The Last Interview books in order

Reading order

The Last Interview is a series published by Melville House that gathers significant interviews with well-known cultural figures. Each slim volume focuses on a single subject and typically includes several conversations conducted over the course of their career, often ending with their final published interview. The series is not limited to any one field: it covers novelists like Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin, musicians like David Bowie and Johnny Cash, thinkers like Hannah Arendt and bell hooks, and many others.

The books work well as introductions to unfamiliar figures or as deeper dives for existing fans. Because the interviews span different periods in each subject’s life, readers get to see how their ideas and public personas changed over time. The Hemingway volume, for example, includes his famous Paris Review interview alongside other conversations from different stages of his career.

Each entry in the series is a standalone book, so there is no required reading order. Readers can pick up whichever volume interests them. The series began in 2005 with a collection of Jacques Derrida’s interviews and has grown steadily, with new subjects added every year.