Independent Reading:
Eras 1-6
AP English Language
2015-2016
S
ERA 1
S Colonial to Mid-19th Century
Texts
S Colonial
S Revolutionary
S Romantics
ERA 1 Book Selections
S Book Selection for ERA 1 is due on Tuesday, 9/1/15.
S ERA 1 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 9/29/15.
ERA 1 Option
S The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
S
The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made
The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s
Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the
brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends
Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the
French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by
hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of
innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic
confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spinetingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives
way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of
a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American
forests.
ERA 1 Option
S Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
S The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for
the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin
from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have
called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous
publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become
one of the most famous and influential examples of an
autobiography ever written. Franklin's account of his life is
divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he
wrote them. There are actual breaks in the narrative between the
first three parts, but Part Three's narrative continues into Part Four
without an authorial break (only an editorial one).
ERA 1 Option
S The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
S In an old, gloomy New England mansion, a woman opens a
shop to support her brother, recently returned from prison. She
takes on a boarder, and a distant relative--a beautiful, lively
young woman--comes to live with them as well. The fragile
bond between this group is shaken by the secret history of the
house and their wealthy cousin who wants to take it from
them.
ERA 1 Option
S The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
S The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a
historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is
considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan
Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells
the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through
an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of
repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne
explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.
ERA 1 Option
S Moby Dick by Herman Melville
S A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this
thrilling maritime adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a
brooding and vengeful sea captain, against the great white
whale that crippled him and came to dominate his life. But
more than just the tale of a hair-raising voyage, Melville's
riveting story passionately probes the human soul. A literary
classic first published in 1851, Moby-Dick remains among the
most highly acclaimed novels of the sea and a powerful
account of the ultimate human struggle.
ERA 1 Option
S Billy Budd by Herman Melville
S Aboard the warship Bellipotent, the young orphan Billy Budd
was called the handsome sailor. Billy was tall, athletic, nobel
looking; he was friendly, innocent, helpful and ever-cheerful.
He was a fierce fighter and a loyal friend. All the men and
officers liked him…
S All but one: Master-at-Arms Claggart. Envious, petty Claggart
plotted to make Billy's life miserable. But when a fear of
mutinies swept through the fleet, Claggart realized he could do
more than just torment the Handsome Sailor...He could frame
Billy Budd for treason...
ERA 1 Option
S Chesapeake by James Michener
S In this classic novel, James A. Michener brings his grand epic
tradition to bear on the four-hundred-year saga of America’s
Eastern Shore, from its Native American roots to the modern age.
In the early 1600s, young Edmund Steed is desperate to escape
religious persecution in England. After joining Captain John
Smith on a harrowing journey across the Atlantic, Steed makes a
life for himself in the New World, establishing a remarkable
dynasty that parallels the emergence of America. Through the
extraordinary tale of one man’s dream, Michener tells
intertwining stories of family and national heritage, introducing us
along the way to Quakers, pirates, planters, slaves, abolitionists,
and notorious politicians, all making their way through American
history in the common pursuit of freedom.
ERA 1 Option
S Centennial by James Michener
S Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A.
Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling
celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America’s
past, the story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested
through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and
warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt,
fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; the cowboy,
Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured
Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe. In Centennial, trappers,
traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters are
brought together in the dramatic conflicts that shape the destiny of
the legendary West—and the entire country.
ERA 1 Option
S Hawaii by James Michener
S
Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener brings Hawaii’s epic
history vividly to life in a classic saga that has captivated readers since its
initial publication in 1959. As the volcanic Hawaiian Islands sprout from
the ocean floor, the land remains untouched for centuries—until, little
more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers make the perilous
journey across the Pacific, flourishing in this tropical paradise according
to their ancient traditions. Then, in the early nineteenth century, American
missionaries arrive, bringing with them a new creed and a new way of life.
Based on exhaustive research and told in Michener’s immersive prose,
Hawaii is the story of disparate peoples struggling to keep their identity,
live in harmony, and, ultimately, join together.
ERA 1 Option
S
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
S
Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by
noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural
surroundings.The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment,
voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854,
it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in
a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor
Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into
a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human
development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective
understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency
were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist
philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in
his book, his cabin was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, about two miles (3 km)
from his family home.
ERA 1 Option
S
Burr (biography) by Gore Vidal
S
S
Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States
from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas
and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series
present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as
interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.
Burr is a portrait of perhaps the most complex and misunderstood of the
Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought
a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In
1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly
married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. Burr retains much
of his political influence if not the respect of all. And he is determined to tell
his own story. As his amanuensis, he chooses Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler,
a young New York City journalist, and together they explore both Burr's past
and the continuing political intrigues of the still young United States.
