100 Books Like Documentary Expression and Thirties America

If you want to learn about the New Deal’s contributions to the arts, there’s no better place to begin than with the art itself. This lavish book—I keep it displayed on my coffee table—collects hundreds of color posters created by the WPA’s Federal Art Project, which put unemployed artists and designers to work during the Depression. It’s no wonder that many of these posters, mostly silkscreen, have been cherished by collectors for years: they’re beautifully designed, often quite striking, and sometimes funny. And like most of the WPA’s cultural endeavors, they were meant to serve the public good. Flip through this book and you’ll find advertisements for national parks, a reminder to brush your teeth, and a warning to always report dog bites!  

When I was researching my book, I spent hours and hours in the National Archives and the Library of Congress, poring over the records of the Federal Writers’ Project. But I turned up few documents that offered as much insight into the FWP as this absorbing novel from 1941. Its author, Jack Balch, worked for the project in Missouri—one of the most dysfunctional and tumultuous outposts anywhere in the country. His thinly fictionalized account describes how the project’s idealistic workers came up against the machinations of a local political machine and, eventually, went out on strike. Balch’s memories, and his anger, are still fresh as he takes stock of both the FWP’s promise and the obstacles it faced in carrying out its mission. 

When Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, needed someone to run the Federal Theater Project, he made a bold choice: Hallie Flanagan, a visionary director, dramatist, and critic. Flanagan is at the center of Furious Improvisation, Quinn’s lively and deeply researched history of the FTP. Quinn’s propulsive narrative never flags, even as she showcases the project’s many triumphs, such as the “Living Newspaper” productions dramatizing current events, or Orson Welles’s so-called “voodoo Macbeth” featuring Black actors. But these productions and others were highly controversial, and the project was eventually attacked by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When a defiant Flanagan told the committee that she was fighting against the “un-American inactivity” imposed by the Depression, they ignored her—but this book stands as a monument to her achievements.   

Today, most people know Zora Neale Hurston as a novelist, thanks to her classic Their Eyes Were Watching God. But she was also an accomplished folklorist, anthropologist, playwright, and essayist. And yet, by the late 1930s, she was broke, and she found work with both the Federal Theater Project and Federal Writers’ Project. This book collects Hurston’s writing for the FWP in her home state of Florida, along with an incisive essay by Pamela Bordelon. The sheer variety of material on display here wasn’t unusual for the FWP: you’ll find essayistic meditations on folklife and art, collections of tall tales and children’s songs, and sketches of labor in the turpentine camps and citrus groves—as well as a chilling report on a racist massacre in Ocoee. 

I find WASP culture absurd and fascinating. I love that rich people, really rich people, have a fixation with stickers, slapping abbreviations for Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket or East Hampton on their luxury vehicles even though said luxury vehicles, parked in said locales, really should say it all. Such is the taxonomy writ large in Lisa Birnbach’s seminal Preppy Handbook, which explores other WASP signifiers such as “the politics of monogramming,” the elevation of old clothes over new, and what your choice of private schools, charities and vacation spots says about you. Pairs well with Take Ivy, a cult photography book by the Japanese photographer T. Hayashida, who spent the early-to-mid 1960s photographing American preps on college campuses — with prep soon becoming the rage in the Japan’s hipster Ginza district.

This is a fun book. The late Bob Adey’s passion for locked-room puzzles and his extraordinary breadth of reading shines through. After a discursive history of this type of detective story, he lists over two thousand novels and stories and the ‘impossible crime’ elements within them. A separate section listing all the solutions is not only enlightening but highly entertaining. A recent updated edition by Brian Skupin evidences the enduring appeal of ‘miraculous mysteries.’ 

During my twenties, I supplemented my understanding of crime writers past and present by studying the essays, bibliographies, and authors’ comments in this weighty tome. It’s a first-rate reference book, packed with information. Reilly was responsible for the first two editions and I was delighted to be asked to contribute essays myself to the third and fourth editions.

Ok, you’ve read Cohen and Monsters and the Monstrous. This monster stuff is getting pretty good, and you might be able to feel around the edges a bit. How does it apply to contemporary America which “no longer believes in monsters?” This is where Poole’s book comes in. Poole walks through monstrosity in the US from Columbus’ first steps to just shy of 2020. All the juicy topics that Americans have used monsters for—sex, race, and politics—emerge in this monstrous tour de force of US history. This is one of the first books I recommend to my students.

If you want to understand how corporations and not churches became the most powerful institutions of moral influence in America, capable of taking away an employee's personal choice outside the workplace and denying their access to healthcare based on the owners’ biblical beliefs, legally protected by the U.S. government as a religious freedom, then you need to read this book.

Paul Levitz was a writer, editor, editor in chief, publisher, and president of DC Comics for decades. This oversized coffee table book is a treasure trove of his insights, memories, and analysis. It’s the definitive history of DC, which only he could write. And it’s full of fun colorful images, making it interesting to younger readers as well as a perfect gift to any pop culture or comics lover.