Non-fiction refers to any narrative based on factual material, including books, audiobooks, and ebooks. Popular genres include biography, science, and creative nonfiction. Non-fiction also includes news coverage, documentaries, and scientific journals. Specialized interests are required for many non-fiction genres. Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs are popular genres. History, sociology, culture, geography, nature, travel, art, and photography are also non-fiction genres. General science focuses on current findings and discoveries. Reference guides help users navigate through the vast amount of non-fiction genres.
Non-fiction is any fiction based primarily on fact, i.e. not a work of the imagination. The word technically applies to any medium, but is most often applied to printed books, audiobooks, and ebooks. Libraries and bookstores use nonfiction genres to divide their nonfiction collections into sections. Popular genres include creative nonfiction, biography, and science, all of which can be broken down into many sub-genres. Other important genres include therapy and medicine, textbooks and other manuals, and general references.
The term “non-fiction” technically includes any narrative based on factual material, a definition that includes news coverage, documentary films, and scientific journals. In popular usage, however, it refers specifically to books and literature that are purported to be largely or entirely based on fact. Many popular non-fiction works are published each year; in fact, most best-seller lists include sections for non-fiction. Works on history, biography, and politics regularly populate these lists, as do therapeutic self-help books. The vast majority of works in many non-fiction genres, however, are enjoyed only by people with specialized interests.
Some of the most popular nonfiction genres are biography, autobiography and memoir, stories of famous or otherwise noteworthy people. Biographies can be written by anyone; autobiographies and memoirs are written by the subjects themselves. In the mid-20th century, biographies such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer’s Marilyn launched a new genre, nonfiction novels or creative nonfiction. The genre has been popular ever since; while these books are written as fiction, their facts are held to be verifiably true. In the early 2000s, several high-profile authors of creative non-fiction were found to have embellished or fabricated facts, causing well-publicized controversy.
History, sociology, and culture are nonfiction genres interested in the ongoing history of how human beings interact. They are often divided into subgenres around more specific topics, such as African-American history or gay and lesbian culture. Works on geography, nature, and travel also constitute genres and subgenres of popular nonfiction, often divided by region. Many of these are travel guides; travel memories are also very popular. Photographs of animals and nature are also considered non-fiction, as are books in general on art and photography.
General science jobs tend to focus on current findings and discoveries, medical issues, or topics under debate and controversy. Each specialized branch of science has its own vast library of literature. These include textbooks and technical manuals that explain many processes in great detail. Similar references are available in every field of human understanding – from Russian literature to hairdressing. There are reference guides available both on and off the Internet to help users navigate through the vast amount of nonfiction genres to find works on a specific topic.
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