100 Books Like Siren Queen

LaSalle’s book made me fall in love with Pre-Code Hollywood despite having been in film and media studies for 20 years.

His in-depth study of many famous actresses during this era such as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Jean Harlow, shows how freer women could be on screen for their life choices. 

The later chapters address the lasting impact of the Code era on the representation of women and their agency, even on contemporary movies. As he discusses it, the Code caused the decline of “socially responsive women’s pictures.”

The year before Errol Flynn blew into Hollywood, the “pre-Code” era ended. What was the “pre-Code” era? It was the period in the early 1930s when Hollywood rode the cliff, making movies about sensational topics like adultery, pay-for-play, drug use, and more. Many of the pictures included a scene or two with leading ladies scantily clad and even braless. Leading men were often scoundrels.

This book entertainingly details both the point of view of studios struggling to remain relevant in the depths of the Great Depression by creating salacious products and the outcry from alarmed parents who took their kids to the movies only to cover their eyes and rush them back out again.

The author backs up his narrative with eye-popping photos illustrating just what was so shocking about the pre-Code era. This interesting period of Hollywood history ended abruptly and, unfortunately, with the puritanical “Production Code” that ushered… show more.

The most supernatural of this list, this book has occasional short chapters (usually just a paragraph or two) by the angel who is shepherding a dying man toward death.

These little interludes give the reader flickers of insight into the author’s vision of dying without anything like proselytizing. The engrossing overarching story is one of friends and family in a small Southern town and one woman’s struggle with her identity and her religion, again without judgment.

There are no easy answers – this book is real and heartwarming at the same time that it is heartbreaking. 

This book resonated deeply within me because, just like the author, I have always relied upon music to drive my emotions. Music played an integral role in shaping my life, especially during times of tremendous grief. This was especially true during the devastating death of a dear friend during my teenage years who succumbed to his demons and the quiet void left by my father’s passing. Each loss felt like a piece of my soul was gone. Music helped me grapple with my mortality.

Being let go from my corporate job was another brutal grief-ridden separation because it felt as if I had lost a part of my identity. Gen Xers like me often navigate the treacherous waters of untapped, sidelined potential. I was reminded that resilience spawns from pain and suffering. Personal battles forced me to confront my fears as I moved forward into today’s digital age. Like Hanif,… show more.

One of the models for my own book, this study of Shibe Park—later named Connie Mack Stadium—places it in the context of the growth and decline of its North Philadelphia neighborhood. Home first to the Philadelphia Athletics, then the Athletics and Phillies, and then, until 1970, the Phillies alone, the stadium went from a position as the centerpiece of a vibrant industrial and residential community to a decaying symbol of urban decline by the 1960s. Still, there are those who remember and love it, and Kuklick has written a fascinating and evocative book that tells the story of a twentieth-century American city through its signature baseball stadium.

A child of slavery, Still became a major figure in the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia which worked to undermine slavery by aiding the enslaved to reach freedom.

Wish I had this book when I was writing my book. There is no better book on the movement in eastern Pennsylvania and Still’s roll in it.

Simon Finger’s book, The Contagious City, is a wonderful, concise introduction to the politics of public health in early America. By focusing on Philadelphia, a city literally designed by William Penn to be healthier than European cities, Finger shows how a distinctly American view of public health developed even after that original plan failed to achieve its desired results. Finger describes the growth of the medical community in Philadelphia, its trials during the Revolution, and its failures during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic.

I love to find “hidden gems” in history. Ona Judge is a gem. First published in 2017, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge is a biography that reads like an engaging novel. It depicts the life of George and Martha Washington’s young enslaved girl that grows to a young woman in the shadows of the most powerful couple in our new nation. At age 16, Ona leaves Mount Vernon to accompany President Washington and Martha while they live in New York and then Philadelphia. She is treated splendidly, but she is still property. This terrible truth crashes upon Ona when Martha, wanting to give the absolute best gift she can to her difficult, disagreeable, and stubborn granddaughter, decides to give her Ona – her most cherished possession, as a wedding gift. Rather than be property to be gifted and given, Ona escapes. This book shows how President… show more.

A well-written study of Philadelphia’s single women in the eighteenth century, this book offers an unusual view of women’s lives by focusing on the unmarried female residents of an urban middle-colony environment. (Most works on colonial women have studied married women in rural New England.) Each chapter highlights an individual woman and the diverse experiences of others like her, including poor women, dependents in siblings’ households, female shopkeepers and other tradeswomen, and women who form organizations with other women. Remarkably comprehensive, it presents a counterpoint to more familiar narratives.

Nathanson (like me) faced the dilemma of writing biography when the subject declines to be interviewed. His approach showed me the way. The availability of digital newspaper databases has opened up enormous possibilities for research, and Nathanson took advantage of them to provide color, detail, and analysis on a grand scale. The many dozens of reporters and newspaper writers who covered Dick Allen wrote game accounts, opinion columns, and feature stories that informed, inspired, and entertained contemporary readers. They watched the games from the vantage point of the press box, peppered the players and managers with questions in the clubhouse afterward, and often rode the buses and planes with the teams. They had a level of access that is the envy of historians, and Nathanson greatly profited from their work.