Books like Hollywood Babylon
Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger reads as salacious, cynical. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.
You'll never eat lunch in this town again
Julia Phillips · 1991
Both explore hollywood
Easy riders, raging bulls
Peter Biskind · 1998
A gossipy, blow-by-blow chronicle of the New Hollywood directors' rise and excess, mixing film history with behind-the-scenes anecdote.
The Kid Stays in the Picture
Robert Evans · 1995
Both explore hollywood
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1966
A meticulously reported account of a senseless Kansas murder that braids the victims' final day with the killers' interior lives — chilly, novelistic prose that keeps you reading toward an ending you already know.
The killing of the unicorn
Peter Bogdanovich · 1984
A grief-stricken first-person account of Dorothy Stratten's final months and murder, doubling as an angry indictment of Hugh Hefner and the Playboy world around her.
The Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean · 1998
A digressive, wry tour through obsession — following a journalist's fascination with an eccentric plant thief into swamps, courtrooms, and the odd subculture of orchid collectors.
Lucky man
Michael J. Fox · 1998
An intimate, self-deprecating account of fame, addiction, and diagnosis that moves from excess to hard-won acceptance, told with warmth and humor rather than self-pity.
The Devil in the White City
Erik Larson · 2003
A meticulously researched dual narrative that braids the wonder of the 1893 World's Fair with the creeping menace of a serial killer stalking its edges.
Fatal charms and other tales of today
Dominick Dunne · 1987
A gossipy, observant tour through wealth and scandal, told with a journalist's eye for the telling detail and a knowing, satirical undertone.
Disaster preparedness
Heather Havrilesky · 2010
Same nonfiction feel
Full service
Scotty Bowers · 2012
A gossipy, matter-of-fact tell-all narrated by an insider who treats scandalous Hollywood liaisons as everyday business, blending nostalgia with candid explicitness.
Hollywood Babylon II
Kenneth Anger · 1984
A gossipy, episodic dive through scandal after scandal, told in short vignettes with a gleeful, muckraking edge rather than sustained narrative arc.
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