ERA 1 Reading Assignment
S ERA 1 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 9/29/15.
ERA 2
S Civil War & 19th Century
S Race Relations
ERA 2 Book Selection
S Book Selection for ERA 2 is due on Tuesday, 10/6/15.
S ERA 2 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 11/3/15.
ERA 2 Option
S
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
S
S
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s classic, eloquent, meticulously
documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian
during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in
hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four
million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen
languages.
Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown
allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and
other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and
broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and
decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury
My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was
won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be
retold from time to time.
ERA 2 Option
S The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
S Henry Fleming, a private in the Union Army, runs away from
the field of war. Afterwards, the shame he feels at this act of
cowardice ignites his desire to receive an injury in combat—a
“red badge of courage” that will redeem him. Stephen Crane’s
novel about a young soldier’s experiences during the American
Civil War is well known for its understated naturalism and its
realistic depiction of battle.
ERA 2 Option
S
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
S
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it
sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous
literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million
copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with
the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely
wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier
named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the
woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and
sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both
helpful and malign. At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s
derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept
away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey,
hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.
ERA 2 Option
S Roots by Alex Haley
S Roots is the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte
and the six generations who came after him. By tracing back
his own roots, Haley tells the story of 39 million Americans of
African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich
cultural heritage that ultimately speaks to all races everywhere,
for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials
ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.
ERA 2 Option
S Beloved by Toni Morrison
S Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding
novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as
intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and
escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She
has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where
so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is
haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose
tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with
bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering
achievement.
ERA 2 Option
S The Killer Angles by Michael Shaara
S In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s
history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One
dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than
rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories.
There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell
on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence,
and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael
Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping,
unforgettable—the dramatic story of the battleground for
America’s destiny.
ERA 2 Option
S Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Selling more than 300,000 copies the first year it was published, Stowe's
powerful abolitionist novel fueled the fire of the human rights debate in
1852. Denouncing the institution of slavery in dramatic terms, the
incendiary novel quickly draws the reader into the world of slaves and
their masters. Stowe's characters are powerfully and humanly realized in
Uncle Tom, a majestic and heroic slave whose faith and dignity are never
corrupted; Eliza and her husband, George, who elude slave catchers and
eventually flee a country that condones slavery; Simon Legree, a brutal
plantation owner; Little Eva, who suffers emotionally and physically from
the suffering of slaves; and fun-loving Topsy, Eva's slave playmate.
S Critics, scholars, and students are today revisiting this monumental work
with a new objectivity, focusing on Stowe's compelling portrayal of
women and the novel's theological underpinnings.
S
ERA 2 Option
S
Lincoln (biography) by Gore Vidal
S
To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great
Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln
we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who
entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South
and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man
from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery,
Lincoln agonizes over the best course of action and comes to his great decision
only when all else seems to fail. As the Civil War ravages his nation, Lincoln
must face deep personal turmoil, the loss of his dearest son, and the harangues
of a wife seen as a traitor for her Southern connections. Brilliantly conceived,
masterfully executed, Gore Vidal's Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.
ERA 2 Option
S Fools Crow by James Welch
S In the Two Medicine Territory of Montana, the Lone Eaters, a
small band of Blackfeet Indians, are living their immemorial life.
The men hunt and mount the occasional horse-taking raid or war
party against the enemy Crow. The women tan the hides, sew the
beadwork, and raise the children. But the year is 1870, and the
whites are moving into their land. Fools Crow, a young warrior
and medicine man, has seen the future and knows that the
newcomers will punish resistance with swift retribution. First
published to broad acclaim in 1986, Fools Crow is James Welch's
stunningly evocative portrait of his people's bygone way of life.
ERA 2 Reading Assignment
S ERA 2 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 11/3/15.
ERA 3
S Later 19th Century
S Post Civil War
S Westward Movement
S Industrial Age
ERA 3 Book Selection
S Book Selection for ERA 3 is due on Tuesday, 11/10/15.
S ERA 3 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 12/8/15.
ERA 3 Option
S
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
S
S
S
From the bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and
Clark’s exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American
history and one of the great adventure stories of all time.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis,
to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia
River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the
first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna
of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington,
and Idaho.
Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and
medical knowledge at the time to provide a vivid backdrop for the expedition. Lewis is supported
by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring
and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged
frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson’s. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and
Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian
hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St.
Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of
the turn of the century.
ERA 3 Option
S O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
S This powerful early Cather novel, a landmark of American
fiction, tells the story of the young Alexandra Bergson, whose
dying father leaves her in charge of the family and of the
Nebraska lands they have struggled to farm. In Alexandra’s
lifelong fight to survive and succeed, Cather relates an
important chapter in the history of the American frontier,
evoking the harsh grandeur of the prairie, and comparing with
keen insight the experiences of Swedish, French and Bohemian
immigrants in the United States.
