Catch-22
1961 · 524 pages
Trying to get grounded for insanity, a bombardier learns that asking to be grounded proves he is sane. Heller runs that loop through a whole war until the deaths stop being funny.
★ 8.7
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1961
Showing 10 books from 1961
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
1961 · 458 pages
Jacobs watched her Greenwich Village street and argued that crowded sidewalks, short blocks, and eyes on the street are what keep a city alive. After this, bulldozing a neighborhood stopped looking like progress.
★ 8.3
The Wretched of the Earth
1961 · 336 pages
Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who joined the Algerian revolution and died at thirty-six. Colonialism deforms the mind of the colonized, he argues, and violence undoes it. Revolutionaries read him as instructions.
★ 7.9
A House for Mr. Biswas
1961 · 564 pages
Mohun Biswas is born unlucky in rural Trinidad, marries into a large domineering family, and spends his life trying to own a house. Naipaul makes those small defeats as large as any tragedy.
★ 7.8
Revolutionary Road
1961 · 337 pages
Frank and April Wheeler tell themselves they are too fine for Connecticut and plan an escape to Paris. Yates tracks every evasion and self-flattering lie until the marriage has nothing underneath it.
★ 6.8
Between Past and Future
1961 · 298 pages
Tradition stopped telling anyone what authority or freedom means, and Arendt refuses to invent a substitute. She reopens each concept instead, arguing that education fails when adults stop taking responsibility for the world.
★ 6.8
The Moviegoer
1961 · 272 pages
Binx Bolling sells stocks in a New Orleans suburb, sits through afternoon movies, and calls his way out of everydayness the search. Percy's first novel beat Catch-22 to the National Book Award.
★ 6.5
The Day of the Owl
1961 · 124 pages
A small-time builder is shot running for a bus in a Sicilian square, and every passenger saw nothing. Sciascia named the Mafia as an organization while Italy still insisted it did not exist.
★ 6.5
What Is History?
1961 · 272 pages
Facts do not speak for themselves, Carr insists. The historian decides which ones get to speak, so study the historian before the evidence. English-speaking historians are still arguing with him.
★ 6.0
James and the Giant Peach
1961 · 146 pages
A rhinoceros escapes London Zoo and eats James's parents. Handed to two dreadful aunts, he crawls inside a house-sized peach and crosses the Atlantic with a crew of insects who become his family.
★ 4.5