Theme Book Ideas

Mr. Amaral

• War Experience• Women in Conflict with Society’s

Expectations• Wild West and Wilderness Experience

• Baseball: All American Sport• 1920’s Expatriate Generation

• Chicago Experience• American Frontier/Social Protest

• Racial Tension and Identity• Southern Issues

• Immigrant Experience• American Family

• America’s Role in the World

The War Experience

Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier

• Plot Background: wounded soldier decides to walk back home to the Blue Ridge Mts. of North Carolina and the woman he loves.

• Author Background: His first novel, taught and lives in North Carolina.

• Historical Setting: Civil War Era

Catch-22by Joseph Heller

• Plot Background: satirical war novel, World War II bombardier feigns insanity in order to get home

• Author Background: Heller served as a B-25 wing bombardier in World War II, flew sixty missions

• Historical Period: 1944, Final Months of World War II

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

• Plot Background: war novel, life of a soldier who survives the bombing of Dresden

• Author Background: Vonnegut served in the US Army from 1942-1945, was a POW, and received the Purple Heart

• Historical Period: 1945, Dresden, Germany, and imaginary planet Tralfadore

In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason

• Plot Background: daughter of man killed in Vietnam tries to link with her past

• Author Background: newspaper and magazine writer

• Historical Period: 1984, with flashbacks to the Vietnam War

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

• Plot Background: short stories about soldiers in Vietnam

• Author Background: served in Vietnam

• Historical Period: Vietnam War

Going After Cacciatoby: Tim O’Brien

• Plot Background: A solider recounts what happened and what could have happened in Vietnam

• Author Background: O’Brien served in an Army combat unit during a tour of duty in Vietnam

• Historical Period: Vietnam 1969

Paco’s Storyby Larry Heinemann

• Plot Background: Vietnam Veteran returns to town looking for work and a sense of normalcy.

• Author Background: won the National Book Award in 1987

• Historical Period: post-Vietnam war

Ender’s Gameby Orson Scott Card

• Plot Background: young people train for alien military attack

• Author Background: science fiction writer known for his moral themes

• Historical Period: future

Cat’s Cradleby Kurt Vonnegut

• Plot Background: search for ice that freezes at room temperature

• Author Background: mixes science fiction and philosophy

• Historical Period: 1960’s

Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

• Plot Background: single woman in wealthy New York society

• Author Background: experienced New York affluence; received Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence in 1921

• Historical Period: early 1900’s

The Color Purpleby Alice Walker

• Plot Background: Georgia, Tennessee, Africa, 1920-40

• Author Background: Brought up in the rural South, won Pulitzer for this book

• Historical Background: The exploitation of women

The Feminine Mystique by Betty

Friedan

• Plot Background: women’s unhappiness in the 1960’s

• Author Background: feminist organizer, writer, and lecturer

• Historical Period: 1960’s

         

The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath

Plot: Highly intelligent young woman struggles with career choices and her own mental stability in the Fifties.

Author: Autobiographical treatment of Plath’s very real personal battles.

Historical events: Conservative era with limited choices for women.

Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen by Alix

Kates Shulman• Plot Background: memoirs of

a woman who feels trapped in her marriage and her life

• Author Background: feminist writer, her book was considered the "first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation movement."

• Historical Period: late 1960’s

         

The Optimist's Daughterby Eudora Welty

• Plot Background: Laurel visits her dying, but powerful Father and finds him married ‘to a coarse and shallow woman’, who is Laurel’s age.

• Author Background: Pulitzer Prize in 1973

• Historical Period: New Orleans, Mississippi Delta 1960’s

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret

Atwood• Plot Background: futuristic

story about women’s rights • Author Background:

prominent Canadian writer of many genres

• Historical Period: 22nd century (2195)

         

The Wild WestThe Wilderness Experience

Undaunted Courageby Stephen Ambrose

• Plot Background: focuses on the exploratory journey of Lewis and Clark.

