Non-fiction
Voyager: Travel Writings, 2016
“Banks’s narrative seductively juxtaposes rambles through lush volcanic mountains, white sand beaches and coral reefs with a barrage of memories of the hash he’s made of his private life.” —The New York Times Book Review
Banks takes on the pleasures and deceptions of travel with gusto and thought, and engages readers to join him in the Everglades, Scotland, Alaska, the Himalayas, the Andes, Senegal, and throughout the U.S., reflecting on his mistakes and rejuvenating his spirits. In the process we, too, are inspired. His thoughtfulness and indefatigable curiosity are infectious, uncompromising and unapologetic. —New York Journal of Books
Dreaming Up America, 2008
“Russell Banks as a novelist has always dared to illuminate the larger issues of human interaction in a society that too often dishonors human rights. Here he gives us a thoughtful and provocative meditation on our history, with a chilling look at what happened to the American dream.” --Howard Zinn
“Russell Banks understands the narratives we invent as Americans to explain ourselves to ourselves. He plummets to the depths of the American soul, holds it up for view and offers in his insights the possibility for atonement.” --Chris Hedges
The Invisible Stranger (with Arturo Patten), 1999
In this unique collaboration Arturo Patten, one of the most important portrait photographers of our time, and Russell Banks visit the hardscrabble north country of Patten, Maine. Patten's haunting portraits of the town's residents evoke characters who exist in Russell Banks's fiction. Taken together, Patten's portraits and Banks's commentary offer a dramatic and provocative combination of word and image.