Non-Fiction
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Myth of the Welfare Queen | 1997 | Buy |
| Thunder Run | 2004 | Buy |
| Wilmington’s Lie | 2020 | Buy |
David Zucchino is an American journalist who spent decades as a foreign and war correspondent, including extensive work for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. His reporting took him to conflict zones across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. His three non-fiction books draw on that reporting experience while addressing American and global injustice.
The Myth of the Welfare Queen (1997) followed a single woman in Philadelphia navigating the welfare system and was based on Zucchino’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism (he won a Pulitzer for Public Service Reporting in 1989 while at the Philadelphia Inquirer). Thunder Run (2004) is an account of the 2003 armored assault on Baghdad during the Iraq War, reconstructed from the perspectives of the American soldiers who carried it out.
Wilmington’s Lie (2020) is his most celebrated book. It tells the story of the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina, when a white supremacist mob overthrew the city’s elected government – one of the only successful coups in American history – and murdered dozens of Black residents. The book won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.