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Background Reading 

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FICTION
Click on the links to see my reviews in The New York Journal of Books

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​About the Sixties or political activism in general: 

Kathleen Alcott, America Was Hard to Find

Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1

Russell Banks, Foregone

C.A. Davids, How to Be a Revolutionary

Joshua Furst, Revolutionaries 

Xochitl Gonzalez, Olga Dies Dreaming

Nathan Hill, The Nix    

David Hirshberg, Jacobo’s Rainbow

Hermione Hoby, Virtue

Alice Mattison, Conscience 

Alice McDermott, Absolution

Jay Neugeboren, After Camus

Jeff Schnader, The Serpent Papers

Jessica Shattuck, Last House

Teddy Wayne, The Great Man Theory

Susan Rebecca White, We Are All Good People Here

... see also my recommended list on Shepherd.com

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About immigration:

Michelle de Kretser, Scary Monsters

Gaelle Josse, The Last Days of Ellis Island 

Marie Myung-Ok Lee, The Evening Hero

Eman Quotah, Bride of the Sea

 

About kidnapping:

Rea Frey, Not Her Daughter 

Helen Klein Ross, What Was Mine

Jacinda Townsend, Mother Country

NONFICTION

Edward Berenson, The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

Preet Bharara, Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law

Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Daniel S. Chard, Nixon's War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism

Katharine Graham, Personal History

Penny Lewis, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory

Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

David von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

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