ERA 3 Option
S My Antonia by Willa Cather
S One of Cather's earliest novels — written in 1918 — is the
story of Antonia Shimerda, who arrives on the Nebraska
frontier as part of a family of Bohemian emigrants. In quiet,
probing depth, the story commemorates the spirit and courage
of the immigrant pioneers whose persistence and strength
helped to build America.
ERA 3 Option
S The Oxbow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark
S Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic
portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American
West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of
three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and
order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful,
vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel,
which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and
evil, individual and community, justice and human nature. As
Wallace Stegner writes, [Clark's] theme was civilization, and he
recorded, indelibly, its first steps in a new country.
ERA 3 Option
S Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
S An 18-year-old girl without money or connections ventures forth
from her small town in search of a better life in Theodore
Dreiser's revolutionary first novel. The chronicle of Carrie
Meeber's rise from obscurity to fame — and the effects of her
progress on the men who use her and are used in turn — aroused
a storm of controversy and debate upon its debut in 1900. The
author's nonjudgmental portrait of a heroine who violates the
contemporary moral code outraged some critics and elated others.
A century later, Dreiser's compelling plot and realistic characters
continue to fascinate readers.
ERA 3 Option
S An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
S Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love
for a rich and beautiful debutante threatened when his lowerclass pregnant girlfriend gives him an ultimatum.
ERA 3 Option
S Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
S In this portrait of a "young woman affronting her destiny," Henry
James created one of his most magnificent heroines, and a story
of intense poignancy. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited
American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt, it is expected
that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her
freedom, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then
she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the charming and cultivated
Gilbert Osmond. Isabel, however, soon discovers the cruelty and
stifling darkness beneath Gilbert's civilized veneer.
ERA 3 Option
S Washington Square by Henry James
S The shy and sweet daughter of a well-to-do physician,
Catherine Sloper seems destined for lifelong spinsterhood until
the sudden appearance of a dashing suitor who proposes
marriage. Her adored father suspects the would-be fiancé of
fortune-hunting and threatens her with disinheritance, forcing
Catherine to choose between lover and father.
ERA 3 Option
S The Ambassadors by Henry James
S Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no
particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the
manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The
mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs.
Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son
Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home.
But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a
remarkable woman; and as the Parisian spring advances, he
himself succumbs to the allure of the 'vast bright Babylon' and
to the mysterious charm of Madame de Vionnet.
ERA 3 Option
S Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
S A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry
McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize— winning classic, Lonesome Dove,
the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest
novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.
Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and
meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws,
whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic,
beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to
make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.
ERA 3 Option
S A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
When Hank Morgan awakens after a knockout blow to the head, he is
shocked to find himself transported from his native Connecticut into the
medieval world of King Arthur’s Court. What follows is a comedic
adventure where Hank, utilizing his knowledge of nineteenth century
technology, attempts to improve the lives of the people of Camelot, thus
altering the course of history.
S Written to satirize nineteenth-century ideals of the Middle Ages, Mark
Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is now regarded as one
of the first American time-travel narratives. As with many of Twain’s
works, A Connecticut Yankee has been adapted numerous times for both
stage and screen, and has been used as a reference in everything from
subsequent works of science fiction to an episode of Bugs Bunny.
S
ERA 3 Option
S The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
S Wharton's first literary success, set amid fashionable New York
society, reveals the hypocrisy and destructive effects of the
city's social circle on the character of Lily Bart. Impoverished
but well-born, Lily must secure her future by acquiring a
wealthy husband; but her downfall — initiated by a romantic
indiscretion — results in gambling debts and social disasters.
ERA 3 Option
S The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
S Deeply moving study of the tyrannical and rigid requirements
of New York high society in the late 19th century and the
effect of those strictures on the lives of three people. Vividly
characterized drama of affection thwarted by a man’s sense of
honor, family, and societal pressures. A long-time favorite with
readers and critics alike.
ERA 3 Option
S Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Perhaps the best-known and most popular of Edith Wharton's novels,
Ethan Frome is widely considered her masterpiece. Set against a bleak
New England background, the novel tells of Frome, his ailing wife Zeena
and her companion Mattie Silver, superbly delineating the characters of
each as they are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle.
S Burdened by poverty and spiritually dulled by a loveless marriage to an
older woman. Frome is emotionally stirred by the arrival of a youthful
cousin who is employed as household help. Mattie's presence not only
brightens a gloomy house but stirs long-dormant feelings in Ethan. Their
growing love for one another, discovered by an embittered wife, presages
an ending to this grim tale that is both shocking and savagely ironic.
