Collection Eight: Politics & Social Issues

May 21, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION EIGHT: POLITICS & SOCIAL ISSUES

Our world is changing rapidly, especially right now. This is a good time to take stock of the way in which our forefathers and mothers have shaped our country, and to think about how we could all do so for the future. This collection takes us through politics, social issues, and the people who create the policies that affect us all.

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How Was it for You? Women, Love, Sex and Power in the 1960s by Virginia Nicholson

A rousing investigation into the decade that changed the world from the perspective of a wide variety of women

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Denial: Holocaust History on Trial by Deborah Lipstadt

A riveting, blow-by-blow account of a singular legal battle, which resulted in a formal denunciation of a Holocaust denier

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson

The definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade

Wing Nuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama by John Avlon

A case for the assertion that the time has come for the moderate majority of Americans to hold extremists accountable

Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning by Elliot Ackerman

From a decorated Marine war veteran, an astonishing reckoning with the nature of combat and the human cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria

Collection Seven: Potluck

May 14, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION SEVEN: POTLUCK

Some books defy categorization, and some are so unique they deserve their own space in any list. This group of books includes a little bit of everything: from paintings to photography, from war to Shakespeare, and an insight into genetics for good measure.

Gullah Images by Jonathan Green

A collection of 180 works by celebrated artist Jonathan Green with a foreword by Pat Conroy

Of Love and War by Lynsey Addario

A stunning and personally curated selection of Lynsey Addario’s photojournalistic work across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa

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Hamlet Globe to Globe: Two Years, 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play by Dominic Dromgoole

The Director of London’s Globe Theatre describes its 450th anniversary undertaking to stage Shakespeare’s Hamlet in every country in the world

Fools & Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

The story of the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream—as related by William Shakespeare’s estranged younger brother

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright’s insight into bad (and often mad) rulers

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She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer

A profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation

Collection Six: Biography

May 7, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION SIX: BIOGRAPHY

A well-researched biography takes us on a deep dive into a life of impact. There is much to discover and learn from this list, tracing lives through the Italian Renaissance to modern-day China and encompassing more familiar worlds. People are fascinating, and none more so than these.

Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna by Ramie Targoff

A biography of Vittoria Colonna, a confidante of Michelangelo, the scion of one of the most powerful families of her era, and a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance

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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang

As China battled through a hundred years of seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history

FDR at War Boxed Set: The Mantle of Command, Commander in Chief, and War and Peace by Nigel Hamilton

The definitive three-volume history of World War II that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not live to write

Renegade: The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe

Barack Obama’s previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into a powerful leader

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The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath edited by Karen Kukil

The complete, uncensored and vivid journals of Sylvia Plath, one of America’s most iconic poets, published in their entirety

Collection Five: Short Fiction

April 30, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION FIVE: SHORT FICTION

Now for another delve into fiction. This time around, we’re focusing on collections of short stories that offer brief glimpses into divergent worlds. The best short stories are perfectly formed, exquisitely crafted literary miniatures. The following three books are ideal examples of the scope of short fiction, ranging from supernatural powers to contemporary issues, all written by authors at the top of their game.

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Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg

A collection of brilliantly observed stories, skewering the lives we live now, from one of the most admired American practitioners of the form

Property by Lionel Shriver

A striking collection of ten short stories and two novellas that dissects the modern obsession with property, in every meaning of the word, with insight and humor

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Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it’s like to be young and black in America

Collection Four: Memoir

April 23, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION FOUR: MEMOIR

Memoirs are a thought-provoking way to see the world through the lives of others. In this collection, we travel through generations of inspiring women, hardworking playwrights, the turbulence of the 1960s, and the decadence of the 1980s.

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A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations by Juliet Nicolson

A family memoir that traces the myths, legends, and secrets of seven generations of remarkable women, written by the grand-daughter of the creator of the famous Sissinghurst garden in the UK,Vita Sackville-West.

The Blue Touch Paper by Sir David Hare

The fascinating story of becoming a writer in the 1960s and 70s when Britain was changing even faster than the author

Negroland by Margo Jefferson

A journey into the insular and discerning society of upper-crust Black Chicago in the 1950s and 60s

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

An incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood

A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost by Frye Gaillard

A deeply personal history of a pivotal time in American life

Collection Three: Bloomsbury

April 16, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION THREE: Bloomsbury

The Charleston Festival, held at the former home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in Sussex, England, provided the inspiration for The Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival. The Bloomsbury Group artists, writers, and thinkers were the creative spark behind the establishment of the Sussex Festival. In honor of our sister Festival across the sea, here’s a collection of Bloomsbury-inspired titles to satisfy the most Anglophile among us.

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The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf by Frances Spalding

The moving story of the life and work of novelist Virginia Woolf, revealed through her own letters to those closest to her

Bloomsbury Pie: The Making of the Bloomsbury Boom by Regina Marler

An examination the persistent allure of Bloomsbury--a fascination driven by nostalgia, adoration, and antipathy--and the resurgence of interest in the Group

The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein

A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism

Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris

A groundbreaking reassessment of English cultural life in the thirties and forties

Collection Two: History

April 9, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION TWO: History

Learning from the past will always benefit the future. In this list we journey through history: from the American Civil War and Civil Rights to World War II and British Royalty, this is a collection of powerful and poignant moments in Western history.

Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics by Marjorie Spruill

The story of two women's movements that drew a line in the sand between liberals and conservatives with far-reaching results

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Our Man in Charleston by Christopher Dickey

Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation

To Catch a King: Charles II’s Great Escape by Charles Spencer

The tantalizing tale of how the most wanted man in the country outwitted the greatest manhunt in British history

Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Judge Richard Gergel

How the violent blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard drove a visionary judge, based in Charleston, to change the course of America’s civil rights history

The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es

The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the most important African-Americans of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era

Collection One: Fiction

April 2, 2020 Austin Walker

COLLECTION ONE: FICTION

Perhaps the best form of literary escapism can be found in fiction. From the Ancient Greeks to spiritual traditions of Africa, to 1980s Chicago and many places in between, this is a list of diverse worlds and characters that come from the minds of some of our favorite Festival speakers.

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

The Man Booker Prize–winning blend of fabulism and gritty realism and the story of a spirit child straddling two worlds according to African legends

FranKISSstein by Jeanette Winterson

An audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love

Circe by Madeline Miller

A bold and subversive re-telling of the life of a Greek goddess

My Life as a Rat by Joyce Carol Oates

A story that traces a life of banishment from a family that forces a young woman to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from a long exile into a transformed life

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic