Palo Alto in books

Palo Alto has never had a single great novel that defines it, the way some cities do. What it has is a long shelf of books that pass through: campus novels, stories of suburban teenagers, memoirs written in hospital call rooms and a growing pile of histories trying to explain Silicon Valley. Read together, they show a town that people keep using as a symbol, for good and bad.

This reading list sticks to books whose Palo Alto or Stanford setting is documented by publishers, reputable reviews or local press. We describe each one in our own words. For where to buy them, see our bookstores guide.

Novels and stories set here

The Portable Veblen, Elizabeth McKenzie (2016)

The most Palo Alto novel on this list. Much of the action takes place in a small rented house in Palo Alto, where Veblen, a translator and squirrel enthusiast named for the economist Thorstein Veblen, plans a wedding to Paul, a neurologist whose medical device is being tested at the local veterans hospital. It was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award and shortlisted for that year's Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction. A bonus for history fans: the real Thorstein Veblen taught at Stanford from 1906 to 1909.

Palo Alto, James Franco (2010)

Scribner published Franco's collection of 11 linked stories in October 2010. Teenagers drink, drive, fight and drift through parties in a town that looks perfect from outside. Franco was born in Palo Alto in 1978 and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996. He drew on his own teenage memories and on memories from local students. Reviews were mixed. Gia Coppola adapted three of the stories into a 2013 film, covered in our guide to Palo Alto in film and TV.

The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood (2021)

A romance set among Stanford graduate students, built around a fake relationship between a biology student and a young professor. Hazelwood, a neuroscientist, wrote it from inside academic science.

All the Little Live Things, Wallace Stegner (1967)

Stegner founded and directed Stanford's creative writing program for decades and lived in Los Altos Hills. This novel, narrated by the retired literary agent Joe Allston, is set in the foothills above a university town that readers have long taken for the hills near Stanford. It is the best book on this list for a feel of the Peninsula before the tech boom.

Writers who lived and worked here

• Kathleen and Charles Norris. Kathleen Norris wrote 93 novels and from 1911 to 1959 was among the most widely read and highest paid women writers in the country. Her husband, Charles Norris, wrote novels about social issues. In the late 1920s they built a Spanish Colonial Revival house by Birge Clark at 1247 Cowper Street, now on the National Register. It is a private home. Our Spanish Colonial Revival guide describes it.
• Ken Kesey. Kesey arrived at Stanford's Creative Writing Center in 1958 and lived on Perry Lane by the Stanford golf course. He began drafting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) in Malcolm Cowley's seminar, drawing on his work and volunteer drug studies at the Menlo Park veterans hospital. Our Perry Lane history tells the full story.
• The Stegner circle. Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone and Wendell Berry all passed through Stanford's writing program in the same years as Kesey. McMurtry later won a Pulitzer for Lonesome Dove and Stone a National Book Award for Dog Soldiers.

Memoirs

• When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi (2016). A Stanford neurosurgery resident's account of training and of his diagnosis with lung cancer, finished by his wife, Lucy, after his death in 2015. Much of it takes place at Stanford Hospital.
• The Possessed, Elif Batuman (2010). Essays about reading Russian literature that draw heavily on her years as a graduate student at Stanford.
• Know My Name, Chanel Miller (2019). A memoir by a Palo Alto native about the aftermath of a 2015 assault on the Stanford campus and the court case that followed. It is a serious book about the legal system and recovery.
• An Architect Grows Up in Palo Alto, Birge Clark. The architect's memoir of the town he largely built. See our Birge Clark page.

Histories and tech books

The nonfiction shelf is longer than the fiction one. A few standouts with strong Palo Alto content:

For the real places behind these books, see our pages on Kepler's Books and the 1960s and Palo Alto in the 1960s.

A reader's day in town

1. Start at Bell's Books, 536 Emerson Street, for used and local history titles. It has been there since 1935.
2. Wander the quiet residential streets a few blocks away to picture Veblen's rented house. Remember the house is fictional and the neighbors are real.
3. Head to Cowper Street to see the Norris House from the sidewalk.
4. Spend the afternoon in the stacks or the local history room of the Palo Alto City Library.
5. End at Kepler's in Menlo Park or Books Inc. at Town & Country Village if there is an author talk that night.

How we chose these books

Every title here has a Palo Alto or Stanford setting confirmed by the publisher, a reputable review, a library list or local press. We left out books that only mention the city in passing and we avoided long quotations. If you know a book we missed, the city's bookstores are good places to ask. Our literary events guide lists where authors read in town.

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