S
ERA 3 Reading Assignment
S ERA 3 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 12/8/15.
ERA 4: Early
S Early 20th Century
S Early Modernism
S 1900-WWII
th
20
Century
ERA 4 Book Selections
S Book Selection for ERA 4 is due on Tuesday, 01/19/16.
S ERA 4 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 02/16/16.
ERA 4 Option
S Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going
to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in
1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as
an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness,
resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and
compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of
the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront
Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's
rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of selfinvention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the
way Americans understand themselves.
ERA 4 Option
S
Ragtime, and Other Titles by E.L. Doctorow
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An
extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of
the century and the First World War.
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American
family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car
into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy
and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma
Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and
out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional
characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose
insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
ERA 4 Option
S
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. . . . I give it to you not that you may
remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of
your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even
fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of
philosophers and fools.” —from The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most
memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy;
haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their
lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh
to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the
twentieth century.
ERA 4 Option
S Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and
see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and
studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll
find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner’s epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic
stranger who comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early 1830s to wrest
his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi
wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the
sons destroyed him.”
ERA 4 Option
S Light in August by William Faulkner
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and
see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and
studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll
find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
Light in August, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of
mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters:
guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn
child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of
Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter
consumed by his mixed ancestry.
ERA 4 Option
S
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and
set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the
last period would fall.” —William Faulkner on As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey
across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated
in turn by each of the family members—including Addie herself—as well as
others the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos.
Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure,
style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.
ERA 4 Option
S
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of
Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful
writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World
War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable
characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant
Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris
to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is
an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing
illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish
Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
ERA 4 Option
S
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American
Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good
fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an
antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat,
and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his
superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his
unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also
Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal,
compassionate, moving, and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins
wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater
in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works,
it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.
ERA 4 Option
S A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms
is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian
front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway’s frank
portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley,
caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled
in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on
Caporetto—of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary,
and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A
story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms,
written when he was thirty years old, represents a new romanticism for
Hemingway.
ERA 4 Option
S
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Prosperous and socially prominent, George Babbitt appears to have everything a man could wish:
good health, a fine family, and a profitable business in a booming Midwestern city. But the middleaged real estate agent is shaken from his self-satisfaction by a growing restlessness with the
limitations of his life. When a personal crisis forces a reexamination of his values, Babbitt mounts a
rebellion against social expectations — jeopardizing his reputation and business standing as well as
his marriage.
Widely considered Sinclair Lewis's greatest novel, this satire of the American social landscape
created a sensation upon its 1922 publication. Babbitt's name became an instant and enduring
synonym for middle-class complacency, and the strictures of his existence revealed the emptiness of
the mainstream vision of success. His story reflects the nature of a conformist society, in which the
pressures of maintaining propriety can ultimately cause individuals to lose their place in the world.
Babbitt ranks among the important 20th-century works addressing the struggles of people caught in
the machinery of modern life, and it remains ever-relevant as a cautionary tale against clinging to
conventional values.
ERA 4 Option
S The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty.
Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown
eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair
and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as
her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in
the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our
obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first
novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the
subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.
ERA 4 Option
S Jazz by Toni Morrison
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees
nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-todoor salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his
teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks
the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and
obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is
assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities
of black urban life.
ERA 4 Option
S Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric
hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of
his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined
novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as
audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she
follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s
origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses,
liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
ERA 4 Option
S McTeague by Frank Norris
McTeague is the story of a poor dentist scraping by in San
Francisco at the end of the 19th century, and his wife Trina,
whose $5,000 lottery winning sets in motion a shocking chain
of events. Few works have captured the seamy side of
American urban life with such graphic intensity.
ERA 4 Option
S The Octopus by Frank Norris
Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and
the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, this is the story of the
waning days of the frontier West.
ERA 4 Option
S The Chosen by Chaim Potok
It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the
pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the
way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into
young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother,
and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever
considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the
peace that neither will ever retreat from again....
ERA 4 Option
S
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and
believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an
artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when
it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok
traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God,
the other subject only to the imagination.
Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a
world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time
his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it
follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the
artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.
ERA 4 Option
S
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
An ardent activist, champion of political reform, novelist, and progressive journalist, Upton
Sinclair is perhaps best known today for The Jungle — his devastating exposé of the meatpacking industry. A protest novel he privately published in 1906, the book was a shocking
revelation of intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago
stockyards. It quickly became a bestseller, arousing public sentiment and resulting in such
federal legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act.|The brutally grim story of a Slavic
family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into
numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair. Vulnerable and
isolated, the family of Jurgis Rudkus struggles — unsuccessfully — to survive in an urban
jungle.
