Which nonfiction book would be you be most devastated to learn was made up?

[Small Town Guy]

Few things made me think of this. Some of our discussions hear about In Cold Blood, Lehrer's books, Travels with Charley, Stephen Ambrose's made-up-Eisenhower stories, New Journalism, etc.

And then today on a Lakers messageboard someone was wondering how disappointed Lakers fans would be if they ever learned Kobe was juicing. Would it ruin their view of him? That made me think, well, no.

But...without accusing any book or writer of anything, which book -- which of your idols -- do you hold so sacred that you'd be devastated to learn the writer made things up/lied/fibbed/fictionalized on purpose? Memoirs, to me, are sort of out of this because I'm skeptical of all of those.

Anything intentionally false in these books would make me wonder what in the hell is the point. Minor mistakes, etc., obviously happen. (and maybe others already know that there have been issues with some of these, I don't know). But off the top of my head:
* Friday Night Lights. "Oh, hey, I made up that part about a coach calling Boobie the N-word."
* Robert Caro's entire canon: "You really thought I looked through every phone book in Florida just to find a single source in a thousand-page book?"
* The Best and the Brightest and The Breaks of the Game.
* What It Takes
* Battle Cry of Freedom
* Sunday Money
* Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. "They didn't actually do all that blow and not everyone had sex with Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt."
* Heaven is a Playground

 

[Dick Whitman]

* First in His Class
* What It Takes
* When Pride Still Mattered
* A People's History of the United States
* The Looming Tower
* Common Ground
* Paterno

 

[The Big Ragu]

Two came to mind immediately.

The Diary of Anne Frank, as much as I would love to think that it is fiction and not something that happened.

I also immediately thought of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

 

[heyabbott]

The Bible, both the Original (aka The Old Testament) and the supplement (aka The New Testament)

 

[MTM]

All the President's Men

 

[Dick Whitman]

The Bible, both the Original (aka The Old Testament) and the supplement (aka The New Testament)

Got news for you ...

 

[Dick Whitman]

All the President's Men

Supposedly the scene with Gene Sperling wasn't invented, by big-time exaggerated.

 

[Versatile]

There's an important caveat: The book wouldn't be wrong, just fabricated, right? In that case, I really don't care. Anything important has been researched many times over. Even if Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species from a couch in Kent without touching a plant, the findings have been tested many times since.

 

[Buck]

If Kobe Bryant was juicing, it wouldn't ruin my view of him because I already don't like him.
However, it would definitely downgrade him in my estimation of where is among great players.
The same is true of LeBron James or Dirk Nowitzki or any other current player who can be considered great in a larger historical context.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Growing Up Brady. I'd be pissed if Greg actually hit that.

 

[Norrin Radd]

 

[cranberry]

In Cold Blood. Oh, wait, that's not nonfiction.

 

[Buck]