over (1993), his history of Nintendo.
If you want another memoirist writing about addiction
→ My guide to the books of Mary Karr, whose memoir Lit follows her own drinking and early sobriety.
Frequently asked questions about David Sheff's books
How many books has David Sheff written?
Eight: All We Are Saying (1981), Game Over (1993), China Dawn (2002), Beautiful Boy (2008), Clean (2013), High (2019, written with his son Nic Sheff), The Buddhist on Death Row (2020) and Yoko: A Biography (2025).
What is the best David Sheff book to start with?
Beautiful Boy (2008). It is his best-known book and the one that made him a leading voice on addiction from a family's point of view. Read Clean (2013) next if you want the research behind it.
Who is David Sheff?
David Sheff (born 1955) is an American journalist and author, best known for Beautiful Boy, his memoir about his son Nic's methamphetamine addiction. As a journalist he has interviewed John Lennon, Steve Jobs, Frank Zappa and Carl Sagan, among many others, for magazines including Playboy, Rolling Stone and Wired.
What are David Sheff's books in order?
All We Are Saying (1981, first published as The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono), Game Over (1993), China Dawn (2002), Beautiful Boy (2008), Clean (2013), High (2019), The Buddhist on Death Row (2020) and Yoko: A Biography (2025).
Is Beautiful Boy a true story?
Yes. It is Sheff's memoir of his son Nic's methamphetamine addiction, and it grew out of his 2005 New York Times Magazine article “My Addicted Son”. Nic Sheff told his side of the same years in his own memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, published in February 2008, the same month as Beautiful Boy.
Is the Beautiful Boy film based on David Sheff's book?
Yes, on two books: David Sheff's Beautiful Boy and Nic Sheff's Tweak. The 2018 film was directed by Felix van Groeningen, with Steve Carell as David and Timothée Chalamet as Nic.
What is All We Are Saying by David Sheff?
The book of Sheff's 1980 Playboy interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, recorded over three weeks in New York. The interview reached newsstands on 6 December 1980, two days before Lennon was killed. It was first published as a book in 1981 as The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and has been in print as All We Are Saying since 2000.
What is the difference between Beautiful Boy and Clean?
Beautiful Boy (2008) is a memoir: what Nic's addiction did to Sheff and his family. Clean (2013) is reporting: what the research says about preventing and treating addiction, and why Sheff argues it should be treated as an illness rather than a moral failing.
Who is David Sheff married to?
Karen Barbour, an artist, illustrator and author of children's books. Sheff has three children, including the writer Nic Sheff.
Has Nic Sheff written books too?
Yes. Nic Sheff wrote the memoir Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (2008), its sequel We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction (2011) and the young adult novel Schizo (2014), and he co-wrote High (2019) with his father.
Did David Sheff write a book about Nintendo?
Yes. Game Over (1993) is a history of Nintendo's rise in the video game industry, based on interviews with figures including Shigeru Miyamoto and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. Later editions were titled How Nintendo Conquered the World and Press Start to Continue.
What is David Sheff's most recent book?
Yoko: A Biography, published by Simon & Schuster in March 2025. It draws on Sheff's friendship with Yoko Ono, which began with his 1980 interview with her and John Lennon.
Footnotes
- David Sheff — Wikipedia
- About David Sheff — davidsheff.com
- Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction — Wikipedia
- All We Are Saying: Three Weeks With John Lennon — NPR, 2010
- David Sheff On Addiction: Prevention, Treatment And Staying ‘Clean’ — NPR, 2013
- Game Over (Sheff book) — Wikipedia
- The Buddhist on Death Row — Simon & Schuster
Bibliography last verified 10 September 2026.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“What we know now is that addicts aren't immoral, they aren't weak; they're ill.”
— David Sheff, on NPR's Weekend Edition, 2013
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