7/23/2023 0 Comments American history booksThe key players: High school cliques: jocks, goths, Trenchcoat Mafias, the disturbing allure and power of Marilyn Manson and his peers, all other misconceptions that serve to cloud the true cause of tragedies like this one Moment in history: Troubled teens Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacre 12 schoolmates and one teacher before committing suicide, ushering in an era in which mass shootings and the ensuing national debate on gun control are stuck in a soul-crushing perpetual loop. The key players: The Manson Family, Sharon Tate, latent voyeuristic and cynical tendencies lurking just beneath the surface of the American psyche Moment in history: Failed musician/cult leader/psychopath Charles Manson brings a shocking, bloody end to the halcyon hippie innocence of ‘60s America with a series of sensationalistic murders that gripped the nation. Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curtis Gentry (Bantam) The key players: The young author, the importance of family at large, the injurious nature of racism and sexism on the entire nation, personal strength It’s essential reading for Americans trying to comprehend the experience of the most marginalized cross-section of society: poor black women. ![]() Moment in history: It was published in 1969 amid the Civil Rights movement, but the story covers the ’30s and ’40s, when the author was coming of age in Stamps, Arkansas. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Ballantine Books) Oh, and the insidious forces of Western capitalism. The key players: An eccentric Vietnam War veteran, a Jewish feminist saboteur, a lapsed Mormon renegade and a libertarian billboard torcher. It should be noted that real-life ecoterrorism is still something taken very seriously, and sentencing reflects this. Moment in history: A wildly funny fictional glimpse into the nascency of American eco-activism, with the titular crew of ragtag misfits dedicated to sabotaging mankind’s industrial blight on the natural world - the monolithic Glen Canyon Dam, finished in 1966, being the greatest focus of their ire. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) And, really, the land itself (“If at moments it was frightening, requiring an effort to put down the conflagrationary imagination, it also augmented the touch of life. The key players: The sparse dozen residents of Eagle. Closest you’ll get to actually living there and understanding the 49th state (and why they’re paranoid about the lower 48). Moment in history: A wild frontier to some (see Into the Wild), but journalist John McPhee’s narrative encompasses bush pilots, prospectors, urban dwellers, politicians and more in his mid-’70s classic. The key players: Forrest, his grade-school sweetheart, an improbable exciting life story propelled by an innate sense of goodness, the best goddamn shrimp you’ve never tastedĬoming into the Country by John McPhee (Daunt Books) ![]() Johnson and being a stuntman alongside Raquel Welch, Forrest still manages to more or less thoughtfully cultivate important relationships in his own life. While serving in the Vietnam War and its attendant counterculture movement, working with NASA, meeting Nixon’s predecessor Lyndon B. Moment in history: Which one? As in the film, Forrest touches key moments in cultural and political history and interacts with real names along the way: Elvis, John Lennon, JFK. ![]() Now allow us to get all scholarly up in here.įorrest Gump by Winston Groom (Doubleday) All in service of better understanding and serving our country. Inside, we tackle the real-life Missouri exorcism that would lead the world to Linda Blair, the intimate details of the Apollo Missions and the crucial role of women in the survival of some of the world’s most-loved brown spirits. The catch? Each book must address, at least in spirit, real events from history. We at InsideHook are not a democracy, however, and as such took it upon ourselves to curate our own modern American canon: 50 titles, one for every state, that reckon with the nature of life in that place. It’s a good, genre-defying survey, and until a contender appears with the clout to oust the 49-year old broadcaster from their viewers-like-you-powered content, PBS will remain the democratically elected arbiter of such matters. ![]() The rest of us are just hoping to close out Primary season with a modicum of sanity, because we’ll be scooting back to the polls quicker than you can say gubernatorial candidate.Ĭonveniently, in a robust effort to get everyday Americans to fall in love with reading (Again? Ever?), PBS is running their Great American Read initiative, using a voter-generated list of the country’s 100 Best-Loved Novels as its syllabus for a nationwide book club. September is back-to-school season for most of the country, which means students K-through-continuing-ed will be shuffling reading lists aplenty.
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