Society Books

-- A --

Abbott, Karen
Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (2007)

Adiga, Aravind
The White Tiger (2008)

Aira, Cesar
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (2006)

Al Aswany, Alaa
The Yacoubian Building (2004)

Algren, Nelson
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949)

Allen, Thomas B. and Norman Polmar
Ship of Gold (1987)

Ambrose, Stephen E.
Citizen Soldiers (1997)

Nothing Like it in the World (2000)

anonymous
Eve Reviv'd or The Fair One Stark-Naked (1684)

Ansell, David
County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital (2010)

-- B --

Baker, Peter C.
Planes (2022)

Ball, Edward
The Slaves in the Family (1998)

Barbery, Muriel
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006)

Barnes, Julian
The Sense of an Ending (2011)

Barry, John
Rising Tide (1998)

Barry, Sebastian
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998)

The Secret Scripture (2008)

Barylick, John
Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America's Deadliest Rock Concert (2012)

Bausch, Richard
Peace (2008)

Bellow, Saul
The Dean's December (1982)

Herzog (1964)

Berkow, Ira
Full Swing: Hits, Runs and Errors in a Writer's Life (2006)

Bickel, Lennard
Mawson's Will (2000)

Binet, Laurent
HHhH: A Novel (“Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”) (2012)

Black Elk
Black Elk Speaks (1932)

Black, Benjamin
The Silver Swan (2008)

Block, Lawrence
The Burglar in the Closet (1978)

Blumenthal, Max
Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009)

Bourdain, Anthony
Kitchen Confidential (2000)

Bowles, Paul
The Sheltering Sky (1949)

Boyle, T.C.
Water Music (1980)

Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Braithwaite, Oyinkan
My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018)

Brooks, Geraldine
People of the Book (2008)

Brown, Dan
The Da Vinci Code (2003)

Brown, Daniel James
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (2013)

Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinkley Firestorm of 1894 (2006)

Brown, Fredric
Fabulous Clipjoint (1953)

Bruen, Ken
The Guards (2001)

Bryson, Bill
One Summer: America 1927 (2013)

Buckley, Christopher
Supreme Courtship (2008)

Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Pellucidar (1915)

Butler, Robert Olen
Tabloid Dreams (1996)

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992)

-- C --

Capote, Truman
In Cold Blood (1965)

Castner, Brian
Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike (2021)

Cather, Willa
My Antonia (1918)

Cecchini, Toby
Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life (2003)

Chabon, Michael
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007)

Chandler, Raymond
The Big Sleep (1939)

Clark, Walter Van Tilburg
The Ox-Bow Incident (1940)

Clowes, Daniel
Mister Wonderful: A Love Story (2011)

Cobbs, Elizabeth
The Hamilton Affair (2016)

Coetzee, J.M.
Disgrace (1999)

Cohen, Adam
Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (2009)

Comey, James B.

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (2018)

Conrad, Joseph
The Secret Agent (1907)

Crile, George
Charlie Wilson's War (2003)

Crimmins, Jerry
Fort Dearborn (2007)

Cummins, Jeanine
American Dirt (2020)

-- D --

Daly, Michael
Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison (2013)

Dando-Collins, Stephen

The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and his City (2010)

De Bernieres, Louis
Corelli's Mandolin (1994)

DeLillo, Don
White Noise (1984)

Diamond, Jared
Collapse (2005)

Doerr, Anthony
All the Light We Cannot See (2017)

Dumas, Alexandre
The Three Musketeers (1844)

Dunne, John Gregory
Monster (1997)

-- E --

Eckert, Allan W.
Twilight of Empire (1989)

Edsel, Robert
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (2009)

Egan, Timothy
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006)

Ehle, John
Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (1988)

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man (1947)

Elsener, James
The Last Road Trip (2018)

Reflections of Valour (2021)
 

-- F --

Fair, Eric
Consequence: A Memoir (2016)

Fallada, Hans
Every Man Dies Alone (1947)

Faulkner, William
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

Faulks, Sebastian
Birdsong (1993)

Fee, Russell
Who You Gotta Kill (2011)

