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Theme Book Ideas

Theme Book Ideas. Mr. Amaral. War Experience Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations Wild West and Wilderness Experience Baseball: All American Sport 1920’s Expatriate Generation Chicago Experience American Frontier/Social Protest Racial Tension and Identity Southern Issues

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Theme Book Ideas

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  1. Theme Book Ideas Mr. Amaral

  2. War Experience • Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations • Wild West and Wilderness Experience • Baseball: All American Sport • 1920’s Expatriate Generation • Chicago Experience • American Frontier/Social Protest • Racial Tension and Identity • Southern Issues • Immigrant Experience • American Family • America’s Role in the World

  3. The War Experience

  4. Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier • Plot Background: wounded soldier decides to walk back home to the Blue Ridge Mts. of North Carolina and the woman he loves. • Author Background: His first novel, taught and lives in North Carolina. • Historical Setting: Civil War Era

  5. Catch-22by Joseph Heller • Plot Background: satirical war novel, World War II bombardier feigns insanity in order to get home • Author Background: Heller served as a B-25 wing bombardier in World War II, flew sixty missions • Historical Period: 1944, Final Months of World War II

  6. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut • Plot Background: war novel, life of a soldier who survives the bombing of Dresden • Author Background: Vonnegut served in the US Army from 1942-1945, was a POW, and received the Purple Heart • Historical Period: 1945, Dresden, Germany, and imaginary planet Tralfadore

  7. In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason • Plot Background: daughter of man killed in Vietnam tries to link with her past • Author Background: newspaper and magazine writer • Historical Period: 1984, with flashbacks to the Vietnam War

  8. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien • Plot Background: short stories about soldiers in Vietnam • Author Background: served in Vietnam • Historical Period: Vietnam War

  9. Going After Cacciatoby: Tim O’Brien • Plot Background: A solider recounts what happened and what could have happened in Vietnam • Author Background: O’Brien served in an Army combat unit during a tour of duty in Vietnam • Historical Period: Vietnam 1969

  10. Paco’s Storyby Larry Heinemann • Plot Background: Vietnam Veteran returns to town looking for work and a sense of normalcy. • Author Background: won the National Book Award in 1987 • Historical Period: post-Vietnam war

  11. Ender’s Gameby Orson Scott Card • Plot Background: young people train for alien military attack • Author Background: science fiction writer known for his moral themes • Historical Period: future

  12. Cat’s Cradleby Kurt Vonnegut • Plot Background: search for ice that freezes at room temperature • Author Background: mixes science fiction and philosophy • Historical Period: 1960’s

  13. Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations

  14. The House of Mirthby Edith Wharton • Plot Background: single woman in wealthy New York society • Author Background: experienced New York affluence; received Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence in 1921 • Historical Period: early 1900’s

  15. The Color Purpleby Alice Walker • Plot Background: Georgia, Tennessee, Africa, 1920-40 • Author Background: Brought up in the rural South, won Pulitzer for this book • Historical Background: The exploitation of women

  16. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan • Plot Background: women’s unhappiness in the 1960’s • Author Background: feminist organizer, writer, and lecturer • Historical Period: 1960’s

  17. The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath Plot: Highly intelligent young woman struggles with career choices and her own mental stability in the Fifties. Author: Autobiographical treatment of Plath’s very real personal battles. Historical events: Conservative era with limited choices for women.

  18. Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen by Alix Kates Shulman • Plot Background: memoirs of a woman who feels trapped in her marriage and her life • Author Background: feminist writer, her book was considered the "first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation movement." • Historical Period: late 1960’s

  19. The Optimist's Daughterby Eudora Welty • Plot Background: Laurel visits her dying, but powerful Father and finds him married ‘to a coarse and shallow woman’, who is Laurel’s age. • Author Background: Pulitzer Prize in 1973 • Historical Period: New Orleans, Mississippi Delta 1960’s

  20. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood • Plot Background: futuristic story about women’s rights • Author Background: prominent Canadian writer of many genres • Historical Period: 22nd century (2195)

  21. The Wild WestThe Wilderness Experience

  22. Undaunted Courageby Stephen Ambrose • Plot Background: focuses on the exploratory journey of Lewis and Clark. • Author Background: author of several books about American History, • Historical Setting: late 1700’s early 1800’s

  23. The Oxbow Incidentby Arthur Van Tilburg Clark • Setting: Nevada • Time Period: 1885 • Theme: Three cattle rustlers are lynched—just as word comes that they are innocent. Seen as the ‘struggle between democracy and totalitarianism’

  24. Lonesome Doveby Larry McMurty • Setting: Great Plains • Time Period: Late 19th C. • Theme: Adventures of two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana; Pulitzer Prize winner

  25. Bad LandBy Jonathan Raban • Setting: Montana • Time Period: 1909. • Theme: Congress, lobbied by the railroad, offered homesteaders 320-acres. An account of the hardships, myths, heroes, heroines and ruin of many immigrants.

