Peyton Place by Grace Metalious Originally published in 1956, it achieved success because of the American public’s growing desire to escape from the artificial conformity... Read More
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou First published in 1969, Angelou recounts the experiences of a young girl growing up in the rural Deep South. Read More
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Originally published in book form in 1906, it exposed the horrifically unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Read More
Murder in the Lincoln Bedroom by Elliott Roosevelt Reviewed by Ed Lengel. Roosevelt’s mystery series offer highly amusing if fantastical romps through the wartime White House. Read More
Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan Reviewed by Ed Lengel. Kaplan writes with a blunt rawness juxtaposing nicely with his subject. Read More
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor A must-read for fans of the hard-boiled genre, and indeed for anyone interested in the nuances of the American popular... Read More
Murder in the White House by Margaret Truman Originally published 1980 The period drama is intriguing and loaded with potential, but it would have benefitted from a more practiced hand. Read More
All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward By attributing Watergate’s exposure to journalists rather than to the American constitutional process, the book and the movie, played a... Read More
Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Highly praised by journalists and academe since its release in 2017, the book uses the drama of the Washingtons’ “relentless”... Read More
The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas The 1981 novel captures a moment in literary time when poststructuralism seemed an attractive means of understanding the twentieth century’s... Read More