Important Books & Writers in US History

8/3/2019 Important Books & Writers in US History

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Key Books and Aut

Colonial Era & American Revolution

Bartolome de las

Casas

A Brief Account of the Destruction

of the Indies (1552)

Richard Hakluyt (various pamphlets)

John Smith (various memoirs)

Anne Bradstreet

"The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung

Up into America, by a

Gentlewoman in such Parts"

(1647)

Mary RowlandsonThe Captivity and Restoration of

Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1676)

New England Primer (1680s-

1720s)

William Berkeley,

John Locke

(various essays and treatises,

17th century)

Ben FranklinPoor Richards Almanac(1732-

50s)

Thomas Paine Common Sense (1776)

Thomas Jefferson The Declaration ofIndependence (1776)

Early National Era & Antebellum

Phyllis Wheatley (various poetry, 1753-84)

McGuffeys Reader

Washington IrvingThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow,

Rip Van Winkle, 1820s)

Abolitionist writers

William Lloyd

GarrisonThe Liberator (newspaper)

Frederick Douglass

The North Star (newspaper),

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass


2/10

Elijah Lovejoy The Alton Observer (newspaper)

Harriet Beecher

StoweUncle Toms Cabin (1852)

Transcendentalists

Ralph WaldoEmerson

Nature, Self-Reliance (1830s)

Henry David ThoreauWalden, On Civil Disobedience

(1840s)

Romantics

Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851)

Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Walt WhitmanLeaves of Grass (1855), O

Captain! My Captain!The Atlantic Monthly; Harpers

Weekly

Gilded Age & Progressive Era

Horatio Alger Ragged Dick series (1867)

Helen Hunt Jackson A Century of Dishonor (1881)

Mark TwainTom Sawyer (1876), Huck Finn

(1884)

Henry George Progress and Poverty (1879)

Alfred T. MahanThe Influence of Sea Power Upon

History (1890)

Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Edward Bellamy Looking Backward (1890)

Frederick Jackson

Turner

The Significance of the Frontier in

American History (1893)

Charles SheldonIn His Steps: "What Would Jesus

Do?" (1896)

L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz (1900)

Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities (1904)

Ida TarbellHistory of the Standard Oil

Company (1904)

Upton Sinclair The Jungle (1906)

Willa Cather O Pioneers! (1913)


3/10

W. E. B. DuBois

(1868-1963)

The Souls of Black Folk, The

Crisis (official magazine of the

NAACP)

News magnates

William Randolph

HearstThe New York Journal

Joseph Pulitzer New York WorldJames Gordon

BennettNew York Herald

1920s & Great Depression

Lost Generation/naturalist writers

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)

Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms (1929), For

Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), The

Old Man and the Sea (1951)

Ezra Pound (various poems)

Gertrude Stein(various experimental fiction &

nonfiction)

T. S. Eliot "The Waste Land" (1922)

Harlem Renaissance

Langston Hughes

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"(1921), "Harlem (Dream

Deferred)" (1951), various fiction

and nonfiction

Alain Locke

(various poetry and nonfiction

works about the Harlem

Rennaissance)

Claude McKay Home to Harlem (1928)

Zora Neale HurstonTheir Eyes Were Watching God

(1937)

H. L. Mencken satirist and culture critic

Francis Townsend Townsend Plan

John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)


4/10

Walter Lippmanfounder of The New Republic

magazine (1913)

50s/60s

Dr. Benjamin Spock Baby and Child Care (1946)

David Reisman The Lonely Crowd (1950)

Dr. Alfred Kinsey

Sexual Behavior in the Human

Male (1948), Sexual Behavior in

the Human Female (1953)

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952)

Arthur MillerDeath of a Salesman (1949); The

Crucible (1953)

C. Wright Mills The Power Elite (1956)

William Whyte The Organization Man (1956)

John KeatsThe Crack in the Picture Window

(1956)

Southern writers

William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I

Lay Dying(1930), Light in August(1932), and Absalom, Absalom!