• Author Background: author of several books about American History,

• Historical Setting: late 1700’s early 1800’s

The Oxbow Incidentby Arthur Van Tilburg Clark

• Setting: Nevada• Time Period: 1885• Theme: Three cattle

rustlers are lynched—just as word comes that they are innocent. Seen as the ‘struggle between democracy and totalitarianism’

Lonesome Doveby Larry McMurty

• Setting: Great Plains• Time Period: Late 19th C.• Theme: Adventures of

two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana; Pulitzer Prize winner

Bad LandBy Jonathan Raban

• Setting: Montana• Time Period: 1909.• Theme: Congress,

lobbied by the railroad, offered homesteaders 320-acres. An account of the hardships, myths, heroes, heroines and ruin of many immigrants.

O Pioneers!by Willa Cather

• Plot Background: Swedish immigrants tame the wild land, also, a love triangle in Nebraska

• Author Background: considered this her first novel, based on the memories of her youth.

• Historical Period: 1880’s immigration, role of women

A Lost Ladyby Willa Cather

• Plot Background: story told by a boy in a Midwestern town, who admires the gracious ways and manners of Marian Forrester

• Author Background: First ever woman to be voted into the Nebraska hall of fame

• Historical Background: the decline of the West, 1920’s

Baseball: the All-American Sport

The Naturalby Bernard Malamud

• Plot Background: a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era. Filled with magical realism

• Author Background: The Natural was his first of eight novels, taught at Bennington College in Vermont

• Historical Period: 1930’s and 1940’s rural vs. urban life

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof

• Plot: 1919 fix of the World Series and its attempted cover-up

• “The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record” ~The Chicago Tribune

1920’s Expatriate GenerationEarly 20th Century

This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Plot Background: 1920’s, East coast and Princeton University

• Author Background: Novelist and screen writer who epitomized the Jazz Age

• Historical Background: Lost Generation, Jazz Age

The Sun Also Risesby Ernest Hemingway

• Plot Background: life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s

• Author Background: winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Maltese Falconby Dashiell Hammett

• Plot Background: mystery set in the underworld of San Francisco

• Author Background: former Pinkerton detective; wrote for pulp fiction magazines

• Historical Background: 1928, prohibition, stock market crash

The Chicago Experience

Studs Loniganby James T. Farrell

• Plot Background: Chicago’s South Side, 1916-1930

• Author Background: Irish South-Sider who worked a wide variety of jobs

• Historical Background: End of World War I, Prohibition

The Coast of ChicagoBy Stuart Dybek

• Setting: Chicago• Time period: 1990’S &

2000’S• Theme: Long stories and

short ones. Some read like poetry. Life in neighborhoods everywhere

House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros• Setting: Chicago• Time Period: Mid-1960’s• Theme: A Chicana

feminist, Cisneros writes of growing up in Chicago’s Mexican- American neighborhoods. Deals with ethnicity and sexual identity.

American Social Protest

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

• Plot Background: California farm area, 1930’s

• Author Background: Fruit picker, journalist, screen writer, Nobel Prize winner

• Historical Period: Great Depression, rise of the American Communist Party

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

• Plot: Two young men travel across the country in search of thrills and adventure.

• Author: Autobiographical novel of Kerouac’s experiences in the late Forties.

• Historical events: McCarthyism, conformist culture in the Fifties when the book was published.

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

• Plot Background: The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after On the Road

• Author Background: concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals

• Historical Period: late 1950’s

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Testby Tom Wolfe

• Plot Background: Ken Kesey’s psychedelic road trip

• Author Background: known for “New Journalism” style

• Historical Period: 1960’s

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestby Ken Kesey

• Plot Background: revolution and power struggle set in a mental ward

• Author Background: volunteered for government LSD experiments & worked in a psychiatric ward

• Historical Period:1960’s

          

  

Less Than Zero and American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis• Historical Period: 1980’s • Plot Background: LA

college student experiments with drugs & alcohol (Less Than Zero).

• Plot: explore depths of insanity as a stockbroker by day tortures and murders at night (American Psycho).

• Author Background: wrote first book when he was 20.

