Best of
United-States
1964
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 Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays
Richard Hofstadter - 1964
In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?”, The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States."Recent months have witnessed an attack of unprecedented passion and ferocity against the national government. The Republican Party has apparently embarked on a crusade to destroy national standards, national projects, and national regulations and to transfer domestic governing authority from the national government to the states. A near majority of the Supreme Court even seems to want to replace the Constitution by the Articles of Confederation…"Unbridled rhetoric is having consequences far beyond anything that antigovernment politicians intend. The flow of angry words seems to have activated and in a sense legitimized what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the 'paranoid strain' in American politics." - Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, June 7, 1995
A Nation of Immigrants
John F. Kennedy - 1964
Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, people who deserve the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This modern edition of his posthumously published, timeless work—with a new introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a foreword by Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League—offers the late president's inspiring suggestions for immigration policy and presents a chronology of the main events in the history of immigration in America.As continued debates on immigration engulf the nation, this paean to the importance of immigrants to our nation's prominence and success is as timely as ever.
Shadow and Act
Ralph Ellison - 1964
His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem—“the scene and symbol of the Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man.On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers.
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
Joyce L. Kornbluh - 1964
Besides the full text and illustrations of the original, this new and expanded edition includes 32 pages of additional material: a new introduction and updated bibliography by old-time Wobbly organizer and scholar Fred Thompson; an informative essay on Wobbly cartoons and cartoonists by Franklin Rosemont; more than 3 dozen additional cartoons and drawings and a useful index. 450 oversize pages crammed with the Wobblies in all their glory! [Not even the doughtiest of capitalism's defenders can read these pages without understanding how much glory and nobility there was in the IWW story, and how much shame for the nation that treated the Wobblies so shabbily. [NY Times Book Review on the 1964 edition]
Don't Call Me Katie Rose
Lenora Mattingly Weber - 1964
She is intent on being called Kathleen and takes on a sophisticated image in order to impress Bruce Seerie, a star athlete of Adams High. "Kathleen's" emotions and finances become quite strained as she lives beyond her means. Does the pressure become too stressful?
Mortal Leap
MacDonald Harris - 1964
During the war, the world returns the favor. When his ship is blown up in the South Pacific, Ben is stripped of every shred of his personal identity—his face, his name, his fingerprints—and cast into the sea like a piece of wreckage. Rescued almost against his will, Ben must at last choose who and what he wants to be. But it is a choice he refuses to make until a dark-haired woman walks into his hospital room and says that he is her husband.MacDonald Harris has written a provocative novel, a wry narrative that moves with the exciting power of an adventure story. In scenes that range from waterfront bars and brothels to the rarefied atmosphere of the California gold coast, he creates men and women who vibrate with a life uniquely their own. His compelling story of a man's triumphant search for something or someone to care about evokes the humor, the sadness and the absurdity of a world that we all must somehow survive.
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 Winds of March
Lenora Mattingly Weber - 1964
While attempting to leave the remote farm, Katie Rose and the child are kidnaped. A suspenseful story unfolds.
Dancers on the Shore
William Melvin Kelley - 1964
They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels. Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families—their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love.
The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail
Wallace Stegner - 1964
Other Bison Books by Wallace Stegner include Mormon Country, Recapitulation, Second Growth, and Women on the Wall.
The War for America, 1775-1783
Piers Mackesy - 1964
Far less familiar is the fact that, for the British, the American colonies were only one front in a world war. England was also pitted against France and Spain. Not always in command of the seas and threatened with invasion, England tried grimly for eight years to subdue its rebellious colonies; to hold Canada, the West Indies, India, and Gibraltar; and to divide its European enemies. In this vivid history Piers Mackesy views the American Revolution from the standpoint of the British government and the British military leaders as they attempted to execute an overseas war of great complexity. Their tactical response to the American Revolution is now comprehensible, seen as part of a grand imperial strategy.