Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Fall Of Berlin 1945 To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War’s outbreak, Antony Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentieth century. With new material gleaned from the Russian archives and numerous other ... (more)

The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.d.r.

by Richard Hofstadter

This book is a landmark in American political thought. It examines the passion for progress and reform that colored the entire period from 1890 to 1940 -- with startling and stimulating results. it searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

The curve of time : the classic memoir of a woman and her children who explored the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest

The curve of time : the classic memoir of a woman and her children who explored the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest

by M. Wylie Blanchet

After her husband died in 1927, leaving her with five small children, everyone expected the struggles of single motherhood on a remote island to overcome M. Wylie Blanchet. Instead, this courageous woman became one of the pioneers of “family travel,” acting as both mother and captain of the twenty-five-foot boat that became her family’s home during the long Northwest summers. Blanchet’s lyrically written account... (more)

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

by Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel's classic history of the Great Depression. In this unique re-creation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. The book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and... (more)

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

by William L. Shirer

Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's German Empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of this century's blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of... (more)

American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

by Gary Gerstle

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the "right" ancestry? Gary Gerstle traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped... (more)

The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas (Twentieth Century Classics S.)

The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas (Twentieth Century Classics S.)

by Gertrude Stein

Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

West With the Night

by Beryl Markham

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s. Regarded by many as one of the best adventure books ever!

Once Upon a Time in New York : Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age

Once Upon a Time in New York : Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age

by Herbert Mitgang

The Jazz Age in New York -- a legendary time in America's liveliest town. Flappers and speakeasies. Gangsters and gun molls. Organized crime and its handmaiden: political corruption. Almost everybody and everything had a price. It was a great time to be a politician in power -- if you knew how to play the game. It was also a time of larger-than-life personalities. Two men, once friends, were locked in a... (more)

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

by James Agee, Walker Evans

A passionate literary innovator, eloquent in language and uncompromising in his social observation and his pursuit of emotional truth, James Agee (1909- 1955) excelled as novelist, critic, journalist, and screenwriter. In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit. This volume collects his fiction along with his... (more)

Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert Korstad, and Christopher B. Daly Lu Ann Jones

Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable... (more)

Trouble in Mind

by Leon F. Litwack

"The stain of Jim Crow runs deep in 20th-century America. . . . Its effects remain the nation's most pressing business. Trouble in Mind is an absolutely essential account of its dreadful history and calamitous legacy." --The Washington Post "The most complete and moving account we have had of what the victims of the Jim Crow South suffered and somehow endured." --C. Vann Woodward In April 1899, black laborer... (more)

Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monument sof the Thirties (New York Review Books Classics)

Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monument sof the Thirties (New York Review Books Classics)

by Murray Kempton

Master journalist Murray Kempton re-creates an era when many believed that the only hope for America's future lay in violent revolution. Writing as both a radical and a skeptic, Kempton looks back - from the vantage of the very un-revolutionary 1950s - on the tangled affairs of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, The Hollywood Ten, and Paul Robeson, considering overly idealistic revolutionaries and others who were... (more)

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life from Prohibition Through World War II (Writer's Guides to Everyday Life)

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life from Prohibition Through World War II (Writer's Guides to Everyday Life)

by Marc McCutcheon

The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III (The Age of Roosevelt)

The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III (The Age of Roosevelt)

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."s Age of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concluding years of Franklin D. Roosevelt"s first term. A measure of economic recovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR"s critics to denounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagogues — Huey Long,... (more)

The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I (The Age of Roosevelt)

The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I (The Age of Roosevelt)

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933, volume one of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."s Age of Roosevelt series, is the first of three books that interpret the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the early twentieth century in terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the spokesman and symbol of the period. Portraying the United States from the Great War to the... (more)

Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

by Susan Ware

Amelia Earhart was first reported missing on 2 July 1937. Despite the ongoing fascination with her disappearance, Susan Ware argues that key aspects of Amelia Earhart's life are still missing. This biography analyzes Earhart as part of the history of women and feminism. A heroine of her era, Earhart is a figure of inspiration for women today. While loving adventure, Earhart saw aviation as liberating for women.... (more)

Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960

Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960

by Gary Gerstle

In this classic interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, Gary Gerstle challenges the popular historical notion that American workers' embrace of "Americanism" and other patriotic sentiments in the post-World War I years indicated their fundamental political conservatism. He argues that Americanism was a complex, even contradictory, language of nationalism that lent itself to a wide variety of... (more)

The Spanish Civil War: A History in PicturesRaymond Carr

The Spanish Civil War: A History in Pictures

by Raymond Carr

Dedicated to the International Brigades, Preston's The Spanish Civil War displays strong Loyalist sympathy. The author, however, still approaches his subject clearly, placing the war in the context of Spanish history as well as analyzing what forces compelled and shaped Russian, German, and Italian intervention. More telling, Preston avoids the trap of excessively romanticizing the Loyalists, listing their... (more)

Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Working Class in American History)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: history-1930 to 1940

The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

by Antony Beevor

by Richard Hofstadter

by M. Wylie Blanchet

by Studs Terkel

by William L. Shirer

by Gary Gerstle

by Gertrude Stein

by Beryl Markham

by Herbert Mitgang

by James Agee, Walker Evans

by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert Korstad, and Christopher B. Daly Lu Ann Jones

by Leon F. Litwack

by Murray Kempton

by Marc McCutcheon

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

by Susan Ware

by Gary Gerstle

by Raymond Carr

by Bruce Nelson