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin

• Plot Background: Dark Comedy about Joe Gallo, a New York City gangster.

• Author Background: awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1986); writer for several New York City newspapers

• Historical Period: Mafia crime, 1940’s – 1960’s

Racial Tension and Identity

African American

Native American

Asian American

Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison

• Plot Background: a young man finds new ways of dealing with race and identity

• Author Background: Ellison wrote about the unity of the the American experience beyond class, race and religion.

• Historical Period: 1940s and Early 1950s, Deep South and Harlem.

Uncle Tom’s Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Plot Background: Kentucky and Louisiana, explores social and psychological problems with slavery and injustice.

• Author Background: appalled by slavery, she wrote this book as a response. Book sold more than 300,000 copies in 1852 when it was published.

• Historical Period: The South, late 1800’s

Native Son by Richard Wright

• Plot Background: Chicago, 1930’s

• Author Background: Moved North as a young man, first full-length novel

• Historical Period: Great Black Migration, rise of American Communist Party, Great Depression

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

• Plot Background: Eatonville and the Everglades, Florida, 1930’s

• Author Background: One of the foremost writers of the Harlem Renaissance

• Historical Background: Harlem Renaissance, establishment of “race colonies”, racial politics

Black Like Meby John Howard Griffin

• Plot Background: White writer passes as a black man in the South

• Author Background: Life changing experience for Griffin.

• Historical Period: 1959, racism

Black Boy by Richard Wright

• Plot Background: Mississippi, Arkansas, Chicago, 1912-1937

• Author Background: Grew up in a poor family, affiliated with Communist Party

• Historical Period: Era of strong racial prejudice, Jim Crow laws, Great Depression

The Bluest Eyeby Toni Morrison

• Plot Background: Told from five perspectives, focuses on an 11 year old girl who faces abuse and racism.

• Author Background: Toni Morrison’s first novel, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993

• Historical Period: American Midwest, Great Depression 1940’s

There are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz

• Plot Background: two brothers struggling to survive in Chicago’s public housing

• Author Background: Wall Street Journal reporter

• Historical Period: 1980’s

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• Plot: murder of a Kansas farm family; investigation and trial

• Author Background: Capote is credited with “inventing” the true crime narrative

• Historical Period: 1959

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

by Sherman Alexie

• Contemporary life on the Spokane Indian reservation, through 22 linked stories

• Basis for the film Smoke Signals

House Made of Dawnby N. Scott Momaday

• Plot Background: Native American World War II vet returns to the reservation

• Author Background: Member of the Kiowa Nation, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for this work

The Joy Luck Clubby Amy Tan

• Plot Background: Chinese mothers and American daughters struggle for understanding

• Author Background: Chinese-American, writes about the clash of cultures and generations

Snow Falling on Cedarsby David Guterson

• Plot Background: memories of internment camp on an isolated island.

• Author Background: former high school teacher and journalist

• Historical Period: 1940’s, flashbacks from 1991 to 1945.

The Immigrant Experience

Woman Warrior & China Men by Maxine

Hong Kingston• Plot Background: growing up

in a Chinese-American family• Author Background: Chinese-

American teacher and college professor

• Historical Period: written in 1976; stories occur 1924-1975

         

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

• Contrast between a family of illegal immigrants and a middle-class suburban family

• Poses questions about immigration, unemployment, discrimination and social responsibility

    

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

• Plot Background: story told by a young immigrant Jewish boy dealing with slum life in New York City

• Author Background: published in 1934, Roth was an immigrant himself, lived in similar slums.

• Historical Setting: New York, Immigrant Jewish life 1911 -1913

When Heaven and Earth

Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip

• Non-fiction: A Vietnamese woman grows up during the Vietnam War

• Focuses on the individual’s emotional and physical outcomes caused by the war

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

by Julia Alvarez• Fifteen

interconnected stories about a Dominican-American family’s struggles with assimilation

• Four sisters and their parents look back on their struggles to adjust to America

Lost in Translationby Eve Hoffman

• Setting: Poland and Vancouver

• Time Period: 1950s+• Theme: Story of a young

girl, who immigrated from Poland, learned a new language and culture, and shares what that experience means.

