1966: In Cold Blood
Author/Editor: Truman Capote
Another book selected by the Library of Congress as one of the books that shaped America, In Cold Blood is a nonfiction novel inspired by a story
“…about a murder that led Truman Capote to travel with his childhood friend Harper Lee ( author of A Kill a Mockingbird) to Holcomb, Kansas, to research his nonfiction novel, which is considered one of the greatest true crime books ever written. Capote said the novel was an attempt to establish a serious new literary form, the “nonfiction novel,” a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless entirely factual. The book was an instant success and was made into a film.”
A portrait of Capote as a young man by Carl Van Vechten courtesy of the American Memory Project.
–http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004662664/