A Dangerous Remedy (2017)

A Dangerous Season: A Sheriff Matt Callahan Mystery (2017)

Ferry, Peter
Old Heart (2015)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby (1925)

Foer, Jonathan Safran
Everything is Illuminated (2002)

Fonseca, Isabel
Bury Me Standing (1995)

Forester, C.S.
The African Queen (1935)

French, Tana
The Likeness (2008)

Fuentes, Carlos
The Old Gringo (1985)

Furst, Alan
Dark Voyage (2004)

-- G --

Galgut, Damon

The Promise (2021)

Gardner, Leonard

Fat City (1969)

Geronimo
Geronimo (1970)

Gess, Denise and William Lutz
Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History (2002)

Gottlieb, Eli
Now You See Him (2009)

Grann, David
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017)

Grant, U.S.
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885)

Greene, Graham
Brighton Rock (1938)

Grey, Zane
Riders of the Purple Sage (2005)

Griesbach, Michael
The Innocent Killer: A True Story of a Wrongful Convion & its Astonishing Aftermath (2014)

-- H --

Haggard, H. Rider
King Solomon's Mines (1885)

Marie (1912)

Hamilton, Jane
Laura Rider's Masterpiece (2009)

Hammett, Dashiell
The Maltese Falcon (1929)

The Big Book of the Continental Op (2017)

Hannah, Barry
Ray (1980)

Hapgood, David
The Murder of Napoleon (1982)

Harbach, Chad
The Art of Fielding: A Novel (2011)

Harding, Paul
Tinkers (2008)

Harr, Jonathan
A Civil Action (1995)

Harrer, Heinrich
Seven Years in Tibet (1953)

Harvey, Michael
The Chicago Way (2007)

We All Fall Down (2011)

Harvey, Miles
The Island of Lost Maps (2000)

Painter in a Savage Land (2008)

The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch (2020)

Hatch, Anthony P.
Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903 (2003)

Hau'fa, Epeli
Tales of the Tikongs (1983)

Hawks, Tony
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis (2001)

Hegi, Ursula
Stones from the River (1994)

Hellman, Lillian
Another Part of the Forest (1946)

Hemingway, Ernest

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Hendrickson, Paul
The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996)

Hiaasen, Carl
Stormy Weather (1995)

Razor Girl (2016)

Highsmith, Patricia

Strangers on a Train (1950)

Hillenbrand, Laura
Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010)

Hilton, George W.
Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic (1995)

Hilton, James
Lost Horizon (1933)

Holmes, Richard
Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985)

Hosseini, Khaled
Kite Runner (2003)

Hough, Richard Alexander
Captain Bligh and Mister Christian (1973)

Huchthausen, Peter, Igor Kurdin & Alan White
Hostile Waters (1997)

Hyde, Anthony

The Red Fox (1982)

-- J --

Jackson, Shirley

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Jacobsen, Annie
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base (2012)

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (2014)

Jacobson, Howard
The Finkler Question (2010)

James, Henry
Wings of the Dove (1902)

Jay, Charlotte
Beat Not the Bones (1952)

The Fugitive Eye (1953)

Jerome, Jerome K.
Three Men in a Boat (2018)

Jiles, Paulette
News of the World (2016)

Jimenez, Francisco
The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997)

Johnson, Craig
A Cold Dish: A Walt Longmire Mystery (2004)

Johnson, Denis
The Laughing Monsters (2014)

Johnson, Steven
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World (2006)

Jones, Edward P.
The Known World (2003)

-- K --

Kafka, Franz

The Trial (1925)

Kanon, Joseph
Stardust: A Novel (2009)

Kantner, Seth
Ordinary Wolves (2004)

Keefe, Patrick Radden
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2019)

Keegan, Claire
Small Things Like These (2020)

Kennedy, William
Legs (1975)

King, Stephen
Joyland (2013)

Kirino, Natsuo
Out (2003)

Kitakata, Kenzo
The Cage (1983)

Kladstrup, Don and Petie
Wine and War (2001)

Koestler, Arthur
Darkness at Noon (1941)

Koryta, Michael
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2014)

Kotlowitz, Alex
The Other Side of the River (1998)

Krakauer, Jon
Into the Wild (1998)

Kray, Fred M.