A powerful view of turn-of-the-century poverty, graft, and corruption, this fiercely realistic
American classic is still required reading in many history and literature classes. It will
continue to haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.
ERA 4 Option
S
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of
the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale
filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and
people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan
and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted
and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns
overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the
unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family
connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time
and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
ERA 4 Option
S The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of
poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to
state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune-in the hotel
business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running
through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. In
this affecting narrative, Wallace Stegner portrays over three decades
in the life of the Mason family as they struggle to survive during the
lean years of the early twentieth century.
ERA 4 Option
S
Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner
Blending fact with fiction, Wallace Stegner retells the story of Joe Hill—the Wobbly bard
who became the stuff of legend when, in 1915, he was executed for the alleged murder of a
Salt Lake City businessman. Organizer, agitator, "Labor's Songster"—a rebel from the skin
inwards, with an absolute faith in the One Big Union—Joe Hill fought tirelessly in the
frequently violent battles between organized labor and industry. But though songs and stories
still vaunt him, and his legend continues to inspire those who feel the injustices he fought
against, Joe Hill may not have been a saintly crusader and may have been motivated by
impulses darker than the search for justice.
Joe Hill is a full-bodied portrait of both the man and the myth: from his entrance into the
short-lived Industrial Workers of the World union, the most militant organization in the
history of American labor, to his trial, imprisonment, and final martyrdom. His famous last
words: "Don't waste time mourning. Organize."
ERA 4 Option
S
Angel of Repose by Wallace Stegner
An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West—a deeply moving
narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past.
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by
a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need. Amid the
chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley,
California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong
artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made her own
journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred years before. In
discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience
and the America that has come of age around him.
ERA 4 Option
S
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great
Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of
one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced
to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their
repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves
and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale
and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its
human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless,
of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the
novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very
nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity
narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark
novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
ERA 4 Option
S
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and
indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of
California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined
destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly
reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created
his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of
identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean and read by
thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained
vitally present in American culture for over half a century.
ERA 4 Option
S
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row
discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for
pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Flood’s
bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with
almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick
puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long,
but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values.
First published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is—both the
exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. John Steinbeck draws on his
memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, and interweaves their stories in this
world where only the fittest survive—creating what is at once one of his most humorous and
poignant works. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck returns to the setting of Tortilla Flat to create
another evocative portrait of life as it is lived by those who unabashedly put the highest value on
the intangibles—human warmth, camaraderie, and love.
ERA 4 Option
S
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple is a tale of personal
empowerment which opens with a protagonist Celie who is at the bottom of America's
social caste. A poor, black, ugly and uneducated female in the America's Jim Crow South in
the first half of the 20th century, she is the victim of constant rape, violence and
misogynistic verbal abuse. Celie cannot conceive of an escape from her present condition,
and so she learns to be passive and unemotional. But The Color Purple eventually
demonstrates how Celie learns to fight back and how she discovers her true sexuality and her
unique voice. By the end of the novel, Celie is an empowered, financially-independent
entrepreneur/landowner, one who speaks her mind and realizes the desirability of black
femaleness while creating a safe space for herself and those she loves. Through a journey of
literary criticism, "Dialogue: Alice Walker's The Color Purple" follows Celie's transformation
from victim to hero. Each scholarly essay becomes a step of the journey that paves the way
for the development of self and sexual awareness, the beginnings of religious transformation
and the creation of nurturing places like home and community.
ERA 4 Option
S Anthem by Ayn Rand
He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared
to fall in love. In an age that had lost all trace of science and
civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these
were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked
for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: standing
out from the mindless human herd. Ayn Rand’s classic tale of a
dystopian future of the great “We”—a world that deprives individuals
of a name or independence—anticipates her later masterpieces, The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
ERA 4 Option
S We the Living by Ayn Rand
We the Living depicts the struggle of the individual against the
state, and the impact of the Russian Revolution on three
human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and
pursue their own happiness. This classic novel is not a story of
politics, but of the men and women who fight for existence
within a totalitarian state.
ERA 4 Reading Assignment
S ERA 4 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 02/16/16.
ERA 5
S WWII
&
S Later 20th Century
ERA 5: Book Selections
S Book Selection for ERA 5 is due on Tuesday, 03/08/16.
S ERA 5 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 04/05/16.
ERA 5 Option
S Lord of the Flies by William Golding
William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small
boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it
seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long
becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic
and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world
the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework
and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive
and terrible. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a
parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the
Flies has established itself as a true classic.
S
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
The summer that Patty Bergen turns twelve is a summer that will haunt her
forever. When her small hometown in Arkansas becomes the site of a camp
housing German prisoners during World War II, Patty learns what it means to
open her heart. Even though she's Jewish, she begins to see a prison escapee,
Anton, not as a Nazi, but as a lonely, frightened young man with feelings not
unlike her own.
In Anton, Patty finds someone who softens the pain of her own father's rejection
and who appreciates her in a way her mother never will. While patriotic feelings
run high, Patty risks losing family, friends — even her freedom — for this
dangerous friendship. It is a risk she has to take and one she will have to pay a
price to keep.
ERA 5 Option
S A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate
Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when
the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.
Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of
World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of
the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual.
Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens
between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the
innocence of these boys and their world.
ERA 5 Option
S
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native
New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult,
secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in
New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us
to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about
Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost,
hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices,
underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own
vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of
mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher
orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets
aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
ERA 5 Option
S
Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning
masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—"Scout"—returns home from New York City to visit
her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were
transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her
close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values
and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a
Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of
the past—a journey that can only be guided by one's own conscience.
Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee.
Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor, and effortless precision—a profoundly
affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only
confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth,
context, and new meaning to an American classic.
ERA 5 Option
S
Pillar of Fire, by Taylor Branch
S
Pillar of Fire is the second volume of Taylor Branch's magisterial three-volume
history of America during the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Branch's thesis, as he explains in the introduction, is that "King's life is the
best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed
postwar years," but this is not just a biography. Instead it is a work of history,
with King at its focal point. The tumultuous years that Branch covers saw the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the beginnings of American
disillusionment with the war in Vietnam, and, of course, the civil rights
movement that King led, a movement that transformed America as the nation
finally tried to live up to the ideals on which it was founded.
ERA 5 Option
S In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
S On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four
members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from
a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent
motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
S As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that
led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both
mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a
work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the
nature of American violence.
ERA 5 Option
S Is Paris Burning?, by Collins & Lapierre
S A great historical look at the waning years of World War II
and the efforts to mitigate the Nazi destruction of Europe;
Includes numerous pictures of Paris in 1944.
ERA 5 Option
S An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard
S A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across
the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing
up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
ERA 5 Option
S
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
S
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued
to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown
writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National
Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key
writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing
up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which
he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the
Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and
confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced
by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
ERA 5 Option
S
A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gaines
S
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a
young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men
are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant
Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school
to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his
aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his
learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a
bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—
the expected.
Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep
understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their
struggle that have unformed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.
ERA 5 Option
S
Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
S
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one
who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is
found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo
Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it
becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San
Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe
strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the
Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land
desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of
what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire
community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched. Gripping, tragic,
and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of
suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed.
ERA 5 Option
S Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley
S The Autobiography of Malcolm X defines American culture and the
African American struggle for social and economic equality that
has now become a battle for survival. Malcolm’s fascinating
perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream,
and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite
citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into
the most urgent issues of our own time.
ERA 5 Option
S Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
S Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable,
malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because
thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his
real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps
increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their
service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from
the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22,
a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if
he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he
makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane
and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
ERA 5 Option
S Lake Woebegone Days, by Garrison Keillor
S Garrison Keillor is the consummate storyteller, gifted with the rare
ability - both in print and in performance - to hold an audience
spellbound with his tales of ordinary people whose lives contain
extraordinary moments of humor, tenderness, and grace. This
recording of Keillor reading his own novel, Lake Wobegon Days,
is a carefully edited abridgement of the book and includes a few
segments taken from live performances recorded during a
fundraising tour for public radio stations in 1985.
ERA 5 Option
S
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
S
An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken
Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of
the 1960s.A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the
novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming
hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse.
McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns
the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and
women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But
McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for
quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.
ERA 5 Option
S The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
S Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and
successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her
acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws
the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her
insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an
experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the
darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell
Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American
classic.
ERA 5 Option
S
The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
S
When Mario Puzo's blockbuster saga, The Godfather, was first published in
1969, critics hailed it as one of the greatest novels of our time, and "big,
turbulent, highly entertaining." Since then, The Godfather has gone on to
become a part of America's national culture, as well as a trilogy of landmark
motion pictures. Now, in this newly-repackaged 30th Anniversary Edition,
readers old and new can experience this timeless tale of crime for themselves.
From the lavish opening scene where Don Corleone entertains guests and
conducts business at his daughter's wedding...to his son, Michael, who takes
his father's place to fight for his family...to the bloody climax where all family
business is finished, The Godfather is an epic story of family, loyalty, and
how "men of honor" live in their own world, and die by their own laws.
ERA 5 Option
S Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko
S Thirty years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one
of the most profound and moving works of Native American
literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a
World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna
Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a
prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he
encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the
Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from
him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo
myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power.
ERA 5 Option
S Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor
S In Rain of Gold, Victor Villasenor weaves the parallel
stories of two families and two countries…bringing us the
timeless romance between the volatile bootlegger who
would become his father and the beautiful Lupe, his
mother–men and women in whose lives the real and the
fantastical exist side by side…and in whose hearts the spirit
to survive is fueled by a family’s unconditional love.
ERA 5 Option
S All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
S This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor
Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding
politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a
southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the
common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the backroom deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his righthand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and
proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a
successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs
him his life. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and
personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history.
ERA 5 Option
S The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolf
S From "America’s nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-
taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an
investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first
Americans to conquer space. "Tom Wolfe at his very best"
(The New York Times Book Review)
ERA 5 Option
S Winds of War, by Herman Wouk
S A Masterpiece of Historical Fiction-The Great Novel of
America's "Greatest Generation" Herman Wouk's sweeping epic
of World War II, which begins with The Winds of War and
continues in War and Remembrance, stands as the crowning
achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative
captures the tide of global events-and all the drama, romance,
heroism, and tragedy of World War II-as it immerses us in the
lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the
war's maelstrom.
ERA 5 Option
S Native Son, by Richard Wright
S Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It
could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for
murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black
man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white
woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s,
Richard Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the
poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in
inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in
America.
ERA 5 Reading Assignment
S ERA 5 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 04/5/16.
ERA 6
S Contemporary & Postmodern Works
ERA 6: Book Selections
S Book Selection for ERA 6 is due on Tuesday, 04/19/16.
S ERA 6 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 05/24/16.
ERA 6 Option
S
Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Exquisite prose and wondrous storytelling have helped make Rudolfo Anaya the
father of Chicano literature in English. Indeed, Anaya's tales fairly shimmer with
the haunting beauty and richness of his culture. The winner of the Pen Center
West Award for Fiction for his unforgettable novel Alburquerque, Anaya is
perhaps best loved for his classic bestseller, Bless Me, Ultima... Antonio Marez is
six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a
curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will
probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the
magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism
of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into
the world...and will nurture the birth of his soul.
ERA 6 Option
S
A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
This groundbreaking play starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeill, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands in
the Broadway production which opened in 1959. Set on Chicago's South Side, the plot revolves
around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son
Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis and matriarch Lena, called Mama.
When her deceased husband's insurance money comes through, Mama dreams of moving to a new
home and a better neighborhood in Chicago. Walter Lee, a chauffeur, has other plans, however:
buying a liquor store and being his own man. Beneatha dreams of medical school.
The tensions and prejudice they face form this seminal American drama. Sacrifice, trust and love
among the Younger family and their heroic struggle to retain dignity in a harsh and changing world
is a searing and timeless document of hope and inspiration. Winner of the NY Drama Critic's
Award as Best Play of the Year, it has been hailed as a "pivotal play in the history of the American
Black theatre." by Newsweek and "a milestone in the American Theatre." by Ebony.
ERA 6 Option
S
Maus I & II, by Art Spiegelman
Spiegelman, a stalwart of the underground comics scene of the 1960s and '70s, interviewed his
father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor living outside New York City, about his experiences. The artist
then deftly translated that story into a graphic novel. By portraying a true story of the Holocaust in
comic form--the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs, the French frogs, and the
Americans dogs--Spiegelman compels the reader to imagine the action, to fill in the blanks that are
so often shied away from. Reading Maus, you are forced to examine the Holocaust anew.
This is neither easy nor pleasant. However, Vladek Spiegelman and his wife Anna are resourceful
heroes, and enough acts of kindness and decency appear in the tale to spur the reader onward (we
also know that the protagonists survive, else reading would be too painful). This first volume
introduces Vladek as a happy young man on the make in pre-war Poland. With outside events
growing ever more ominous, we watch his marriage to Anna, his enlistment in the Polish army
after the outbreak of hostilities, his and Anna's life in the ghetto, and then their flight into hiding as
the Final Solution is put into effect. The ending is stark and terrible, but the worst is yet to come--in
the second volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning set. --Michael Gerber
ERA 6 Option
S Tortilla Curtain, by TC Boyle
Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los
Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered
sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he
a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals
Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the
American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp
deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings
Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their
opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy
of error and misunderstanding.
ERA 6 Option
S Lords of Discipline, by Pat Conroy
In this powerful, mesmerizing, and acclaimed bestseller, Pat Conroy
sweeps us into the turbulent world of four young men—friends,
cadets, and blood brothers—and their days of hazing, heartbreak,
pride, betrayal, and, ultimately, humanity. We go deep into the heart
of the novel’s hero, Will McLean, a rebellious outsider with his own
personal code of honor who is battling into manhood the hard way.
Immersed in a poignant love affair with a haunting beauty, Will must
boldly confront the terrifying injustice of a corrupt institution as he
struggles to expose a mysterious group known as “The Ten.”
ERA 6 Option
S
The Road from Coorain, by Jill Conway
At age 11, Conway ( Women Reformers and American Culture ) left the arduous
life on her family's sheep farm in the Australian outback for school in war-time
Sydney, burdened by an emotionally dependent, recently widowed mother. A
lively curiosity and penetrating intellect illuminate this unusually objective
account of the author's progress from a solitary childhood--the most appealing
part of the narrative--to public achievement as president of Smith College and
now professor at MIT. Gifted with an ability to adapt to a wide range of cultures
and people and despite ingrained Australian prejudice against intellectuals,
Conway devoted herself to the study of history and literature, spurred on by
excellent British-style schooling. Her further adventures could easily make a
rewarding second volume.
ERA 6 Option
S
An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and
having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which
"didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the
compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a
target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one
fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere,
things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled
me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's
speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you
do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one
would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful;
"still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins
burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive."
ERA 6 Option
S
Typical American, by Gish Jen
From the beloved author of Mona in the Promised Land and The Love Wife comes
this comic masterpiece, an insightful novel of immigrants experiencing the
triumphs and trials of American life. Gish Jen reinvents the American immigrant
story through the Chang family, who first come to the United States with no
intention of staying. When the Communists assume control of China in 1949,
though, Ralph Chang, his sister Theresa, and his wife Helen, find themselves in a
crisis. At first, they cling to their old-world ideas of themselves. But as they begin
to dream the American dream of self-invention, they move poignantly and
ironically from people who disparage all that is “typical American” to people who
might be seen as typically American themselves. With droll humor and a deep
empathy for her characters, Gish Jen creates here a superbly engrossing story that
resonates with wit and wisdom even as it challenges the reader to reconsider what
a typical American might be today.
ERA 6 Option
S Shipping News, by Annie Proulx
Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a
crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed
fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his
two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle
and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the
starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in
Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty
except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered
members of three generations try to cobble up new lives . . .
ERA 6 Option
S
Blessings, by Anna Quindlen
Blessings, the bestselling novel by the author of Black and Blue, One True Thing, Object
Lessons, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life, begins when, late at night, a teenage couple
drives up to the estate owned by Lydia Blessing and leaves a box.
In this instant, the world of the estate called Blessings is changed forever. The story of Skip
Cuddy, the Blessings caretaker, who finds a baby asleep in that box and decides he wants to
keep her, and of matriarch Lydia Blessing, who, for her own reasons, decides to help him,
Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what
makes a person, a life, legitimate or illegitimate, and who decides; the unique resources
people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption,
and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The Washington Post
Book World said, “Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some
forgotten fragment of family.”
ERA 6 Option
S
Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichel
At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making
sense of the world. . . . If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who
they were." Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a
life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food,
unforgettable people, and the love of tales well told. Beginning with Reichl's
mother, the notorious food-poisoner known as the Queen of Mold, Reichl
introduces us to the fascinating characters who shaped her world and her tastes,
from the gourmand Monsieur du Croix, who served Reichl her first soufflé, to
those at her politically correct table in Berkeley who championed the organic food
revolution in the 1970s. Spiced with Reichl's infectious humor and sprinkled with
her favorite recipes, Tender at the Bone is a witty and compelling chronicle of a
culinary sensualist's coming-of-age.
ERA 6 Option
S
Hunger of Memory, by Richard Rodriguez
Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his
schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his
university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum.
Here is the poignant journey of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social
assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation — from his past, his parents, his
culture — and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America.
Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of
Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language
... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.
ERA 6 Option
S A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley
A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three
daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This
sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes
long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of
Shakespeare’s King Lear cast upon a typical American community in
the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of
truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous
topography of humanity.
ERA 6 Option
S This Boy’s Life, by Tobias Wolff
This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces
us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and
bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father
and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they
develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby
fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a
new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and
Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of
adolescence. His various schemes - running away to Alaska, forging
checks, and stealing cars - lead eventually to an act of outrageous selfinvention that releases him into a new world of possibility.
ERA 6 Reading Assignment
S ERA 6 Independent Reading Assignment is due on
Tuesday, 05/24/16.
Book Reviews
S All book reviews provided (excluding Roots) can be found
on:
S http://www.amazon.com/books-used-books-
textbooks/b?node=283155
S Roots book review can be found on:
S http://www.rootsthebook.com