(1936)

Tennessee WilliamsA Streetcar Named Desire (1948),

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

Truman CapoteBreakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and

In Cold Blood (1966)

Beatnik authors

Allen Ginsberg "Howl" (1958)Jack Kerouac On The Road (1951)

William S. Burroughs Junky (1953)

Gregory CorsoBomb, Marriage, and other

critical poems

Sloan WilsonThe Man in the Gray Flannel

Suit (1955)


5/10

John Kenneth GalbraitThe Affluent Society(1958)

Michael Harrington The Other America (1962)

Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)

Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Ralph Nader Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)

Dr. Timothy LearyThe Psychedelic Experience

(1964)

Paul Erlich The Population Bomb (1968)

David PotterPeople of Plenty(1954), The

Impending Crisis (1977)

Mickey Spillane I, The Jury (1945)

John CheeverThe Wapshot Chronicle (1945),

Bullet Park (1969)

70s-Today

Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein

Maya AngelouI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

(1969)

Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982)


6/10

hors in American History

Spanish monk critical of the brutal treatment of the Taino and demanded better

treatment of Indians, one of the few primary sources from the era; helped start the

Black Legend; may have led some European thinkers to start thinking that power

ought to come from the assent of the governed

English writer who tried to persuade his countrymen to pursue an overseas empire

(1580s)

self-promiting English colonist who recorded his experience in Jamestown, VA

(1608-31)

Puritan writer and the first published female author in America; life from a woman's

perspective in colonial New England

one of many Puritans who wrote religious-themed captivity narratives (about

being kidnapped by Indians); her narrative was about her experience during King

Philips war

book used for school children; taught moral lessons

British philosophers who wrote about social contracts and mans natural rights:

life, liberty, and property"; Locke added that we have the right to rebel if our

governments become tyrannical, and both added to Rene Descartess idea that

our universe can be understood and our world improved because God gave us the

ability to reason

popular proverbs & advice on hard work and frugality; reflected Protestant values

(of the middle and New England colonies)

British-born author and rebel (patriot) urged in "Common Sense" for colonists to

declare independence and condemned monarchy; he also wrote the wartime

propaganda pamphlets The Crisis"

Jefferson's declaration was a combination of enlightenment philosophy and a

lawyerly list of the things George III did that violated the natural rights of the

colonists in America

first published black slave poet; wrote on patriotic and other themes wrote a

famous poem about George Washington; she was later emancipated by her

owners

book given to young children to help them become literate and gain American

values

New England storyteller from the "Knickerbocker Group" of authors, wrote

traditional tales and exaggerated versions of true stories, like the the I cannot tell

a lie cherry tree story about a young G. Washington


7/10

Illinois abolitionist newspaper published right across the Mississippi R. across from

Missouri; Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob in 1837

So youre the little lady who started this great war

founding author of transcendentalist movement

Transcendentalist who wrote about finding a spiritual connection in nature; critic of

slavery and the Mexican war, inspired later reformers such as MLK, Jr.

romanticism was related to transcendentalism in that focused on the individual

experience and mans relationship with nature

first great American novel but unpopular at the time

famous poem about Lincoln

still-in-print magazines founded in the mid-19th C to publish works of American

authors; The Atlantic had an abolitionist bent to it

rags-to-riches stories for young boys; advocated of hard work and honesty & the

American Dream

critical of US policy toward Native Americans

American humorist; wrote stories about young boys and regional subcultures, later

wrote biting satire and fierce criticism of imperialism

critic of laissez-faire economics who blamed problems on high land prices &

monopolies

pro-imperialist who advocated creating a stronger navy

photos & articles that exposed problems of urban poor

sci-fi story about a man who wakes up in a socialist paradise

as President of the American Historical Association, he presented his "frontier

thesis" at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair (aka Worlds Columbian Exposition)

major novel of Social Gospel movement, one of the best-selling books of all time

has been interpreted as allegory of the 1896 election/Populism/gold standard

controversymuckraker whose McLures articles exposed corruption in cities and other urban

problems

muckraker who helped increase support for govt anti-trust action

Christian Socialist classic; made readers demand food safety regulation

novel about difficult life for frontier settlers living on the Great Plains


8/10

NAACP co-founder & critic of Booker T. Washington lived through many of the

most important Civil Rights-related eras

the 1941 Orson Welles movie Citizen Kane is based on the life of Hearst and the

newspaper war he engaged in with Pulitzer, which led to the creation of crass

"yellow journalism"

