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In May 1972 Esquire ran a comic essay by a former New York Post reporter about being flat-chested. “A Few Words About Breasts” made Nora Ephron’s name as a humorist, years before When Harry Met Sally… made it in Hollywood. She had started at Newsweek as a “mail girl” because, she was told, the magazine did not hire women writers. Her books follow the same voice across four decades: magazine pieces on food, fashion and the press in the 1970s, a novel about the end of her marriage to Carl Bernstein in 1983, and two short bestselling essay collections about getting older. This guide covers her 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1970–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Nora Ephron’s best-known books are Heartburn (1983), her only novel, and I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006), which reached number one on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. Her 1970s journalism is in Wallflower at the Orgy (1970), Crazy Salad (1975) and Scribble Scribble (1978). Start with Heartburn; the films she wrote, from Silkwood to Julie & Julia, grew out of the same voice.
Where to Start with Nora Ephron
If you want her defining book
→ Heartburn (1983) — the 1983 novel based on her second marriage.
If you want the late essays
→ I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006) — short comic pieces on ageing.
If you want the 1970s journalism
→ Crazy Salad (1975) — including “A Few Words About Breasts”.
If you want everything in one volume
→ The Most of Nora Ephron (2013) — essays, the novel, a screenplay and a play.
7 Nora Ephron Books, in Order
Wallflower at the Orgy
Twelve magazine pieces from 1968 and 1969. Ephron reports on the New York food establishment, Helen Gurley Brown, Arthur Frommer’s budget travel guides, the menswear trade, the boom in occult publishing and Jacqueline Susann, and has herself made over for a story.
Crazy Salad
Pieces written between 1972 and 1974, many from her Esquire column on women, during the second wave of American feminism. Its subjects are the women’s movement and the women around it, and it includes “A Few Words About Breasts” (Esquire, May 1972), the essay usually seen as the start of her career as a humorist.
Scribble Scribble
Her Esquire columns from the mid-1970s, when the column turned from women to the media: newspapers, magazines, editors and the ethics of what gets printed. It is the most journalistic of her books, written by a reporter about her own trade.
Heartburn
Rachel Samstat, a New York food writer seven months pregnant with her second child, discovers that her husband Mark, a Washington political journalist, is having an affair with Thelma Rice. The novel is openly based on Ephron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein and his affair with Margaret Jay, and recipes run through the story. It spent 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and Ephron wrote the 1986 film, directed by Mike Nichols with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.
I Feel Bad About My Neck
Comic essays written at 65 about bodily upkeep, menopause, children leaving home, apartments and food. It reached number one on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list in September 2006, and in 2019 The Guardian placed it on its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
I Remember Nothing
Her last book, on memory and getting older. It includes “Journalism: A Love Story”, about her years as a reporter, “The Legend”, about her mother, the screenwriter Phoebe Ephron, a piece on her infatuation with Lillian Hellman, and two closing lists: what she will miss and what she won’t.
The Most of Nora Ephron
A 576-page selection published by Knopf in November 2013, the year after her death, with an introduction by her longtime editor Robert Gottlieb. It contains the full text of Heartburn, the screenplay of When Harry Met Sally…, the play Lucky Guy, and essays and journalism from across her career.
In What Order to Read Nora Ephron
Nothing in Ephron continues from one book to the next, so you can read in any order. Publication order shows the arc of her career: the three 1970s collections are a reporter’s books about other people, Heartburn turns the same eye on her own life, and the two late collections are memoir in short pieces.
If you want one book before deciding, read Heartburn; it is short and contains most of what she does. Then go back to Crazy Salad for the journalism, or forward to I Feel Bad About My Neck for the late essays. The Most of Nora Ephron overlaps with all of them, so it works best as a single volume instead of the others.
A reading path
1. Heartburn (1983)
2. Crazy Salad (1975)
3. I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006)
4. I Remember Nothing (2010)
5. Scribble Scribble (1978)
Everything Else Nora Ephron Published
Beyond the 7 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
First book
1
1 book · 1968
- 1968And Now Here’s Johnny!her first book, about Johnny Carson
Plays
3
3 books · 2002–2013
- 2002Imaginary Friendsa play with music about the feud between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, staged on Broadway
- 2009Love, Loss, and What I Worewritten with her sister Delia Ephron from Ilene Beckerman’s book; Drama Desk Award 2010
- 2013Lucky Guyabout the New York columnist Mike McAlary, with Tom Hanks; staged after her death
The years · 1941–2012
Quick facts about Nora Ephron
- Known for
- Nora Ephron is known for turning her own life, from her chest size to her divorce, into comic essays and fiction, and for writing romantic comedies such as When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle.