Broken: The Suspicious Death of Alydar and the End of Horse Racing’s Golden Age (2023)

Krehbiel, Randy
Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre (2019)

Krist, Gary
City of Scoundrels (2012)
The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche (2007)

Kurson, Robert
Shadow Divers (2004)

-- L --

Lansing, Alfred
Endurance (1959)

Lardner, Ring
Ring Lardner: Selected Stories (1997)

Larson, Erik
The Devil in the White City (2003)
Thunderstruck (2006)
In the Garden of Beasts (2011)

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020)

Laskin, David
The Children's Blizzard (2004)

Lavigne, Michael
Not Me (2005)

Lavin, Talia
Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (2020)

Le Carré, John

Cinnamon Skin (1982)

Le May, Alan
The Searchers (1954)

Lethem, Jonathan
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015)
Motherless Brooklyn (1999)

Letts, Tracy
August: Osage County (2008)

Levine, Mark
F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century (2008)

Lewis, Jeffrey
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel (2018)

Licata, Anthony
Hannibal's Niece: A Tale of Love, Murder and Deceit in Ancient Rome (2017)

Liss, David
A Conspiracy of Paper (2000)

Lynch, Thomas
The Depositions: New and Selected Essays on Being and Ceasing to Be (2019)

-- M --

Maas, Peter
The Terrible Hours (1999)

MacDonald Fraser, George
Flashman in the Great Game (1975)

MacDonald, Laura M
Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion 1917 (2005)

Mace, O. Henry
47 Down: The 1922 Argonaut Gold Mine Disaster (2004)

Macintyre, Ben
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War (2018)

MacLean, John
Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (1999)

MacPherson, Malcolm
The Black Box (1998)

Malamud, Bernard
The Assistant (1957)

Marcus, Ben
The Flame Alphabet (2012)

Martel, Yann
Life of Pi (2001)

Matthiessen, Peter
Shadow Country (2008)

Maxwell, William
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)

McCann, Colum
Let the Great World Spin (2009)

McCarthy, Cormac
Cities of the Plain (1998)

The Road (2006)

McCullough, David
1776 (2005)
The Johnstown Flood (1968)

McEwan, Ian
Black Dogs (1992)

McNickle, D'Arcy
Runner in the Sun (1954)

Michaeli, Ethan
The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (2018)

Miller, Derek B.
Norwegian By Night (2013)

Milosz, Szeslaw
Milosz's ABC's (2001)

Momaday, N. Scott
House Made of Dawn (1969)

Moore, Brian
No Other Life (1993)

Mukherjee, Abir
A Rising Man (2016)

Murakami, Haruki
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)

-- N --

Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita (1955)

Naipaul, V.S.
A Bend in the River (1979)

Némirovsky, Irène
Suite Française (2004)

Nguyen, Viet Thanh
The The Sympathizer (2015)

Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)

Nin, Anais
Delta of Venus (1969)

Noah, Trevor
Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

-- O --

O'Brian, Patrick
Master and Commander (1970)

O'Brien, Fann
The Third Policeman (1967)

O'Brien, Tim
Things They Carried (1990)
In the Lake of the Woods (1994)

O'Connor, Flannery

Wise Blood (1952)

O'Nan, Stewart
The Circus Fire (2000)

Orwell, George
Burmese Days (1934)

-- P --

Partisan Review
Knowledge and Information Technology (2000)

Pasternak, Judy
Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos (2010)

Petrakis, Harry Mark
The Odyssey of Kostas Volakis (1999)

Petterson, Per
Out Stealing Horses (2007)

Philbrick, Nathaniel
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of Whaleship Essex (2000)

Phillips, Julia
Disappearing Earth (2019)

Picco, Giandomenico
Man Without a Gun (1999)

Portis, Charles
True Grit (1968)

Preston, Douglas
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story (2017)

