Here are 100 books that It's All Good fans have personally recommended if you like
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Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for a two-year backpacking sojourn across the country. I took a bunch of snapshots along the way with a little point-and-shoot camera. 800 of those images became my first book. Photography – be it travel, documentary, street or reportage – is my passion. The following are but five of five hundred books I’d love to recommend.
I tried to do something different with this list than the usual photography books people often cite, however, there is just no avoiding how important Robert Frank’s The Americans has been on the medium. In 1955, Frank departed for a two-year road trip to document the people of the United States, which coincided with the evolution of new post-war classes – namely, the working poor and those who would eventually become the beatniks of the ‘60s. Focusing on the racial and socio-geographic divide, Frank was a pioneer, as his work defiantly contradicted the popular romanticized propaganda of Life Magazine, opening the doors to the gritty documentary and street photography genres we know today.
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of 20th-century photography
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life. And it was not just Frank's subject…
Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for a two-year backpacking sojourn across the country. I took a bunch of snapshots along the way with a little point-and-shoot camera. 800 of those images became my first book. Photography – be it travel, documentary, street or reportage – is my passion. The following are but five of five hundred books I’d love to recommend.
Larry Clark is most well known for his controversial 1995 motion picture Kids, but decades before refashioning himself into a filmmaker, Clark got his start as a shutterbug. His first and most critically acclaimed photo essay, Tulsa, was on the heroin habits of friends from the fringes of his Oklahoman hometown throughout the 1960s. His follow-up book, 1983’s Teenage Lust, is a much more accomplished and focused collection; Clark dials up to 11 his intrigue for rebellious children, paralleling the graphic imagery with anecdotes of his own wayward youth. Out of print for decades, good luck finding an affordable copy.
In Teenage Lust, Larry Clark returns to Oklahoma and the frank autobiographical material of his first book Tulsa (1971). This time he focused on the next generation, local teenagers, some of whom were the younger brothers of his old friends, whose lives were just beginning to spiral out of control through amphetamine use and petty crime. ‘Teenage Lust is a scrapbook whereas Tulsa is a movie,” he told [Mike] Kelley. The needles and guns that had been Tulsa’s key motives are reprised here, along with the seedy glamour of the addict turned outlaw. But Teenage Lust is also about innocence…
Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for a two-year backpacking sojourn across the country. I took a bunch of snapshots along the way with a little point-and-shoot camera. 800 of those images became my first book. Photography – be it travel, documentary, street or reportage – is my passion. The following are but five of five hundred books I’d love to recommend.
Manhattanite David Godlis took up street photography in the 1970s, spending after dark at the now-notorious Bowery punk-rock bar, CBGB. However, few others could have predicted that the bands he was capturing in their infancy would go on to become some of the most iconic musicians of the era: Blondie, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, the Cramps... Godlis’ lens is grainy and gauzy, using only the scant natural light available to document these dark personalities on and off stage. History Is Made At Night is equal parts talent and perfect timing, as only a true historian would have had the foresight to hang out with who other photographers then considered just a bunch of unwashed miscreants.
Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for a two-year backpacking sojourn across the country. I took a bunch of snapshots along the way with a little point-and-shoot camera. 800 of those images became my first book. Photography – be it travel, documentary, street or reportage – is my passion. The following are but five of five hundred books I’d love to recommend.
Veteran photographer Larry Fink once called my own book of photography “boring”, which I wear as a badge of honor, as I would have to be on the street-beat for as long as he has – 50 years! – before I could ever measure up to his skill and accomplishments. Fink specializes in juxtapositions, and in this touching series from the early-‘80s, he spends time among the working class of rural Pennsylvania as well as nouveau-riche socialites of New York, then couples the imagery into a telling tale of two cities. He has an uncanny ability to get right up in his subject’s business at their most vulnerable moments, and in that regard, among Fink’s large body of work, Social Graces is his most poignant.
I have always believed that everyone has a story to tell. I have connected to people throughout my life because I chose to sit, listen, and share stories. I do this in my own neighborhood and on my travels worldwide. I do it with people I don’t have anything in common with and people I think I might not like. Every time, without exception, I learn something. Often, I am inspired. These experiences have tested and grown my compassion, empathy, kindness, and understanding capacity. I suppose this is why I love reading. It’s like meeting strangers and sharing stories.
I loved Jeanette Walls honest and raw telling of her father’s mental illness and her mother’s unorthodox mothering and the impact they both had on her childhood and adulthood. People with mental illness are often portrayed as villains with no redeeming qualities.
Still, Walls finds the bits and pieces of her father that are beautiful, made her childhood sometimes magical, and led to her own successful career and life.
Now a major motion picture starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson.
This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents.
At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane,…
Teaching middle school made me painfully aware of the disparity in our students’ lives. Some kids have every advantage, while others struggle to survive without enough food, clean water, or a safe, dry place to sleep for the night. All these kids, with their diverse backgrounds, sit side-by-side in class and are expected to perform at the same academic and social levels. In my novels, I feature ordinary teens that are strong, smart, and resilient, like so many of the students who taught me as much as I taught them.
