Best of
American

1958

Warlock


Oakley Hall - 1958
    First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.

A Coney Island of the Mind


Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 1958
    The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller's "Into the Night Life" and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950's—as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind—a kind of circus of the soul.

Diary of an Early American Boy


Eric Sloane - 1958
    Profusely illustrated, it will give its readers a sense of participation in the past that is all too rare in conventional histories.

The Story of Helen Keller


Lorena A. Hickok - 1958
    "She's not a poor little thing. She's a strong, healthy child. I suspect she has a better mind than many children who can see and hear." Helen was deaf, dumb and blind, isolated in a world of silence and darkness. She couldn't get out of the black closet she lived in until Annie Sullivan arrived one day, burning with determination to free Helen's mind, and teach her to live as a real human being. The job that Annie Sullivan set for herself and never been accomplished before. At first it looked hopeless, for there didn't seem to be any way to reach the child whose strong will clashed with her teacher's. But then one day Helen realized what was wanted of her, and from her first discovery that "everything has a name," there was no stopping her. Learning was fun, and the once bad-tempered little girl was transformed into a quick and avid pupil who could "see" a lion, ride a horse, swim in the ocean. Helen Keller, denied pity by her wise teacher, became the most famous child in the world, and then a gracious, well-educated woman whose triumphs make a story more moving than any fiction.

The Ugly American


William J. Lederer - 1958
    The book introduces readers to an unlikely hero in the titular “ugly American”—and to the ignorant politicians and arrogant ambassadors who ignore his empathetic and commonsense advice. In linked stories and vignettes set in the fictional nation of Sarkhan, William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick draw an incisive portrait of American foreign policy gone dangerously wrong—and how it might be fixed.Eerily relevant sixty years after its initial publication, The Ugly American reminds us that “today, as the battle for hearts and minds has shifted to the Middle East, we still can’t speak Sarkhanese” (New York Times).

The Most Of S.J.Perelman


S.J. Perelman - 1958
    This definitive collection brings together the finest of Sidney Joseph Perelman's comic writings, satires and parodies, from The Customer is Always Wrong and Boy Meets Gull to Is There an Osteosynchrondroitrician in the House? and The Pants Recaptured.

The Floating Opera and The End of the Road


John Barth - 1958
    The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels.  Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives.  Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions.  Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama.

The Langston Hughes Reader


Langston Hughes - 1958
    It combines highlights of the novels, stories, plays, poems, songs, and essays that have established his commanding position in world literature. Among the selections are the complete libretto of his popular musical comedy Simply Heavenly; the text of his pageant Glory of Negro History; his one-act play, Soul Gone Home; generous portions of his autobiographies, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander; and of the incomparable Simple trilogy: Simple Takes a Wife, Simple Speaks his Mind, and Simple Stakes a Claim.

Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic


Barbara O'Brien - 1958
    

Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories‏ (Anchor Literary Library)


Vladimir Nabokov - 1958
    (Nine of them also previously appeared in Nine Stories.)All were later reprinted within The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Spring in Fialta --Forgotten poet --First love --Signs and symbols --Assistant producer --Aurelian --Cloud, castle, lake --Conversation piece, 1945 --"That in Aleppo once" --Time and ebb --Scenes from the life of a double monster --Mademoiselle O. --Lance.

The William Saroyan Reader


William Saroyan - 1958
    This is the most complete and generous sampling of the first half of an indispensable American writer's career.

The Americans, Vol. 1: The Colonial Experience


Daniel J. Boorstin - 1958
    "A superb panorama of life in America from the first settlements on through the white hot days of the Revolution." - Bruce Lancaster, Saturday Review

Suddenly Last Summer


Tennessee Williams - 1958
    Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror. Anne Meacham, as a girl who has been the sole witness to her cousin's unbelievably shocking death, is brought into a 'planned jungle' of a New Orleans garden to confront a family that is intensely interested in having her deny the lurid tale she has told. The post-dilettante's mother is, indeed, so ruthlessly eager to suppress the facts that she had the girl incarcerated in a mental institution and she is perfectly willing, once she finishes her ritualistic five o'clock frozen daiquiri, to order the performance of a frontal lobotomy. A nun stands in rigid attendance; a doctor prepares a hypodermic to force the truth; greedy relatives beg her to recant in return for solid cash. Under the assorted, and thoroughly fascinating, pressures that are brought to bear, and under the intolerable, stammering strain of reliving her own memories, Miss Meacham slowly, painfully, hypnotically paints a concrete and blistering portrait of loneliness.of the sudden snapping of that spider's web that is one man's life, of ultimate panic and futile flight. The very reluctance with which the grim, hopeless narrative is unfolded binds us to it; Mr. Williams threads it out with a spare, sure, sharply vivid control of language.and the spell is cast."

Desolation Angels


Jack Kerouac - 1958
    Along with such visionaries as William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac changed the face of American literature, igniting a counterculture revolution that even now, decades later, burns brighter than ever in Desolation Angels.In one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, finally hits the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest young stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary writing.

The Dharma Bums


Jack Kerouac - 1958
    Published just a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.

The Conversion of the Jews


Philip Roth - 1958
    Each book in the series has been designed with today's young reader in mind. As the words come to life, students will develop a lasting appreciation for great literature.The humor of Mark Twain...the suspense of Edgar Allan Poe...the danger of Jack London...the sensitivity of Katherine Mansfield. Creative Short Stories has it all and will prove to be a welcome addition to any library.