- 1941
- Born in New York City
- 1972
- “A Few Words About Breasts” in Esquire
- 1983
- Heartburn
- 1989
- Writes When Harry Met Sally…
- 2012
- Dies in Manhattan, aged 71
- Born
- 19 May 1941, New York City; raised in Beverly Hills, the eldest of four daughters of the screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron
- Died
- 26 June 2012, Manhattan, of pneumonia caused by leukaemia
- Education
- Wellesley College, BA in political science, 1962
- Worked
- Newsweek, New York Post, then Esquire and New York
- Married
- Dan Greenburg (1967–1976), Carl Bernstein (1976–1980), Nicholas Pileggi (1987–2012)
- Films
- Three Oscar nominations for screenwriting: Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle; BAFTA for When Harry Met Sally…
The red mark is 1983: Heartburn, her only novel, based on the end of her marriage to Carl Bernstein.
How Nora Ephron Writes: Everything Is Copy
Ephron’s mother, the screenwriter Phoebe Ephron, told her that everything is copy: whatever happens to you, however humiliating, is material. Ephron took it literally. She wrote about her flat chest in 1972, her divorce in Heartburn and her neck at 65, and in 2016 her son Jacob Bernstein used the phrase as the title of his HBO documentary about her.
She was a reporter first, and it shows in the detail. Her essays are built from exact things: brand names, prices, recipes, the menu at a particular restaurant. Heartburn stops the story of a collapsing marriage to give recipes, which The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik read as a joke both about a food writer writing a novel and about novel-writing itself. The jokes do the work an argument would do elsewhere.
The other signature is the list. I Remember Nothing ends with “What I Won’t Miss” and “What I Will Miss”, and her late essays often move by numbered points instead of paragraphs. The tone is confiding and direct, close to the voice in her films, which is why readers who know Sally Albright tend to recognise the narrator of Heartburn.
Watch
Nora Ephron: The Academy of Achievement Interview
Nora Ephron talks about her life and work as a writer in a full-length interview recorded for the Academy of Achievement, which inducted her in 2007. From the official Academy of Achievement channel.
Frequently asked questions about Nora Ephron’s books
How many books has Nora Ephron written?
Seven key books are on this page: five essay collections, one novel (Heartburn, 1983) and the posthumous selection The Most of Nora Ephron (2013). She also published a first book in 1968, And Now Here’s Johnny!, and wrote three plays.
What are Nora Ephron’s books in order?
Wallflower at the Orgy (1970), Crazy Salad (1975), Scribble Scribble (1978), Heartburn (1983), I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006), I Remember Nothing (2010) and The Most of Nora Ephron (2013).
Where should I start with Nora Ephron?
With Heartburn, her only novel: short, funny and based on her own divorce. If you prefer essays, start with I Feel Bad About My Neck.
What is Nora Ephron’s most famous book?
Heartburn (1983), which spent 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became a 1986 film with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006) is her biggest essay collection, a number one New York Times bestseller.
Is Heartburn based on a true story?
Yes. Rachel Samstat is based on Ephron, her husband Mark on Carl Bernstein, Ephron’s second husband, and Thelma Rice on Margaret Jay, with whom Bernstein had an affair in 1979 while Ephron was pregnant with their second son. Bernstein objected to the book and threatened to sue but did not; under their divorce settlement he had the right to read and approve the screenplay and see a first cut of the 1986 film.
Which films did Nora Ephron write?
Among others Silkwood (1983, with Alice Arlen), Heartburn (1986), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998) and Julie & Julia (2009). She directed the last three, as well as This Is My Life (1992), Mixed Nuts (1994), Michael (1996) and Bewitched (2005).
Did Nora Ephron win an Oscar?
No. She was nominated three times for best original screenplay, for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle. She won the BAFTA for When Harry Met Sally…, and her last play, Lucky Guy, was nominated for the Tony for best play in 2013.
When did Nora Ephron die?
On 26 June 2012 in Manhattan, aged 71, of pneumonia caused by leukaemia. She had been diagnosed with myelodysplasia in 2006 and kept the illness private.
What is “A Few Words About Breasts”?
A comic essay about being flat-chested, first published in Esquire in May 1972 and collected in Crazy Salad (1975). It is often read as the start of her career as a humorist.
Did Nora Ephron know who Deep Throat was?
She said she did. Bernstein’s notes called the Watergate source “MF”, which he said meant “my friend”; Ephron guessed it stood for Mark Felt, the former FBI associate director, and told people for years. Felt was confirmed as Deep Throat in 2005.
Footnotes
- Nora Ephron — Wikipedia
- Heartburn (novel) — Wikipedia
- Heartburn (1986) — AFI Catalog
- I Feel Bad About My Neck — Wikipedia
- The Most of Nora Ephron — Kirkus Reviews
- I Remember Nothing — NPR
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
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.
“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
— Nora Ephron, commencement address at Wellesley College (1996)
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