  26. O Pioneers!by Willa Cather • Plot Background: Swedish immigrants tame the wild land, also, a love triangle in Nebraska • Author Background: considered this her first novel, based on the memories of her youth. • Historical Period: 1880’s immigration, role of women

  27. A Lost Ladyby Willa Cather • Plot Background: story told by a boy in a Midwestern town, who admires the gracious ways and manners of Marian Forrester • Author Background: First ever woman to be voted into the Nebraska hall of fame • Historical Background: the decline of the West, 1920’s

  28. Baseball: the All-American Sport

  29. The Naturalby Bernard Malamud • Plot Background: a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era. Filled with magical realism • Author Background: The Natural was his first of eight novels, taught at Bennington College in Vermont • Historical Period: 1930’s and 1940’s rural vs. urban life

  30. Plot: 1919 fix of the World Series and its attempted cover-up “The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record” ~The Chicago Tribune Eight Men Outby Eliot Asinof

  31. 1920’s Expatriate GenerationEarly 20th Century

  32. This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott Fitzgerald • Plot Background: 1920’s, East coast and Princeton University • Author Background: Novelist and screen writer who epitomized the Jazz Age • Historical Background: Lost Generation, Jazz Age

  33. The Sun Also Risesby Ernest Hemingway • Plot Background: life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s • Author Background: winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature

  34. Plot Background: mystery set in the underworld of San Francisco Author Background: former Pinkerton detective; wrote for pulp fiction magazines Historical Background: 1928, prohibition, stock market crash The Maltese Falconby Dashiell Hammett

  35. The Chicago Experience

  36. Studs Loniganby James T. Farrell • Plot Background: Chicago’s South Side, 1916-1930 • Author Background: Irish South-Sider who worked a wide variety of jobs • Historical Background: End of World War I, Prohibition

  37. The Coast of ChicagoBy Stuart Dybek • Setting: Chicago • Time period: 1990’S & 2000’S • Theme: Long stories and short ones. Some read like poetry. Life in neighborhoods everywhere

  38. House on Mango Streetby Sandra Cisneros • Setting: Chicago • Time Period: Mid-1960’s • Theme: A Chicana feminist, Cisneros writes of growing up in Chicago’s Mexican- American neighborhoods. Deals with ethnicity and sexual identity.

  39. American Social Protest

  40. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck • Plot Background: California farm area, 1930’s • Author Background: Fruit picker, journalist, screen writer, Nobel Prize winner • Historical Period: Great Depression, rise of the American Communist Party

  41. Plot: Two young men travel across the country in search of thrills and adventure. Author: Autobiographical novel of Kerouac’s experiences in the late Forties. Historical events: McCarthyism, conformist culture in the Fifties when the book was published. On the Roadby Jack Kerouac

  42. The Dharma Bumsby Jack Kerouac • Plot Background: The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after On the Road • Author Background: concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals • Historical Period: late 1950’s

  43. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Testby Tom Wolfe • Plot Background: Ken Kesey’s psychedelic road trip • Author Background: known for “New Journalism” style • Historical Period: 1960’s

  44. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestby Ken Kesey • Plot Background: revolution and power struggle set in a mental ward • Author Background: volunteered for government LSD experiments & worked in a psychiatric ward • Historical Period:1960’s

  45. Less Than Zero and American Psychoby Bret Easton Ellis • Historical Period: 1980’s • Plot Background: LA college student experiments with drugs & alcohol (Less Than Zero). • Plot: explore depths of insanity as a stockbroker by day tortures and murders at night (American Psycho). • Author Background: wrote first book when he was 20.

  46. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin • Plot Background: Dark Comedy about Joe Gallo, a New York City gangster. • Author Background: awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1986); writer for several New York City newspapers • Historical Period: Mafia crime, 1940’s – 1960’s

  47. Racial Tension and Identity African American Native American Asian American

  48. Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison • Plot Background: a young man finds new ways of dealing with race and identity • Author Background: Ellison wrote about the unity of the the American experience beyond class, race and religion. • Historical Period: 1940s and Early 1950s, Deep South and Harlem.

  49. Uncle Tom’s Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe • Plot Background: Kentucky and Louisiana, explores social and psychological problems with slavery and injustice. • Author Background: appalled by slavery, she wrote this book as a response. Book sold more than 300,000 copies in 1852 when it was published. • Historical Period: The South, late 1800’s

  50. Native Sonby Richard Wright • Plot Background: Chicago, 1930’s • Author Background: Moved North as a young man, first full-length novel • Historical Period: Great Black Migration, rise of American Communist Party, Great Depression

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