100 Books Like The Sleep of Reason

I’ll be honest: I don’t like Ayn Rand. I think she is a bad writer and a worse philosopher.

But I also can’t think of a book that better illustrates how, in the last century, we became a society that embraces greed and reveres the pursuit of wealth than Atlas Shrugged. Rand romanticizes a world where people are selfish, where empathy is weakness, where money is literally a religion, and the only thing worth pursuing.

It’s a maddening novel, but it lays the groundwork for the reality that would become Den of Thieves. I did not read every word; certainly not every word of John Galt’s nauseating 60-page (60 pages!) diatribe of a speech.

I wouldn’t recommend reading every word. But I do recommend reading (most of) it.

Nathaniel Branden’s account of his relationship with Rand is honest and deeply emotional. For a psychologist who writes mainly on the theme of self-esteem, this book is a bit of a departure from his usual works, but for any fan of Rand and her volatile relationship with a man nearly half her age, it is well worth the read.

Stories about women in radio are few and I was thrilled to find Radio Girls. Although it’s fiction, there is a real sense that the author did their research combining fact with fiction in the very early days of the BBC. In 1926, American-born Maisie Musgrave meets the challenges of rising from a secretary in a predominated male industry to become an unexpected heroine at a time when very few women were given the chance.  

Before there was Carrie, Maranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, there was Simone, Anita, Beverly, and Lou—the Crazy Ladies of Joyce Elbert’s bestselling novel of the late ’60s.

I first bought this book when I was all of 13. My mother threw it away… I bought it again. After the fourth time, she finally gave up and I’m very happy to say I still have that first edition with very worn pages in my nightstand today.

Many years later, I became long-distance friends of Ms. Elbert. I learned that several of the characters in her book, including Jack Bailey, were, as I had surmised, based on real people!

She was one of the very best writers of her time. If you can find this book, and the sequel The Return of The Crazy Ladies, as well as all her other titles, buy them. You will not be disappointed! 

I include this book for two reasons. First, Thompson describes a turn-of-the-twentieth-century range war, largely forgotten (and utterly unknown to me!) that raged a few miles from my family’s cattle ranch in eastern Oklahoma. Second, Thompson discovered the story when he stumbled across articles hidden in a deceased relative’s closet.

My recent book emerged in much the same way—from articles and correspondence hidden for a half-century. My goal is to bring hidden history to light—in this case, the history of a statesman and 6-term congressman who has languished in undeserved obscurity for decades.

In every story in this heart-rending collection, the protagonists—all of them Indigenous people—are dealing with some of the most challenging circumstances that can be imagined: the tragic deaths of loved ones, the trials of trying to rebuild one’s life post-incarceration, and the fallout from substance abuse, to name just some of the difficulties the stories address. At the same time, most of the protagonists exhibit some form of resilience in response to these challenges, and I was deeply moved by the variety of this resilience, by the characters’ determination, and by Johnston’s insights into their experiences. I also love the ways in which the stories are connected by place: All of them unfold in Oklahoma, and Johnston brings their settings to life.

Release Me is an anthology that looks at the legacy of Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District through the eyes of various authors tapping a plethora of literary styles and devices. Through Release Me, the voices of the oft-unheard ring out. The legacy of the Greenwood District lives. 

The Unfinished Bombing was eerily prescient when first published in 2001 and remains uncannily relevant today.

Linenthal set the standard in his analysis of public tragedy, its impact on an American community and the larger nation, and its memorialization.

In April 1995, a white homegrown right-wing terrorist bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 men, women, and children. Linenthal’s story of the massive crime, outpourings of grief, and the efforts to memorialize the dead and prevent future cataclysms is gripping and personal yet academically astute.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum that rose from the rubble is among the most culturally and aesthetically successful monuments in the history of American public memory. Though seemingly eclipsed by the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001, this story of rupture and recovery, so well told by the author, continues to be critical and instructive.

When I studied the civil rights movement, nobody told me about Clara Luper or the Oklahoma City sit-ins, which took place a year and a half before the Greensboro sit-in. I didn’t even realize there was segregation that far west. Someday Is Now helps fill that common knowledge gap, but it’s also a solid introduction to “separate and unequal,” as well as a portrait of a teacher and civil rights activist who should be better known. It left me wanting to learn more about Luper and the children who joined her, especially Luper’s nine-year-old daughter Marilyn, who by her own account proposed the sit-in—without ever having heard of one!

Morrison’s most ambitious and most underrated novel, Paradise (1997) tells the story of Ruby, a town founded by a group of African-Americans turned away after slavery from other black townships because of their darker skin color. Ruby’s male leaders accordingly establish a patriarchal community devoted to keeping bloodlines pure and youth in line. This stern society inevitably clashes with the inhabitants of a former convent on its fringes where a multiracial group of fugitive women come together amid the tumult of the 1960s. In this intensely written and kaleidoscopically structured violent epic, Morrison rewrites the Biblical Exodus and the American myth of westward settlement, she sets Christianity against Gnosticism, and she strives to do nothing less than reinvent religion for the postmodern world. Reading this as a teenager in the late ‘90s showed me that contemporary fiction could aspire to be as grand and world-changing as the classics.