One Book, One Chicago - The Adventures of Augie March - Further Reading

One Book, One Chicago Fall 2011

FDR: The First Hundred Days
By Anthony J. Badger
Declaring that Americans had “nothing to fear but fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt faced insurmountable obstacles including 25 percent unemployment. Badger offers a concise assessment of FDR’s first 100 days in office and the federal policies implemented to move the country out of its greatest economic crisis.

An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli
By Niccolo Capponi
A direct descendant of Machiavelli, Niccolo Capponi presents a fascinating biography of the writer and philosopher primarily known for The Prince (Il Principe). Thoroughly researched and including his own translations, Capponi’s work dispels familiar Machiavelli myths and instead offers a fascinating and intimate portrait of a brilliant individual struggling to find his place in Florentine society.

The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
Edited and translated by Peter Constantine
This comprehensive anthology of newly translated works includes everything from Machiavelli’s personal correspondence to his philosophical writings, presenting new insights into the precarious political climate during Renaissance Italy. A PEN American Center finalist in translation, Constantine’s work offers a fresh but faithful perspective on this complex thinker.

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
By Morris Dickstein
Literary icons William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell, film directors Frank Capra and Busby Berkeley, jazz greats Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and musician Woody Guthrie are among the hundreds of artists whose contributions to 1930s culture gave Americans respite from a time of economic crisis. This detailed chronicle presents an amazing era of American artistic and cultural evolution.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
By Timothy Egan
The prolonged droughts of the early 1930s culminated in the catastrophic “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935, the worst dust storm in American history. Egan presents a story of ordinary people, both citizen and immigrant, longing for a piece of farm land to call their own who were taken in by promoters’ lies about the land’s profitability and then had to endure the ecological consequences of this land boom.

The U.S. Merchant Marine at War, 1775–1945
Edited by Bruce L. Felknor
As the “fourth arm of defense,” the Merchant Marine has a rich heritage of service from its beginnings during the American Revolution. Felknor explores its history through World War II with historic documents as well as accounts from the seamen themselves.

The Great Depression: A Diary
By Benjamin Roth, edited by James Ledbetter and Daniel B. Roth
As a young lawyer and U.S. Army veteran in Youngstown, Ohio, Benjamin Roth was looking forward to a prosperous life after World War I. Two years after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Roth began writing a personal diary, trying to grasp what happened and its impact on America’s ordinary middle class. Roth’s account of the Great Depression at times hauntingly parallels current economic conditions.

Saul Bellow: Letters
Edited by Benjamin Taylor
Listed on the 2010 top 10 lists by The New York Times and Washington Post, these letters by Bellow throughout his life are not only beautifully, wittily written, but give great insight into a man, his work, his friendships and the times in which he lived. Bellow’s gift for writing perfect, spot-on sentences does not weaken even in this casual form, and adds to his body of work and to his legacy.

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
By Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel presents stories of individuals whose dreams and hopes for a better future evaporated during the political and economic upheavals of the Great Depression. From sharecroppers to executives, politicians to gangsters, Terkel explores the idealism, failures and successes of Americans from every social and economic stratum.

Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression
By Errol Lincoln Uys
An estimated 250,000 young men and women rode the rails during the Great Depression looking for a job. Uys presents a portrait of these rail riders, many beginning their journey as children who much too soon became adults. However, thousands of these young people survived and found hope through New Deal programs such as the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps).

Recommended Fiction

With a focus on soul-searching heroes and epic tales that place you perfectly in time and place, we recommend the following titles.

The Death of the Heart
By Elizabeth Bowen
Innocent French orphan Portia must survive the politely treacherous world of her half-brother’s London home.

The Hatbox Baby
By Carrie Brown
This ensemble piece is set against the backdrop of Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair.

An American Tragedy
By Theodore Dreiser
Clyde Griffiths, son of a family of street preachers, grows up and finds himself on trial for murder.

Nightmare Alley
By William Lindsay Gresham
A carnival mentalist uses ambition and ruthlessness to work his way up in the world.

Crossing California
By Adam Langer
This novel tells of three families living on opposite sides of Chicago’s California Avenue in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The Fortress of Solitude: A Novel
By Jonathan Lethem
Two friends of different races grow up in a Brooklyn neighborhood from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The Lacuna
By Barbara Kingsolver
Follow Harrison William Shepherd to 1930s Mexico, where he encounters Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky.

A House for Mr. Biswas
By V.S. Naipaul
This dark comedy of manners introduces readers to Mohun Biswas, who strives to break free of his domineering in-laws and own a home of his own.