Can’t Get There from Hereis another stark look at the realities of kids living on the street. Strasser quickly drew me into the life of Maybe and her tribe of friends Maggot, 2Moro, Rainbow, and Tears. Their day-to-day existence is one of scrounging for food, looking for a safe place to sleep for the night, and avoiding those who would harm them. Adults have hurt these kids so many times and in so many ways that their reluctance to trust the police for help is totally understandable.
She lives with a tribe of homeless teens -- runaways and throwaways, kids who have no place to go other than the cold city streets, and no family except for one another. Abused, abandoned, and forgotten, they struggle against the cold, hunger, and constant danger.
With the frigid winds of January comes a new girl: Tears, a twelve-year-old whose mother doesn't believe her stepfather abuses her. As the other kids start to disappear -- victims of violence, addiction, and exposure -- Maybe tries to help Tears get off the streets...if it's not already too late.…
In March 2020, in the middle of a pandemic that had all but crippled New York City, my husband and I became homeless advocates. For months, we woke up each morning, made dozens of sandwiches, and walked the deserted city streets trying to feed the homeless, who were struggling to survive. Deserted streets meant no panhandling, which in turn, meant no food. In doing so, we became friends with many of the homeless men and women in our neighborhood. Fear and suspicion were replaced by trust and love, and our eyes and hearts were forever opened to people who had once been objects to be avoided.
This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Hometells the story of the difficulty of finding acceptable housing for the poor in New York City. Sandler follows the story of a young, poor, unwed mother, Camila, for one year as she struggles to find safe and affordable housing for herself and her newborn son. Against all odds, red tape, and never-ending bureaucracy, Camila never gives up. I found this story inspiring as well as educational about the homelessness crisis in New York City, a new found passion after my experience trying to feed the homeless during the first year of the pandemic.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times
Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren…
I am an anthropologist and studied homelessness in Paris and London for the last decade. I was drawn into the world of people on the streets when I moved to London and started observing their parallel world. I spent almost a year with people on the street in London and two years in Paris. I volunteered in day centers, safe injection facilities, and soup kitchens and slept in a homeless shelter. Since I finished my first book on my observations in Paris, I have advised both policymakers on homelessness and written countless journalistic articles. My goal is always to provide a clearer picture of homelessness through the eyes of the people themselves.
This book is a story about gangs in Chicago and one woman’s personal involvement in researching them. It is a sad book but also one full of surprises, family stories, and romance.
I learnt so much about what it means to be black and poor today. Goffman was as closely involved as was possible for a white, female grad student and pushed the boundaries of what good journalism and research needs to do today.
Teaching middle school made me painfully aware of the disparity in our students’ lives. Some kids have every advantage, while others struggle to survive without enough food, clean water, or a safe, dry place to sleep for the night. All these kids, with their diverse backgrounds, sit side-by-side in class and are expected to perform at the same academic and social levels. In my novels, I feature ordinary teens that are strong, smart, and resilient, like so many of the students who taught me as much as I taught them.
Catherine Ryan Hyde does a masterful job of showing us the stark reality of teen homelessness through the eyes of Jordy and Chloe. The content of the first few chapters was hard for me to read because of what young people must do to survive on the street and what traumas lead them there in the first place. As the story unfolded, though, Hyde took me on a warm and loving journey as Jordy set out to show Chloe that there truly is a lot of beauty in the world.
Meet Jordy. He’s on his own in New York City. Nobody to depend on; nobody depending on him. And it’s been working fine. Until this girl comes along. She’s 18 and blond and pretty–her world should be perfect. But she’s seen things no one should ever see in their whole life–the kind of things that break a person. She doesn’t seem broken, though. She seems . . . innocent. Like she doesn’t know a whole lot. Only sometimes she does. The one thing she knows for sure is that the world is an ugly place. Now her life may depend…
I’ve been a newspaperman for 40 years, the last 25 at The New York Times, and crime is the meat and potatoes of the business. My mother came from an Irish American clan in the Pennsylvania township where the Molly Maguires were born – my great-uncle died at 13 in the mine where the Mollies made one of their first recorded appearances. So I’ve been fascinated by Irish American true crime ever since the Sean Connery film The Mollies Maguires came out in 1970. I’ve spent most of my adult life researching the subject, and have given lectures on it all over the country.
This work came out in the Roaring Twenties, but the gangsters of that decade had nothing on the 19th-century outfits like the Dead Rabbits and the Gas House Gang.
When the dive bars have names like the Tub of Blood and they’re kept in business by the likes of Razor Riley, One-Lung Curran, and Stumpy Malarkey, you can’t go wrong. But to me the most compelling part was Asbury’s account of New York’s horrendous Civil War draft riots.
The Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania were born in opposition to that same draft, after a Protestant Republican allied with the coal industry used conscription to try to rid the coal fields of Irish Catholic Democrats and mine labor activists before a crucial election.
First published in 1928, Herbert Asbury's whirlwind tour through the low-life ofnineteenth-century New York has become an indispensible classic of urban history.
Focusing on the saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys of the Bowery and the notorious Five Points district, The Gangs of New York dramatically evokes the destitution and shocking violence of a turbulent era, when colorfully named criminals like Dandy John Dolan, Bill the Butcher, and Hell-Cat Maggie lurked in the shadows, and infamous gangs like the Plug Uglies, the Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery Boys ruled the streets. A rogues gallery of prostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets,…
