Hello! I am looking for some nonfiction American literature books (preferably longer but not necessary). For example, I just read the 1945 Etiquette by Emily Post and I thought it gave an interesting snapshot of what the customs were like among the wealthy class at the time.
by Nireus806
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“Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal” by Eric Schlosser and “Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom” by Adam Chandler are near opposite takes on American fast food culture. The first gets compared with Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” (a novel, but one that exposed corruption in government and business in the early 20th century) while the latter is a love letter to fast food culture. I enjoyed both of them and found insights in each about the 70-something years that the modern fast food industry and culture has grown.
If you liked the Post book, see if you can source Live Alone And Like It by Marjorie Hillis which is a curious and fascinating little book about how to make an interesting [and well-mannered] life – aimed at those new creatures in America, office girls living on their own. Written in the 1930s. I found a copy on Abe.
Maybe books by M.F.K. Fisher, a mid-20th century food writer? often praised for her writing as well as her content. “How to Cook a Wolf” is the classic recommendation, I think
*Carriages Without Horses: J. Frank Duryea and the Birth of the American Automobile Industry* by Richard P. Scharchburg
*Benjamin Franklin: An American Life* by Walter Isaacson
*Last of the Blue and Gray: Old Men, Stolen Glory, and the Mystery That Outlived the Civil War* by Richard A. Serrano
*Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society: America’s Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective Who Brought Them to Justice* by Victoria Bruce and William Oldfield
*Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams* by Rich Cohen
*Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster* by T.J. English
*The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West* by Jeff Guinn
*Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life* by Roger Daniels
*Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34* by Bryan Burrough
*American Art and Architecture* by Michael J. Lewis
*American Painting of the Nineteenth Century* by Barbara Novak
*Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures* by Cynthia Saltzman
Literature=fiction. Do you want old/classic non-fiction, written a long while ago, or current non-fiction about the past?