Great channel getting many good tips to my Book List here☺

I miss your videos, Ashley!

Can I just say that I love your videos. I love this video and videos like this. I’ll read The Fire Next Time very soon. 🙂

Loved this video, I would definitely enjoy more like it. It also may be helpful to give a little more historical context for the period in which these books were produced by.

Do you think that Kerouac’s later works are depressing because he had reached the natural outcome of his lifestyle? Kerouac influenced a generation and sadly many who idolised him met similar or even more tragic ends. It is interesting that his work documents the journey from free-spirited optimism to enslavement and despair.

I’ve recently been super interested in the 60’s so many pushes for change by people actively doing things (positively and negatively) such a cool time to look at.

Thanks for this. It’s helped me get an idea of some writers and books for an American literature course I’m attending early next year. I love Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking so will check out Slouching Towards Bethlehem as well.

Thanks for the era specific book recomendation. Definitely going to read at least a few of these. Do you think you’ll ever do a book on post-modern literture. I’m really hate post-modern philosophy, and feel I should read some of the books in that vain. Do you have any recommendation for literary examples of the movment.

So happy you mentioned Trout Fishing in America. A wildly underrated and under appreciated book and author, in my opinion. His book of poetry titled ‘The Pill Vs. The Springhill Mine Disaster’ is great as well.

I’m so glad I found this channel! I’ve been dying to find online literature lover people that read more classics. You seem to be extremely intelligent and thoughtful – I am a bit envious! Haha. I look forward to following your videos now 🙂

Love this video so much! Now I want to go on a 60’s reading binge for the rest of summer!!!!

Lovely to see you walk through a hand full of big works from a big decade. Would be fun to see you do this for all of the decades. Also, do you follow the ‘All Of The Shelves’ ? — She has been doing a series on American lit decade by decade and it is beyond wonderful.

part of the truth is hidden to us
what part?
the part that we are on

Whenever I watch your videos, I keep bookdepository on stand-by just in case. I already have over a 1000 books, am a literary theory graduate and work in two bookstores, so that is saying a lot! You’re great.

Great selection! I love Steinbeck, but I haven’t come across “My Trip with Charlie” yet. Definitely added to my TBR list because I’m sure, as you said, American life as he knew it had change dramatically.

If you are interested in the 1960s, and in a politically insightful way that dissects how intellectual contributions shaped the decade, you should start with Noam Chomsky, particularly The Responsibility of Intellectuals. It is a profoundly important essay by one of the most important minds of all time that sort of shuffles through the intellectual history of humanity and takes a look at how intellectuals, including the self-proclaimed radicals, have mostly spend their time producing semantically ambivalent verbose treatise that do very little in the way of mobilizing direct action civil disobedience, creating rational public opinion or explaining political issues to the layman, and end up being either idle polemics or some exercise in distorted morality.

2:20 i just read some nonfiction about american fighter planes and world war 1 planes were even worst. alot of people crashed, got shot down, or accidentally shot their propellers off and died. some planes wouldnt land correctly so it was kind of funny people even went through with all of it in order to fight in the war to end all wars XD

Great video! I had a great class on the 60s as well in college. Recently I have realized that in the early to mid 60s, at least, World War II still felt very recent and was seen and felt that way by a lot of people, it was still being processed by those who’d lived through it. Thinking about 9/11 and the way it still very much reverberates, I can see that.

Your videos never cease to impress. Thanks for the great introductions. I have read and enjoyed so many books because of you!

Thanks so much for this list. I find American history between 1900s-1960s fascinating and the ’60s in particular was such an incredible decade. I’ve read a few of these on your list but am always looking for more recommendations so will definitely be going on a buying spree now. ^^

I’ve already read a few of these works, and I do recognize all the titles. The 1960s was a great era for literature in the United States and elsewhere.

I think every generation loves stories about the people who lived before them.  I was 13 years old in 1963, and I was drawn to stories about the Dust Bowl (The Grapes of Wrath) and the “Great Depression” (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Anything about the Holocaust just ripped our hearts out! It is strangely comforting to know that this continues on with young readers. Loved this post.  Thank you.