Best of
United-States

1959

Brown Girl, Brownstones


Paule Marshall - 1959
    Remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control. --The New Yorker An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears. --New York Herald Tribune Set in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and World War II, Brown Girl, Brownstones chronicles the efforts of Barbadian immigrants to surmount poverty and racism and to make their new country home. Selina Boyce is torn between the opposing aspirations of her parents: her hardworking, ambitious mother longs to buy a brownstone row house while her easygoing father prefers to dream of effortless success and his native island's lushness. Featuring a new foreword by Edwidge Danticat, this coming-of-age tale grapples with identity, sexuality, and changing values in a new country, as a young woman must reconcile tradition with potential and change.

The Bottom Of The Harbor


Joseph Mitchell - 1959
    As William Fiennes wrote in the London Review of Books, 'Mitchell was the laureate of the waters around New York', and in The Bottom of the Harbor he records the lives and practices of the rivermen, with love and understanding and a sharp eye for the eccentric and strange. This is some of the best journalist ever written.

North by Northwest


Ernest Lehman - 1959
    His consolation is that he gets to romance an elegant female spy, but he soon learns that the game of international intrigue is played for high stakes. Ernest Lehman provides an introduction to this souvenir volume, published to coincide with the centenary of Hitchcock's birth, in which he describes the course of his cherishable collaboration with the master of suspense.

Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution


Arthur Bernon Tourtellot - 1959
    The actions of each individual who played a conspicuous part in the day's work are minutely traced but Mr. Tourtellot never loses the main thread of his narrative and the wealth of detail he has included gives substance and color to an exciting story."— J. C. Miller, New York Herald Tribune Book Review "Tourtellot does not let his 19th of April float up in the spring air unconnected with a past or a future. He has built in very skillfully the story of the months before that day and then sends its echoes rolling on through time—and into distant states and nations....No other book generally available performs an even remotely comparable job....Makes full use of old material, adds a good deal that has come to light in the intervening years and, standing firmly on its own base, presents magnificently for the general reader and the specialist this immortal opening chapter of our beginnings as a nation."—Bruce Lancaster, The Saturday Review "The result of thoughtful examination of the evidence and clear writing."—Walter Muir Whitehill, New England Quarterly "An absorbing and vital history, containing much newly published information about a crucial week in the history of the United States. "—J.M. Goodsell, Christian Science Monitor

The Flowers of Hiroshima


Edita Morris - 1959
    

The Love Letter


Jack Finney - 1959
    Fantasy, Romance.I've heard of secret drawers in old desks, of course--who hasn't?But the day I bought my desk, I wasn't thinking of secret drawers, and I know very well I didn't have any least premonition or feel of mystery about it.Also availiable at:http://web.archive.org/web/2009022318...

Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States


Eleanor Flexner - 1959
    The struggle for women's voting rights was one of the longest, most successful, and in some respects most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics."The book you are about to read tells the story of one of the great social movements in American history. The struggle for women's voting rights was one of the longest, most successful, and in some respects most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics... It is difficult to imagine now a time when women were largely removed by custom, practice, and law from the formal political rights and responsibilities that supported and sustained the nation's young democracy... For sheer drama the suffrage movement has few equals in modern American political history."--From the Preface by Ellen Fitzpatrick

Apologies to the Iroquois with A Study of the Mohawks in High Steel


Edmund Wilson - 1959
    Edmund Wilson examines the plight, life, history, and culture of the Iroquois in New York State.

Fragments of Hawaiian History


Mary Kawena Pukui - 1959
    John Papa 'I'i, one of the leading citizens of the Hawaiian kingdom during the 19th century, left a unique and invaluable record in "Fragments of Hawaiian History." Brought up for a life of service to the high chiefs, John Papa 'I'i (1800-1870) describes life under the Kamehameha's with the authority of a first-hand witness, presenting personal experiences and revealing the pattern of Hawaiian culture as it actually functioned.

1877: Year of Violence


Robert V. Bruce - 1959
    By 1877 the United States had ground through four years of depression with no end in sight. The mood of the nation was explosive. As labor sought to unite against the great corporations, violence and lawlessness spread through the cities, accented by race riots, lynchings, government corruption, scandal in high places, and the shocking growth of teenage gangs. The summer of 1877 produced a climax: a nationwide railroad strike accompanied by rioting coast to coast. Mr. Bruce's moving account of these events portrays a nation trying to cope with an industrial depression before it had learned about the problems of industrialism. The upheaval was perhaps our closest brush with class revolution in America. "A taut narrative that is relieved by flashes of an appropriately sardonic humor. Mr. Bruce has resisted the temptation to let his spectacular story turn into a mere hour-by-hour re-creation of mayhem and emotion. All along the way he thoughtfully assesses just what this year meant in American history."-Eric F. Goldman, New York Times. "The author goes to the sources in scholarly fashion but reports it in a popular style...An informative and readable book."-C. Vann Woodward.

The Golden Book Encyclopedia, Book 5: Daguerreotype to Epiphyte


Bertha Morris Parker - 1959