James Bennett, Sr. and his son James Bennett, Jr; their papers evolved into what

is today the International Herald Tribune

expatriate authors, many who lived in Paris during Prohibition, critical of

materialism and fundamentalism that grew in the 1920s

celebration of the 1920s exhuberance but critical of the materialism that accompanied it

leading voice for his generation; spent years in Paris and Cuba; uses a very

masculine, forceful style in all of his writing

leading modernist poet who pioneered the imagist technique that influenced later

poets like Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams; controversial figure in the

1930s for his support of fascism & anti-semitism

modernist, avante garde writer who inspired many other artists and writers during

her time in Paris; a leading intellectual of her era; experimented with stream-of-

consciousness writing

modernist classic poem that seemed to embody post-WWI disillusionment

black authors who struggled with the realities of an oppressive society (and the

contradictions that come from being supported by white patrons); also affiliated

with jazz musicians like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong

leading poet and writer of the movement; rhythmic poetry and prose that focuses

on the black experience in America

so-called "father of the Harlem Ren.", encouraged blacks to look to Africa for

inspiration, advocated "The New Negro" ideology that insisted on confidence and

refusing to comply with unreasonable attitudes from whites

Jamaican-born poet and novelist who was for a time communist (but who grew

disillusioned after visiting the USSR)

seminal work in womens & African-American literature

spoke out against Prohibition and Christian fundamentalism (lampooned W. J.

Bryan at the Scopes trial)

Not really an author--he led the movement to a nationwide pension system (helped

lead to Social Security)

story of Okies who abandon the Dust Bowl and set out for California during the

Depression


9/10

came up with the term "Cold War," later was critical of George F. Kennans

containment policy and in the 70s became the conservative enemy of liberal critic

Noam Chomsky

influenced generations of baby boom parents to be more affectionate with their

children, and to treat them as individuals (before the focus had been on discipline)

classic work of sociology that attempted to describe the way middle class values

were increasingly shaped by materialism rather than traditional values

The so-called "Kinsey Reports" revealed hidden attitudes about sexual behavior;

helped liberalize attitudes about sex and gender relations; continued by other

doctors who challenged beliefs about gender and sexuality such as [William]

Masters & [Virginia] Johnson and Dr. Shere Hite (author of The Hite Report).

depicted the struggles for identity for black Americans

Miller's plays criticized life in America, and the latter was set in Puritan New

England and was meant to condemn McCarthy'switch hunts; Miller refused to

testify before HUAC (his wife Marilyn Monroe accompanied him at the risk to herown career)

a critical look at the class of people in power; explored the "military-industrial

complex" that Eisenhower warned about upon leaving office

nonfiction work that described how people not only worked for organizations but

how they belonged to them as well; critical of the way corporate life harms

individual identity

nonfiction work critical of suburban sprawl

set a series of novels in a f ictional town (Yoknapatawpha County), geographically

identical to his own hometown of Oxford Mississippi; unlike minimalists likeHemingway, he wrote stream-of-consciousness works that described the

complexity of Southern life

famous playwright

controversial journalist and fiction writer; his novel-like account of a small-town

murder (In Cold Blood) helped establish what is often called the "non-fiction novel"

critical of the conformity they witnessed in the 1950s; the forerunners of the

broader 60s counterculture movement

critical of 50s conformitysemi-autobiographical novel inspired by jazz, poetry, and drugs

described life as a heroin addict

youngest o the beat poets, lived overseas for a time

novel about the depressing nature of corporate life in white-collar America


10/10

ironically-titled book identified the problems of increasing private wealth but and a

declining public sector and an increasing income disparity

socialist member of the New Left who "re-discovered" rural and inner-city poverty

that had become invisible to an increasingly middle class, suburban America

helped start the modern environmentalism movement

a psychologist who studied depression in thousands of middle-class housewives;

helped start the feminist (women's liberation) movementabout dangers of cars; helped start consumer protection movement

promoted the use of LSD; he was a counterculture icon

warning that overpopulation would drain resources and kill millions by the 1980s

historian who argued that American institutions and culture has been shaped by its

abundance; earned the Pulitzer prize for his work on the causes of the Civil War

his pulp novels (starring toughguy detective Mike Hammer) are trashy, violent, and

mysoginistic--not to mention fiercely anticommunist

novels that were critical of middle class conformity

The Washington Post investigative reporters who uncovered the Watergate

scandal

poet laureate who wrote about her own life and female Afro-American experience

novels & nonfiction about the black and female experience

Documents

Important Books & Writers in US History