Library of America

[billyboy]

I'm a longtime subscriber to this great series, and they just announced the next wave of books to be published, including a couple volumes of film criticism:

JAMES AGEE—Fall 2005

- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction

- Film Writing & Selected Journalism

AMERICAN POETRY:

17th & 18th Centuries—2006

RICHARD HENRY DATA, JR.:

- Two Years Before the Mast & Other Voyages—Fall 2005

HENRY JAMES:

- Novels 1901-1902—Spring 2006

ARTHUR MILLER:

Plays 1944-1961—Spring 2006

PHILIP ROTH

Novels & Stories 1959-1962—Fall 2005

Novels 1967-1972—Fall 2005

AMERICAN FILM CRITICS—2006

[gslade]

These Books are very nice

I have

Saul Bellow

Novels 1944-1953

and

Dashiell Hammett

Crime Stories & Other Writings

Good to see them expand this series

they are expensive (unless you can find them on sale)

another good buy is the Everymans Library series

[TheMusicalMarine]

The two Raymond Chandlers and the Steinbecks are well worth buying. The Reporting World War II (both of them) and Reporting Vietnam (both of them) are also extremely valuable if your interested in those periods.

[Jazzmoose]

I must confess that the only one of these books I've managed to spring for is the collected writings of Thomas Paine. I'm cheap...

[Philip]

The two volumes on the Civil Rights movement are particularly engrossing.

[ghost of miles]

I love the LOAs too, and the Civil Rights volumes are high on my "to-get" list. Will second MusicalMarine's picks (though I don't yet have the WWII titles); the Hammetts and Crime Novels are great as well. Some other faves:

John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (I've gotten the two recent DPs but haven't read them yet)

Flannery O'Connor. In a big way; one of the best in the series.

The Melville Tales with PIERRE and "Benito Cereno" in it.

James Baldwin, both EARLY NOVELS AND STORIES and COLLECTED ESSAYS.

W.E.B. Du Bois, WRITINGS.

The Emerson volume of essays.

Both Hurstons.

Sinclair Lewis, MAIN STREET AND BABBITT.

Richard Wright, EARLY WORKS.

A bunch of others that I have but haven't read yet... yeah, it's a great series.

[billyboy]

Reading the 'Reporting World War II' and 'Reporting Civil Rights' volumes are amazing experiences, completely different from reading a history book. There's a sense of the unknown in reading articles written in the midst of turmoil, in which no one knows how things are going to turn out. That quality is mostly missing in other history books, in which the author already knows how things end up.

My faves in the series, besides the above, are the Crime Novels of the 30's, 40's and 50's, and the collection of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Library of America Webpage