84 books like The Jungle

This short book, filled with delightful illustrations, is so much fun that you don’t immediately notice that it’s a powerful history of how urbanization and industrialization led to a new mass culture. The particular focus is on the rise of the amusement park, and the controversies that arose over how people “should” spend their leisure time and discretionary income. When the Russian revolutionary Maxim Gory toured Coney Island in 1907, he concluded that in America, amusement (rather than religion) had become the opiate of the masses. This book, a classic, remains relevant, inspiring thoughtful analysis concerning the ongoing power of the leisure industry and its impact on how people think, live, and spend their money. 

There are many books on the reforms of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era—this one is the best.  Flanagan, who writes clearly and engagingly, centers this work on four themes: politics, social justice, economics, and foreign policy. Every chapter features lively stories and helpful illustrations. While Flanagan certainly includes excellent coverage of vital federal and state reforms, she is particularly effective in her coverage of how every day Americans, including women and various minority groups, responded to the problems confronting society.

If you’re tired of historians spoon-feeding you their interpretations of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, this great selection of the period’s documents provides an unfiltered look at what people were thinking and doing at the time in their own words. The documents are arranged thematically with four or five per section: The New South; The New West; Native Americans; Big Business; Gilded Age Society; Working People, Immigrants in the Industrial Age; Populism; The Coming of Jim Crow; Labor Protest Rebuilding American Institutions; The Political System; Imperialism and Anti-imperialism, and the Debate about World War I. This is a user-friendly collection that doesn’t go too deep into any one person or event, yet introduces the key issues of the period.

To understand American race relations today, the history of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a vital starting point. In the wake of the Reconstruction, legalized segregation formalized institutional racism. With no federal lynch law, many states and municipalities refused to prosecute lynchings, striving instead to perpetuate myths of lynching as the only appropriate response to naturally lascivious Black men who desired inherently pure and virtuous white women. This exceptional biography traces the fascinating life of journalist and women’s suffrage advocate Ida Wells, who fearlessly fought against racism, segregation, and, especially, lynching. She was a leader in progressive era reform, despite the discrimination she endured even from many progressives due to her sex and her race.

We love this book for its breadth and its moral and environmental urgency. Muir writes eloquently [in an admittedly heightened and romantic prose] about the beauties of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Sequoia National Parks, the only ones in existence at the time. Muir is of interest to Roosevelt because of his understanding of how important it is for wilderness to be preserved for all time not by state governments—as was the case in his time—but by the federal government. This of course was one of TR’s central personal beliefs and was to be, especially after his two-night camping trip in Yosemite with Muir in 1903, a central and guiding policy of his Presidency. For an elegant essay, readers might want to spend time with Muir’s chapter, “The Wild Gardens of Yosemite Park.”

This novel’s power remains intact every time I read it, even as the nature of the tragedy seems to shift – from the perils of living by one’s looks (my teenage reading) to the cruelty of the world towards women (my young adult reading) to the struggle for personal freedom in a money-obsessed culture (my more recent readings).

Edith Wharton’s novel is a masterpiece, both electrifying and relevant, and worth re-reading as often as possible. 

Once you finish the book, watch the Terence Davies-directed film, starring the luminous Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart.

Theodore Roosevelt read the book and loved his philosophy and way of telling a life story. Autobiography is at the heart of American literature. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and Roosevelt’s contemporary in age and thinking, was the first writer the President invited to lunch at the White House, controversial as that invitation came to be. We love the book because, in this day of reconsidering Black history, the reader can see how Washington’s notion of self-reliance, captured in his famous admonition, “Cast down your bucket where you are,” helps to define the quest for economic and social freedom for people of color in the early 20th century. Readers will discover a compelling man with an engaging writing style who speaks to the struggles within American society that persist to this day.

This is where the “Western novel” began.

By reading this book, people of the early 20th century were introduced to a prototype protagonist who would be duplicated (with variations) for generations to come. Authors who followed this lead were Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Jack Schaefer, Charles Portis, Elmer Kelton, and I.

As a boy I found my heroes in the format of the lone common man who faced up to adversities that cut against his moral code.  These protagonists played a large part in shaping my values. Even though the characters were fictitious, the lessons were real. The inspiration hit home.

Wister’s influence on later writers remains intact for good reason. His work was the historical beginning of the “Western,” which, to many folks, serves as the quintessential American story.

I read that Matt Weiner wouldn’t have had the courage to write Mad Men if he’d read this before he worked on the series.

Revolutionary Road is set in the world of New York advertising during the martini lunch era, and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn’t exactly have that Singin’ in the Rain optimism, but it’s darkly hilarious. The opening scene is literary perfection, set at the dress rehearsal for the Laurel Players.

Yates masterfully captures that Waiting for Guffman sincerity (and inherent comedy) of community theater, and the novel sets the stage for the deeply human tale of longing. It is deeply American and deeply perfect.

David Golder embodies the classic “rags to riches” story fueled by insecurity and greed. He is the breadwinner of a morally bankrupt family that spends and cheats openly on him, and whose members blame him when he is unable to bring home the bacon anymore. A tightly-woven plot, with business deals that take place offstage but which impinge strongly on everyone, especially Golder—who is heroic in business, yet tragic in life. You might find his Russian negotiation tactics, replete with temper tantrums, of particular interest—they are still in use today. Written in short chapters and with cutting dialogue, this book carried Némirovsky to international fame in 1929; however, being an assimilated French Jew, prominence attracted Nazi persecution, culminating in her death at Auschwitz.