Books like Bette Davis Black and White — picked by fans

When I first read this book over twenty years ago, I thought, finally, someone who sees what I see in classic Hollywood films—dynamic and exciting women. She traces American women onscreen: from the flappers of the 1920s (It girl Clara Bow) to the European goddesses Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich to the sultry Mae West in the 1930s, to the fast-talking Dames Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and to Marilyn Monroe and her postwar millionaire-seeking pals.

Her multi-decade analysis contemplates what changed in the 1970s-80s; as American women earned greater equity in real life, their onscreen representation paled compared to their pre-WWII sisters. A quarter into the twenty-first century, female star-driven Hollywood films remain an anomaly. Read this book to find out why it was the inverse more than ninety years ago.

When you think of Method acting—which actors come to mind? Marlon Brando, James Dean, Robert De Niro…in other words, all men? This is where Keri Walsh’s landmark book comes in, challenging the cultural presumption that Method acting is a male craft.

This book is a revelation for both my teaching and research. Walsh argues that actresses like Kim Stanley, Shelley Winters, and Jane Fonda developed a feminist Method of acting that synthesized with second-wave feminism. Even more striking is their omission from American cinema histories because Walsh underscores how critics praised these women and their films, won Oscars, and/or they were popular with audiences in their contemporary moment.

This book sets the historical record straight by showing that Method acting was equally the domain of Hollywood women and men.

When I read this book, I was relieved—at long last, a book that underscored the behind-the-scenes contributions of working women in the 1930s and 1940s. J.E. Smyth’s fascinating study brings to light new dimensions to screen legends Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and fashion designer Edith Head, but also women less known to the greater public—the intrepid editors like Barbara McLean and Margaret Booth, three-time Screenwriter Guild president Mary J. McCall, and producers like Joan Harrison and Virginia Van Upp.

I like how this book provides a counter-history to the male-dominated narratives of Hollywood. Smyth shows that women found other ways outside of directing to leave their mark on Hollywood in the twentieth century.

In my teen years, I was a voracious reader of star biographies. I still love them, and the late Cari Beauchamp’s book is a page-turning, spellbinding biography that details the life of pioneering screenwriter Frances Marion, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood for nearly three decades. 

Beauchamp also introduces readers to the early Hollywood sisterhood network that furnished Marion and other powerful women in American film at the time (Mary Pickford, Adela Rogers St. John, Hedda Hopper). I recommend this book as a historical backdrop for understanding the current gender parity issues plaguing Hollywood.

This book grew out of the labor of love both scholarly and personal. It brings together three generations of scholars and diverse, interdisciplinary approaches to this complex and still largely misunderstood and underappreciated Black queer writer and theorist of 20th-century US identity. Michele Elam’s introduction deftly reevaluates and situates Baldwin as a 20th-century master for contemporary readers here and now, while the essays collected here provide cutting-edge scholarship and much nuance and fresh insight. Theoretically rich and with several exquisitely written essays, it touches upon all of the major aspects of the writer’s fascinating life and works.

This is an angry book.

Rereading it made me angry all over again. Much about U.S. race relations has improved since Baldwin's essay was published in 1963. But rereading it now, after six decades when I myself have sometimes been active in anti-racist efforts, I was stunned by how penetrating and accurate his critique remains, and how enduring the depredations he described back then have proven to be.

And yet! And yet, the writing is suffused with empathy and, disarmingly, even with love. Discrimination and inequality made Baldwin a militant, but he never turned mean and never embraced violence. He is a model of how to stay humane.

Baldwin writes both fiction and non-fiction beautifully and intimately and if you don’t know his non-fiction work then this is a very good place to start. Across a number of essays, he elegantly sets out the deep struggle faced by Black Americans and articulates how a different humanity, in America and beyond, and a different future can be realized. 

Many have studied how in 1963 African Americans marched to gain equality, especially in southern towns, like Birmingham, Alabama. But I never knew that the first main march involved thousands of children and teens who marched so their parents wouldn’t lose their jobs. These brave youth found the courage to face their fears and the hatred of whites who fought to keep them separate and unequal. Their protest march encouraged adults to join them. Hateful efforts to stop the march were broadcast across the country, ultimately changing the direction of the civil rights movement. Bold pictures show everyday children and civil rights leaders finally gaining rights to playgrounds and diners and eventually better schooling. An important story, simply written—and about children who made a difference.

The decision to recruit Black soldiers made an enormous difference in the war and in politics. Black recruits to the U.S. Army equaled all the northern men lost in the first two years of fighting and proved themselves on many battlefields. Their sacrifice also made an irrefutable case for Black rights. Joseph Glatthaar’s book admirably tells the story of these soldiers and their white officers.

I loved Ayo, this book’s fourteen-year-old main character. She’s burnt out on activism, having been raised by a famous activist mom fighting for Black rights in America. All Ayo wants is to take a break and live a normal teen life. This makes so much sense to me—why do people who are at a disadvantage have to spend their time fighting for basic rights—what if they just want to spend their time making art or writing books like selfish white dudes are free to do?

But when something terrible happens at a big march, Ayo skipped, all the education and activist spirit her mom drilled into her no longer feels like a burden. I loved how she figured out she wanted to fight and really came into her own.