Something Foolish, Something Gay


Glen Sire - 1958
    Meet Laurie Merritt--16 a blonde doll andSammy Hastings--17 a crew-cut typeTHEY live near HollywoodGo SteadCruise around in a cherry-colored jalopyHave marvelous times together--from high school proms and elegant dates along Hollywood's Sunset Strip, to chili and pizza, summer jobs, picnics, and cramming for examsInseparable, Incomparable--Absolutely Unforgettable

Letters to a Spiritual Seeker


Henry David Thoreau - 1958
    In seeking to understand nature, Thoreau sought to "lead a fresh, simple life with God." In 1848 a seeker named Harrison Blake, yearning for a spiritual life of his own, asked the then-fledgling writer for guidance. The fifty letters that ensued, collected here for the first time in their own volume by Thoreau specialist Bradley P. Dean, are by turns earnest, oracular, witty, playful, practical— and deeply insightful and inspiring, as one would expect from America's best prose stylist and great moral philosopher.

The Spirit Of Seventy-six: The Story Of The American Revolution As Told By Participants


Henry Steele Commager - 1958
    Renowned scholars Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris have provided a prudent, perceptive answer—the participants themselves—and in the process have fashioned from the vast source material a thrilling chronological narrative. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six allows readers to experience events long-entombed in textbooks as they unfold for the first time for both Loyalists and Patriots: the Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, the Declaration of Independence, and more. In letters, journals, diaries, official documents, and personal recollections, the timeless figures of the Revolution emerge in all their human splendor and folly to stand beside the nameless soldiers.Profusely illustrated and enhanced by cogent commentary, this book examines every aspect of the war, including the Loyalist and British views; treason and prison escapes; songs and ballads; the home front and diplomacy abroad. In short, the editors have wrought a balanced, sweeping, and compelling documentary history.

Three Short Novels


Kay Boyle - 1958
    In "The Crazy Hunter," the killing of a blind gelding is pivotal in a power struggle between a businesslike mother, a feckless father, and an almost grown daughter. In "The Bridegroom's Body," swans become surrogates for human emotion in a story of suppressed passion and the unquestioned male subjugation of women. "Decision," the only overtly political story in the collection, deals with the liberating power of moral choice—even if the choice means almost certain death—in Franco's Spain. As Robert Smith wrote about Kay Boyle in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Few American writers have written so beautifully of the human condition with a mind that recognizes the limitations of conduct and with a heart that sees the need to test those limits always by love and courage."

Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings


Charles Sanders Peirce - 1958
    With Buchler's book, best way to approach notoriously cryptic philosopher. Features 24 selections including "The Place of Our Age in the History of Civilization," "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," and "The Fixation of Belief."

Plays of Eugene O'Neill, Vols. I-III


Eugene O'Neill - 1958
    

Pilgrimage


Savitri Devi - 1958
    It is a personal account of her pilgrimage to various National Socialist "holy sites" in 1953.It was published in Calcutta in 1958.The book is dedicated "To the German People" and opens with quotations from the Bhagawad Gita.Contents 1. Linz; Leonding 2. Braunau am Inn 3. Berchtesgaden; Obersalzberg; Königssee 4. Munich 5. Landsberg am Lech 6. Nuremberg 7. Martyrs' graves, smoking chimneys and men of iron 8. Hermann's Monument and the Valley of the Eagles 9. The Rocks of the Sun

Once There Was a War


John Steinbeck - 1958
    In his dispatches he focuses on the human-scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.

In Love


Alfred Hayes - 1958
    Here, he visits her, erratically, and not always happily. All is soon inexorably overturned when a rich interloper comes between the couple with an indecent proposal-a thousand dollars for a night.

The American Earthquake


Edmund Wilson - 1958
    The resulting chronicle was hailed by the New York Times as "the best reporting that the period of depression has brought forth in the United States," and forms the heart of the present volume. In prose that is by turns dramatic and naturalistic, inflammatory and evocative, satirical and droll, Wilson painted an unforgettable portrait of a time when "the whole structure of American society seemed actually to be going to pieces." The American Earthquake bookends this chronicle with a collection of Wilson's non-literary articles—including criticism, reportage, and some fiction—from the years of "The Follies," 1923–1928, and the dawn of the New Deal, 1932–1934. During this period, Wilson had grown from a little-known journalist to one of the most important American literary and social critics of the century. The American Earthquake amply conveys the astonishing breadth of Wilson's talent, provides an unparalleled vision of one of the most troubling periods in American history, and, perhaps inadvertently, offers a self-portrait comparable to The Education of Henry Adams .

The Big Front Yard (Astounding Science Fiction. Vol. LXII. No. 2. October 1958)


Clifford D. Simak - 1958
    The situation get stranger when his dog Towser finds a buried ship in the woods.- Winner of 1959 Hugo Award for Best NoveletteSubsequently published in a number of anthologies.

From the Terrace


John O'Hara - 1958
    It richly chronicles one man's rise to wealth, power, and prominence - and the haunting sense of failure at his heart.

Baby Doll and Other Plays


Tennessee Williams - 1958
    This volume also contains 'Something Unspoken' and 'Summer and Smoke'.