Midnight’s Children
By Salman Rushdie
Saleen Sinai is born at the exact moment of India’s independence. Throughout his life, he finds uncanny links between himself and his country, as well as the 1,000 other children born that hour.

The Grapes of Wrath
By John Steinbeck
Follow the Dust Bowl migration of Tom Joad and his family from Oklahoma to California in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The House of Mirth
By Edith Wharton
New York at the turn of the 20th century sets the stage for Lily Bart, who must decide between marrying for love or money.

When Luba Leaves Home: A Profile in Stories
By Irene Zabytko
In 1968 Chicago, Luba, daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, strives to form her own identity.

Recommended Fiction for Kids and Teens

The characters in these classic—well-known and yet-to-be—books are, like Augie, growing up, moving on, coming home and discovering things about themselves. These are adventures that shape characters, readers and the world.

Home of the Brave
By Katherine Applegate
(Ages 10–13)
When Kek moves from Africa to Minnesota, he finds that hope and friendship help him adjust to a new life in a strange land, just as many others have when new to America across the centuries.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
By Stephen Chbosky
(Ages 14 and up)
This affecting story of the road to manhood follows Charlie’s experiences from the edge of the dance floor into the thick of life and back again.

Bud, Not Buddy
By Christopher Paul Curtis
(Ages 9–12)
Bud, author of “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself,” sets off to find himself and his father, who may or may not be who he thinks he is, in this recipient of both the Newbery and Coretta Scott King awards.

David Copperfield
By Charles Dickens
(Ages 12 and up)
This renowned autobiographical novel set in 19th century England reveals that the tough times of growing up are timeless and placeless, just as happiness can be, as well.

Johnny Tremain
By Esther Forbes
(Ages 10–13)
From a Newbery- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes the story of Johnny Tremain, the stuck-up silversmith’s apprentice, who, as the world is changing in 1775, faces drastic adjustments in his own life leading him to different jobs, allegiances and realizations.

Looking for Alaska
By John Green
(Ages 14 and up)
In his own search for the “Great Perhaps,” 16-year-old Miles Halter leaves his trouble-free home to start over at Culver Creek boarding school and finds out far more about himself than he bargained for when tragedy strikes.

Ten Mile River
By Paul Griffin
(Ages 14 and up)
On their own, but “friends to the end,” streetwise Ray and José experience the joys and pains of loyalty, love and life amongst their hardscrabble urban existence.

The Outsiders
By S.E. Hinton
(Ages 14 and up)
This unforgettable story explores the intense bonds of friendship as a group of alienated and self-dramatized teens makes their way through the world’s rites of passage.

Hitch
By Jeanette Ingold
(Ages 12 and up)
Risking everything to start a new life during the Great Depression, Moss Trawnley matures quickly and finds his future, despite where and from whom he comes.

Inside Out & Back Again
By Thanhha Lai
(Ages 8–12)
Hà, a young girl from Vietnam, uses poetry to chronicle how her life and that of her family have changed in ways big and small by coming to America to escape the war in their homeland.

The Incredible Voyage of Ulysses
Adapted and illustrated by Bimba Landmann
(Ages 10 and up)
One of the most classic of all tales, this account of journeying around the world and into oneself in the search for eternal meaning is visually presented here in a fresh and timeless way.

A Separate Peace
Peace Breaks Out
By John Knowles
(Ages 14 and up)
New England’s Devon school is populated by young men testing its rules and experiencing horrors created not only by World War II but by their own internal and external battles.

The Catcher in the Rye
By J.D. Salinger
(Ages 14 and up)
What would Augie March and Holden Caulfield think of each other?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
By Betty Smith
(Ages 12 and up)
Living in a poor part of town with immigrants from many nations around her, Francie Nolan, through the books she finds at her neighborhood library, is able to dream, hope and survive.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
By Mark Twain
(Ages 10 and up)
Huck and Tom, their stories the quintessential American bildungsromans, are considered by many to be the literary forefathers of Augie March.

One Crazy Summer
By Rita Williams-Garcia
(Ages 9–12)
In this multi-award winning masterpiece, Delphine must take care of her younger sisters—and grow up fast—when they attend Black Panther summer camp while visiting the mother who abandoned them years before.

Moon Over Manifest
By Clare Vanderpool
(Ages 9–12)
As the daughter of a drifter, 12-year-old Abilene Tucker is sent to live in Manifest, Kan., where she embarks on a “spy hunt,” discovering that mysterious things have happened among different cultures for decades, and that those occurrences have more impact on her life than she at first realizes.

One Book, One Chicago - The Adventures of Augie March - Further Reading One Book, One Chicago Fall 2011

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One Book, One Chicago Fall 2011

One Book, One Chicago Fall 2011

Further Reading

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