Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Robert Kanigel Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Robert Kanigel
Photo: Michael Lionstar

Robert Kanigel

Robert Kanigel Biography

Robert Kanigel is the author of nine previous books, most recently Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry and, before that, Eyes on the Street, his biography of Jane Jacobs. He has received many awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, the Grady-Stack Award for science writing, and an NEH Public Scholar grant. His book The Man Who Knew Infinity was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; it has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was the basis for the film of the same name starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel. Kanigel and his wife, the poet S. B. Merrow, live in Baltimore.

Robert Kanigel's website

This bio was last updated on 03/26/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Robert Kanigel talks about is 2022 memoir, Young Man, Muddled

What, to you, makes a good story?

There has to be something beyond the bare facts, a larger theme, a natural flow with highs and lows, slowings-down and speedings-up. There has to be human conflict, people wanting something and not getting it, at least not right away.

Do you have any plans for a sequel?

Yes, it's something I've been working on for a while now. Right now I'm calling it Errors and Obsessions. The story picks up from Muddled in San Francisco, after my break-up from the woman I here call Maura. It's a tale of obsession, failure, and a kind of redemption, all built around a writing project I took on that I allowed to take me over, distort my life, and make me miserable, along with everyone around me, including my friends, my girlfriend, and my parents. I wound up in a psychiatric halfway house before finally deciding, quite consciously, that I would return to Baltimore. Baltimore had been so nurturing to me. It was the place where I grew into something like an adult, albeit a muddled one, and I needed to go back to it.

What is your writing process like?

Research the hell out of my subject, in every way I can imagine, then write. I usually try not to do any writing until I'm maybe 80 or 90 percent of ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Robert Kanigel at BookBrowse
Young Man, Muddled jacket Vintage Reading : From Plato to Bradbury jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Robert Kanigel but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

We recommend 1 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
From the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

To make a library it takes two volumes and a fire. Two volumes and a fire, and interest. The interest alone will ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.