The third season of my audio drama, The Gray Area, is likely to be the most ambitious project that I have ever attempted and, given the multiple time periods and multiple universes, it has required a great deal of research. What follows is a list of books I have read so far. I estimate that I am about 65% into my research. I still have a few dozen books to read (and have the towering piles to prove it!). My hope is to complete the scripts and start production sometime in 2023.
Mid-Century America:
Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn
Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
Eric Dregni, Let’s Go Bowling
Brett Harvey, The Fifties
William Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower
Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier
James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice
James Kaplan, Sinatra
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Robert Lenzer, The Great Getty
Shawn Levy, Rat Pack Confidential
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream
Harry & Bonaro Overstreet, The Strange Tactics of Extremism
Doug Schmidt, They Came to Bowl
Howard Stallings, The Big Book of Bowling
Gay Talese, Fame and Obscurity
Gay Talese, The Bridge
Nick Tosches, Dino
1977:
Michael Azzarad, Our Band Could Be Your Life
Lester Bangs, Mainlines, Blood Fests, and Bad Taste
Lester Bangs, Psychic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Jim DeRogatis, Let It Blurt
Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues
Nelson George, Hip Hop America
Duncan Hannah, Twentieth Century Boy
Anthony Haden-Guest, Studio 54 ,Disco, and the Culture of the Night
Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day
Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me
Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories
Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock
Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming
Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Paul Wilson, Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story
James Wolcott, Lucking Out
Anti-Consumerism:
John Brooks, Showing Off in America
John Brooks, The Go-Go Years
Paul Fussell, Bad
Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I’m Lying
Black Studies:
Arna Bontremps, Black Thunder
Sarah Broom, The Yellow House
Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun
Rudolph Fisher, The Conjure-Man Dies
Nelson George, Post-Soul Nation
Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter
Nella Larsen, Quicksand
Claude Mackay, Home to Harlem
Trussie McMillan Cottom, Thick
Ishmael Reed, Complete Works
George Scuhlyer, Black No More
Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks
Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry
Jean Toomer, Cane
Mary Helen Washington, The Other Blacklist
Albert Woodfox, Solitary
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground
Richard Wright, The Outsider
Lusitania
Robert D. Ballad, Exploring the Lusitania
Greg King and Penny Wilson, Lusitania
Jennifer Kewley Drasrau, Lusitania, Tragedy or War Crime?
Erik Larsen, Dead Wake
Fionbarr Moore, et al, RMS Lusitania: The History of a Wreck
Diana Preston, Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy
David Ramsay, Lusitania: Saga and Myth
Relationships/Sexuality:
Brian Aldiss, The Horatio Stubbs Saga
Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire
Rachel Devlin, Relative Intimacy
John D’Emilo and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters
Martin Duberman, Stonewall
Alex Espinoza, Cruising
Cynthia Heimel, But Enough About You
Cynthia Heimel, Sex Tips for Girls
Gayle E. Pitman, The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets
Anka Radakovich, Sexplorations
Anka Radakovich, The Wild Girls Club
Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, Sex at Dawn
Stejpan Sejac, Sunstone
Lisa Taddeo, Three Women
Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor’s Wife
Lisa Wade, American Hookup
Moira Weigel, Labor of Love
Great Depression:
Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression
Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man
Studs Terkel, Hard Times
Philosophy/Technology:
Joel Beckerman, The Sonic Boom
Nick Bilton, Hatching Twitter
John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration
Alan Ehrenhold, The Lost City
Claire Evans, Broad Band
Matt Fortnow, The NFT Handbook
David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism
Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
Camilla Russo, The Infinite Machine
Lucy Sante, Low Life
Laura Shin, The Cryptopians
War:
Pat Barker, Regeneration
A. Scott Berg, World War I and America
Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
Elizabeth Cobbs, The Hello Girls
Paul Fussell, The Boys’ Crusade
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
Paul Fussell, Wartime
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Stephen L. Harris, Harlem’s Hell Fighters
James Jones, From Here to Eternity
Ernest R. May, The World War & American Isolation 1914-1917
Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
Tim O’Brien, If I Died in a Combat Zone
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier
Women’s Rights:
Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her
Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away
Linda Greenhouse, Justice on the Brink
Jane L. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA
Patricia C. Miller, The Worst of Times
Michelle Oberman, Her Body, Our Laws
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Renee Rosen, White Collar Girl
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady
Rebecca Traister, Good and Mad
Daniel K. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn
Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren