Fans pick 100 books like Counter Culture

By Eleanor Dunfey-Freiburger,

Here are 100 books that Counter Culture fans have personally recommended if you like Counter Culture. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of The Road to Wigan Pier

Emily Hourican Author Of Mummy Darlings: A Glorious Guinness Girls Novel

From my list on Britain before WWII that show true daily life.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I started researching the 1930s in Britain, I realised that I had only ever considered the period from the Irish perspective, as the tail-end of the long battle for independence. I had always seen Britain in the role of oppressor: Rich, where Ireland was poor; powerful where Ireland was weak. As I read more, a new picture of Britain began to emerge. The Great Depression, the numbers of people unemployed, the children with rickets and scurvy due to malnutrition. And with those things, the rise of socialism and fascism, both expressing the same dissatisfaction with life. I wanted to know more. And so I went looking for books to teach me.

Emily's book list on Britain before WWII that show true daily life

Emily Hourican Why did Emily love this book?

The first half of this book is a deep immersion into the shockingly bleak living conditions of 1930s working-class families in the impoverished industrial north of England, then in the grip of the Great Depression. As an Irish person – and given the historic nature of the relationship between the two countries, in which Britain has always been the dominant and powerful one – it was genuinely eye-opening to me to understand how hard life was for ordinary English people.

Orwell’s writing was undertaken from the vantage point of his own experience. He spent months living with families in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and his descriptions of their lives are detailed and very vivid. The second half is an essay about the development of his own political conscience – interesting, but not essential in the way the first half is. 

By George Orwell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Road to Wigan Pier as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An unflinching look at unemployment and life among the working classes in Britain during the Great Depression, The Road to Wigan Pier offers an in-depth examination of socio-economic conditions in the coal-mining communities of England’s industrial areas, including detailed analysis of workers’ wages, living conditions, and working environments. Orwell was profoundly influenced by his experiences while researching The Road to Wigan Pier and the contrasts with his own comfortable middle-class upbringing; his reactions to working and living conditions and thoughts on how these would be improved under socialism are detailed in the second half of the book.


Book cover of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston

Katherine Giuffre Author Of Outrage: The Arts and the Creation of Modernity

From my list on maverick creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent my career as a sociologist studying how creative people work, what social settings are most conducive to creativity, and how to foster creativity for everyone in our daily lives. I know that creativity is often not easy and can even be met with hostility much more frequently than we might think. Creativity is, after all, a type of deviance and creative people can face real obstacles in finding and following their vision. But a richer understanding of how and why creativity happens – and of its obstacles – can be a tool for making a more vibrant, creative, inclusive, and just world.

Katherine's book list on maverick creativity

Katherine Giuffre Why did Katherine love this book?

On top of having written one of the most profound novels of the 20th century, Zora Neale Hurston was a fierce and fearless proponent of authenticity in literature and art – and she paid the price for that.

Boyd’s biography of her is the best, delving into this complex woman who was both deeply of her time and way ahead of it. Boyd quotes Hurston in one of my all-time favorite lines by a writer responding to a demeaning critic: “I will send my toe-nails to debate him…” An inspiration for all creative people facing rejection for being true to themselves!

By Valerie Boyd,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Wrapped in Rainbows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From critically acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd comes an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century—Zora Neale Hurston.

A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance—including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker—acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon.

Wrapped in Rainbows, the first biography…


Book cover of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Alan Bollard Author Of Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars

From my list on how economists agree and disagree amongst each other.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington. As a previous Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury and Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, I have had quite a bit of experience watching economists’ ideas succeed and fail in the real world. I have written a number of books about policy economists and their lives in peace and wartime. (And a couple of novels too!)

Alan's book list on how economists agree and disagree amongst each other

Alan Bollard Why did Alan love this book?

This is the story of four (European and American) central bankers fighting the dramas and crises during the lead-up to the Great Depression. When crisis looms, Bank of England Governor Montagu Norman puts on a disguise and boards a cruise ship to consult with his friend Benjamin Strong in New York. If only financial crises could still be fought that way today! I liked it because I used to be a central bank governor myself!

By Liaquat Ahamed,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Lords of Finance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West's principal bankers . . . Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most important, timely." -Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"There is terrific prescience to be found in [Lords of Finance's] portrait of times past . . . [A] writer of great verve and erudition, [Ahamed] easily connects the dots between the economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today." -The New York Times

It is commonly believed that…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II

Robert Matzen Author Of Season of the Gods

From my list on old Hollywood in general (and Warner Brothers in particular).

Why am I passionate about this?

My dad instilled in me a love of, and respect for, history and an avid interest in golden-era Hollywood. In my adult life as a professional writer, that paternal guidance has translated into eight books about various aspects of old Hollywood, with a growing focus on the intersection of Hollywood and World War II. My career to date was punctuated by the international success of Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II, which detailed the future star’s very hard life in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation. Dad didn’t live long enough to know I’d written anything, let alone a number of books he would have enjoyed reading. 

Robert's book list on old Hollywood in general (and Warner Brothers in particular)

Robert Matzen Why did Robert love this book?

When a New York Times correspondent and Yale Fellow sits down to write a book about the making of Casablanca for its 50th anniversary, one expects quality, and Harmetz delivers by detailing the times and people who created and marketed the timeless classic.

This book served as a primary source during the writing of my book. The extensively researched and footnoted book was repackaged in 2002 as The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II and remains in print more than 30 years after its initial release.

Book cover of The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, Part Two

John E. Schmitz Author Of Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War

From my list on United States during the World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse. 

John's book list on United States during the World War II

John E. Schmitz Why did John love this book?

Kennedy’s book is part of the Oxford series on American history, and as such, I know that any writer’s work must meet high standards, and I was not disappointed by Kennedy’s book. 

I love this book as it is both readable to any non-historian, but it provides a great deal of depth and detail along with amazing storytelling. It came as no surprise to me that this book won the Pulitzer Prize—it is worth the read!  

By David M. Kennedy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The American People in World War II as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Even as the New Deal was coping with the Depression, a new menace was developing abroad. Exploiting Germany's own economic burdens, Hitler reached out to the disaffected, turning their aimless discontent into loyal support for his Nazi Party. In Asia, Japan harbored imperial ambitions of its own. The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked worldwide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world.
The American People in World War II--the second installment of…


Book cover of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

Iwan W. Morgan Author Of FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America

From my list on why FDR was the greatest American president.

Why am I passionate about this?

I consider FDR the greatest of all presidents for leading America with distinction in the domestic crisis of the Great Depression and the foreign crisis of World War 2 and creating the modern presidency that survives today in the essential form he established. I have written books on Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan during fifty years as a US history professor in UK universities. I always intended to write a book about how FDR reinvented the presidency that these Republicans inherited, something I finally did in ‘retirement’. My five chosen books explain the challenging times he faced and the leadership skills he displayed in meeting them.     

Iwan's book list on why FDR was the greatest American president

Iwan W. Morgan Why did Iwan love this book?

This Pulitzer Prize-winning study is the best single-volume history of America in the Age of FDR.  Meticulously researched, ambitiously conceived, and vividly written, it crafts superb portraits of the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kennedy offers a balanced assessment of FDR’s New Deal, concluding that his reforms enhanced the socio-economic security of millions of Americans despite their overall failure in the 1930s to achieve economic recovery, which would only come about through the crucible of war in the early 1940s. However, the real heroes of the book are the American people for their resilience and resolve in the face of the Great Depression and World War 2, the two greatest challenges the United States faced in the twentieth century.  

By David M. Kennedy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freedom from Fear as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom from Fear tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefullly consuming capital and inflicting untold misery…


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Book cover of The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

The Chomsky Effect By Robert F. Barsky,

Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.

In…

Book cover of The Good Companions

Robert Kaplow Author Of Me and Orson Welles

From my list on set in the world of the theater.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since adolescence I’ve written scripts, stories, and songs. For ten years I wrote songs and sketches for NPR’s Morning Edition  as “Moe Moskowitz and the Punsters.” Among my young-adult novels, my favorite remains Alex Icicle: A Romance in Ten Torrid Chapters, a literate howl of romantic obsession by an over-educated and under-loved madman. I think my funniest comedy novel is Who’s Killing the Great Writers of America? that not only kills off some famous writers, but simultaneously parodies their style. And, of course, Stephen King ends up solving the whole crazy conspiracy. I taught writing for many years, and I’m pleased to report that my students taught me more than anything I ever taught them.

Robert's book list on set in the world of the theater

Robert Kaplow Why did Robert love this book?

The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley is a long novel from 1929—and it’s one of the few long novels I have eagerly returned to more than once. Three Britons (a young man, young woman, and older man) are dissatisfied with their lives, and they take to the open road. Along the way they create a travelling musical-comedy troupe, The Good Companions, and we travel along with them for the tryouts, the opening nights, the standing ovations, the missed opportunities, the lucky breaks: and the glories of friendship. The novel offers readers the delicious chance to live entirely in a world now completely vanished.

By J.B. Priestley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Good Companions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Three unhappy characters, flee from their old lives to seek adventure on the open road. Fate brings them together and into the presence of a broken-down theatrical touring company. Throwing caution to the winds they save the group and set off on an unforgettable tour of the pavillions and provincial theatres of England. First published in 1929.


Book cover of Let the Wild Grasses Grow

Craig Lancaster Author Of And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

From my list on Books featuring characters navigating the contemporary American West.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a son of the contemporary American West—born near the Pacific Coast, raised in Texas, and an inveterate traveler of its byways and odd corners. Through the duality of my upbringing, as the son of a well-traveled mother, a suburban sportswriter stepfather, and a father who worked in extractive industries, I’ve seen up close both harmony and dissonance. The work I’m drawn to, whether on the creation end or the consumptive end, goes deep into the lives that play out in these places.

Craig's book list on Books featuring characters navigating the contemporary American West

Craig Lancaster Why did Craig love this book?

I was utterly awed by Kase Johnstun’s boundless love for the characters in this novel, which I learned later was informed by memories of and letters by his grandparents.

It overflows with some of my favorite things about the literature that most often resonates with me: When an author of great skill can mine memory and history, spend time with it, apply the transformative agent of imagination, and emerge into the world with work laden with genuineness.

I find Johnstun’s work to be imbued with love, which he marries to considerable storytelling chops. He’s a writer more people should know about, so it’s become a bit of a mission of mine to shout his name.

By Kase Johnstun,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Let the Wild Grasses Grow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Beautiful and expansive…in Johnstun's Let the Wild Grasses Grow, Colorado has a successor to Kent Haruf."
—SEAN PRENTISS, author of Finding Abbey

Let the Wild Grasses Grow chronicles the lives of Della Chavez and John Cordova, childhood friends separated by a tragic accident, who find each other again during World War II after leading separate lives of struggle through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and, for John, abuse at the hands of his grandfather. This sweeping American love story celebrates the power of home landscapes, family heritage, and first love.


Book cover of Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950s New York

Pamela S. Nadell Author Of America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today

From my list on memoirs through the voices of women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of history and Jewish studies at American University and author of America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, winner of the National Jewish Book Award – 2019 Jewish Book of the Year. Since childhood I have been reading stories of women’s lives and tales set in Jewish communities across time and space. Yet, the voices that so often best evoke the past are those captured on the pages of great memoirs.

Pamela's book list on memoirs through the voices of women

Pamela S. Nadell Why did Pamela love this book?

Written in separate voices in alternating chapters, this unusual double memoir by the long-married couple, the novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan, tells the stories of two privileged New Yorkers.  Growing up on opposite sides of Central Park, they came of age in the 1950s. Dreaming dreams of literary lives, they came to see them realized as their lives converged.

By Anne Bernays, Justin Kaplan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Back Then as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan -- both native New Yorkers -- came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Written in two separate voices, Back Then is thecandid, anecdotal account of these two children of privilege -- one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side -- pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books.

Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on the transformative years in the lives of two young people…


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Book cover of Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink

Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink By Ethan Chorin,

Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…

Book cover of Emergence

Adam Gaffen Author Of The Road to the Stars

From my list on to learn about hopepunk SF and why we need it.

Why am I passionate about this?

Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”

Adam's book list on to learn about hopepunk SF and why we need it

Adam Gaffen Why did Adam love this book?

I discovered this book in 1985, reading and re-reading the book during high school and, eventually, buying the worn-out copy from the library before graduation.

While it may seem to be a dystopian story – it takes place after a nuclear-biological armageddon, after all – it’s an early example of hopepunk. Candy Smith-Foster repeatedly puts the good of others, including her macaw, Terry (short for Terry Dactyl), ahead of her own welfare. Not bad for a preteen facing the destruction of all she knew.

How much of an impact did this have on me? One of the reasons Kendra’s name starts as Foster-Briggs is to honor Palmer’s masterwork.

By David R Palmer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Emergence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the aftermath of a bionuclear war Candy Smith-Foster searches the ruins of America for any other survivors


Book cover of The Road to Wigan Pier
Book cover of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
Book cover of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

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