20th Century > 1950s
Featured Titles
The Blackboard Jungle
by Evan Hunter
After serving his country in World War II, Richard Dadier decides to become an English teacher--and for the sin of wanting to make a difference, he's hired at North Manual Trades High School. A tough vocational school in the East Bronx, Manual Trades is home to angry, unruly teenagers exiled from New York City's regular public schools. On his first day, Dadier endures relentless mockery and ridicule and makes an enemy of the student body by rescuing a female colleague from a vicious attack.
Year: 1954
Genre: Crime Fiction
The Bridge at Andau
by James A. Michener
For five brief, glorious days in the autumn of 1956, the Hungarian revolution gave its people a glimpse at a different kind of future--until, at four o'clock in the morning on a Sunday in November, the citizens of Budapest awoke to the shattering sound of Russian tanks ravaging their streets. The revolution was over. But freedom beckoned in the form of a small footbridge at Andau, one of the most important crossings in the world, as the soul of a nation fled across its unsteady planks.
Year: 1957
The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe
Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.
Year: 1979
Genre: Historical, Non-fiction
The Big Nowhere
by James Ellroy
Los Angeles, 1950 Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Gangland intrigue and Hollywood sleaze. Three cops caught in a hellish web of ambition, perversion, a nd deceit. The D. A.'s brass, a sheriff's deputy, and a rough-and-tumble bagman are unknowingly chasing a nightmare in this thrilling novel.
Year: 1988
Genre: Crime Fiction
L.A. Confidential
by James Ellroy
L.A. Confidential is epic "noir", a crime novel of astonishing detail and scope written by the bestselling author of The Black Dahlia. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law. And three lawmen are caught in a deadly spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, and offers no mercy, grants no survivors.
Year: 1990
Genre: Crime Fiction
Titles
| Got It | Want It | Read It | Year | Title | |||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1954 | The Blackboard Jungle | by Evan Hunter | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1957 | The Bridge at Andau | by James A. Michener | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1979 | The Right Stuff | by Tom Wolfe | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1988 | The Big Nowhere | by James Ellroy | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1990 | L.A. Confidential | by James Ellroy | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1992 | White Jazz | by James Ellroy | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1993 | The Fifties | by David Halberstam | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 1998 | Cities of the Plain | by Cormac McCarthy | ||||||
| -- | -- | -- | 2001 | A Painted House | by John Grisham | ||||||
