This bibliography is an idiosyncratic selection of books intended as a starting point for interested readers. Books tagged with the * symbol are particularly recommended
History and society
*James Baldwin
No Name on the Street, The Fire Next Time, Evidence of Things Not Seen
, and many others. The most brilliant prose stylist of twentieth-century America. Stunningly incisive accounts of the black experience in the cities of...
read more >>
Biography and oral history
Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
. First of a five-volume autobiography that provides an ultimately uplifting account of how a black girl transcended her traumatic childhood in 1930s Arkansas.
Paul Auster (ed)
...
read more >>
Entertainment and culture
Kenneth Anger
Hollywood Babylon
. A vicious yet high-spirited romp through Tinseltown's greatest scandals, amply illustrated with gory and repulsive photographs, and always inclined to bend the facts for the sake of a good story. A...
read more >>
Travel writing
Edward Abbey
The Journey Home
. Hilarious accounts of whitewater rafting and desert hiking trips alternate with essays, by the man who inspired the radical environmentalist movement Earth First! All of Abbey's many books, especially
...
read more >>
Fiction
General Americana
*Raymond Carver
Will You Please Be Quiet Please
? Stories of the American working class, written in a distinctive sparse, almost deadpan style that perhaps owes something to Hemingway and certainly...
read more >>