Proulx, Annie
Shipping News (1993)

Puleo, Stephen
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2003)

Pynchon, Thomas
The Crying of Lot 4 (1988)

-- R --

Raymond, Derek
I Was Dora Suarez (1990)

Read, Piers Paul
Alive: Sixteen Men, Seventy-Two Days, and Insurmountable Odds - Survival in the Andes (2005)

Rhys, Jean
The Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

Rice, John and Gail Tanzer
The Ghost of Cleopatra: Edmonia Lewis and Her Lost Masterpiece (2019)

Rickover, Hyman George
How the Battleship Maine was Destroyed (1976)

Roberts, David
Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration (2013)

Roberts, Jason
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (2006)

Roth, Philip

The Human Stain (2000)

American Pastoral (1997)

The Plot Against America (2004)

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

Rowe, Percy
The Great Atlantic Air Race (1977)

Roy, Arundhati
The God of Small Things (1997)

Rushdie, Salman
The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)

Russell, Mary Doria
Doc (2011)

Russo, Gus
The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America (2001)

Russo, Richard
Empire Falls (2001)

-- S --

Sagal, Peter
The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) (2007)

Saramago, Jose
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991)

Saunders, George
Tenth of December: Stories (2013)

Liberation Day: Stories (2022)

Seal, Mark
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter (2011)

Sedaris, David
Barrel Fever (1994)
Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein (1818)

Shepard, Sam
Cruising Paradise: Tales (1996)

Shteyngart, Gary
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002)

Sides, Hampton
Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission (2001)
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (2014)

Skloot, Rebecca
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

Smiley, Jane
Age of Grief (1987)

Smith, Carl S.

Chicago’s Great Fire (2020)

Stanton, Mike
The Prince of Providence (2003)

Stashower, Daniel and Sherlock Holmes
Teller of Tales (1999)

Stedman, ML
The Light Between Oceans (2012)

Stegner, Wallace
Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (1969)

Stone, Robert
Damascus Gate (1998)

Synge, John Millington
The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

-- T --

Tedlock, Dennis (trans.)

Popol Vuh (1986)

Tey, Josephine

The Daughter of Time (1952)

Thompson, Heather Ann
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (2016)

Thompson, Hunter S.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Thompson, Jim
The Killer Inside Me (1952)

Thompson, Lester W.

Lucky Medicine: A Memoir of Success beyond Segregation (2023)

Traven, B.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1935)

Trevor, William
Death in Summer (1998)

-- U --

Urrea, Luis Alberto
The Devil's Highway (2005)

-- V --

Vance, J.D.
Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

various
Poetry (1998)

various
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 (2003)

Verghese, Abraham
Cutting for Stone (2009)

Verne, Jules
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A Tour of the Underwater World (1870)

Vincent, Lynn & Sara Vladic
Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man (2019)

Vise, David A
The Bureau and the Mole (2002)

Von Drehle, David
Triangle (2003)

Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse Five (1969)

von Schirach, Ferdinand
Guilt (2011)

Vowell, Sarah
Assassination Vacation (2005)

Voynich, Ethel Lilian

The Gadfly (1897)

-- W --

Walsh, Joan
What's the Matter with White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America (2012)

Waugh, Evelyn
A Handful of Dust (1977)
The Loved One (1948)

Webster, John
The White Devil (1612)

Weir, Alison
The Children of Henry VIII (1996)

Weir, Andy
The Martian (2011)

Wiencek, Henry
An Imperfect God (2003)

Wilkerson, Isabel
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010)

Wong, Jan
Red China Blues (1996)

Wonnell,Don
290: A Novel of the American Civil War (2015)

Wright, Lawrence
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)

Wylie, Christopher
Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America (2019)

-- Y --

Yalom, Irvin D.
When Nietzsche Wept (1992)

Young, Alfred F.
Masquerade (2004)

-- Z --

Zebrowski, Jr., Ernest
The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives (2001)

Zesch, Scott
The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier (2004)

Zuckoff, Mitchell
Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (2011)

Zusak, Markus
The Book Thief (2005)