Best of
Americana

1964

A Different Drummer


William Melvin Kelley - 1964
    Set in a mythical backwater Southern town, A Different Drummer is the extraordinary story of Tucker Caliban, a quiet, determined descendant of an African chief who for no apparent reason destroys his farm and heads for parts unknown--setting off a mass exodus of the state's entire Black population.Nearly three decades offer its first publication, A Different Drummer remains one of the most trenchant, imaginative, and hard-hitting works of fiction to come out of the bitter struggle for African-American civil rights.

Hard Rain Falling


Don Carpenter - 1964
    The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class: married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

The Swimmer


John Cheever - 1964
    But as night falls and the season begins to change, Neddy sinks from optimistic bliss to utter despair.

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America


Leo Marx - 1964
    His research helped to define--and continues to give depth to--the area of American studies concerned with the links between scientific and technological advances, and the way society and culture both determine these links. The Machine in the Garden fully examines the difference between the pastoral and progressive ideals which characterized early 19th-century American culture, and which ultimately evolved into the basis for much of the environmental and nuclear debates of contemporary society.This new edition is appearing in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Marx's classic text. It features a new afterword by the author on the process of writing this pioneering book, a work that all but founded the discipline now called American Studies.

The Pond


Robert Murphy - 1964
    Fourteen-year-old Joey spends his childhood visiting a beautiful back-country pond in Virginia. His humorous and heart-warming adventures in and around the pond, with the faithful dog Charley at his side, broaden his understanding of his place in the world and awaken in him a protective instinct towards all nature. In an era of climate-change debate and animal rights movements, The Pond delivers an important message to readers of all ages, at the same time never failing to delight.

Fear on Trial


John Henry Faulk - 1964
    The dramatic account of Faulk's six years on the blacklist and his lawsuit against AWARE.

Voices on the River: The Story of the Mississippi Waterways


Walter Havighurst - 1964
    This volume follows frontier commerce up the Mississippi River and its two major tributaries, the Ohio and the Missouri. It tells of steamboat speed records, races and disasters, and of the growing nation in the vast Midwest.