Southern Issues

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

• Plot Background: Georgia cotton mill town, 1930’s

• Author Background: First novel at age 23, a focus on the “grotesque”

• Historical Period: Condition of young women and Blacks in the Great Depression, growth of radio

A Streetcar Named Desire [and a second play] by Tennessee Williams

• Setting: New Orleans • Time Period: 1940’s• Theme: Dysfunctional

family; Blanche DuBois, despite her poverty and lack of morals, tries to live in a gentile fashion

All the King’s Menby Robert Penn Warren

• Plot Background: 1930’s, an unnamed Southern state

• Author Background: Novelist, poet, scholar, university professor

• Historical Background: the Great Depression, political corruption in the South

The American Family

Ragtimeby E. L. Doctorow

• Plot Background: stories of “average” New York families woven with celebrities (Houdini, Freud, etc.)

• Author Background: born in New York; English professor at New York University

• Historical Period: early 1900’s (but written in 1974)

All My Sons and Death of a Salesman**

by Arthur Miller• Author Background: Miller’s

dramas explore the issues that afflict humanity in post-WWII America

• Historical Period: 1940s, after World War II

• Plot Background: An aging business man discovers how his actions have affected his family

**Or another play like The Crucible

Franny and Zooeyby J.D. Salinger

• Plot Background: two distinct and related stories about the Glass siblings

• Author Background: originally published in The New Yorker magazine.

• Historical Background: teen angst late 50’s early 60’s

Nine Storiesby J.D. Salinger

• Plot Background: A collection of short stories

• Author Background: Includes his most famous stories “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” + “For Esme with Love and Squalor”

• Historical Background: late 1940’s – early 1950’s

The Housebreaker of Shady Hills by John Cheever

• Plot Background: Collection of short stories focusing on the suburb of Shady Hill

• Author Background: Cheever won the Pulitzer Prize for The Stories of John Cheever, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award

• Historical Background: late 50’s early 60’s

Rabbit, Runby John Updike

• Plot Background: 3 months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player and his attempts to escape the constraints of his life.

• Author Background: Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest

• Historical Background: late 50’s early 60’s

We Were the MulvaneysJoyce Carol Oates

• Plot Background: “ideal” family begins to fall apart after a traumatic event.

• Author Background: has published a book a year since the 1960’s

• Historical Period: 1970’s

Empire Fallsby Richard Russo

• Plot Background: Explores life in a small, blue collar Maine town, where the mill and textile industries have closed, leaving behind the people and their stories.

• Author Background: lives in Maine; winner of Puiltzer Prize

• Historical Background: present day

America’s Role in the World

The Plot Against Americaby Philip Roth

• Plot Background: alternate history in which FDR is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh

• Author Background: winner of National Book Award in 1960 for Goodbye, Columbus

• Historical Background: 1940

The Manchurian Candidateby Richard Condon

• Plot: A former P.O.W. is brainwashed and programmed to kill a presidential nominee

• Set during the Cold War (late 1940’s)

• A true thriller with intrigue, suspense, and humor

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

• Plot Background: New York City’s social and ethnic divisions, told through the downfall of a wealthy bond salesman

• Author Background: former reporter credited with creating the “New Journalism” style

• Historical Period: 1980’s

Primary Colors: A Novel of Politicsby Anonymous/Joe Klein

• Plot Background: The study of a presidential campaign, fictionalization of Bill Clinton’s run for the White House.

• Author Background: Washington D.C. journalist, writer for Time Magazine

• Historical Background: 1992 presidential campaign

• War Experience• Women in Conflict with Society’s

Expectations• Wild West and Wilderness Experience

• Baseball: All American Sport• 1920’s Expatriate Generation

• Chicago Experience• American Frontier/Social Protest

• Racial Tension and Identity• Southern Issues

• Immigrant Experience• American Family

• America’s Role in the World