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Sarah Churchwell's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Sarah Churchwell recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sarah Churchwell's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
The "colossal affair" that is Jay Gatsby's mansion, Owl Eyes, Wolfsheim and his "gonnegtions," West Egg, East Egg, the valley of ashes, Jordan Baker, and Daisy Fay—they belong to all time as does the American classic in which they appear. But a classic belongs to its own time, too, and this meticulously compiled, handsomely designed and generously illustrated volume documents the social reality out of which The Great Gatsby grew and the cultural milieu in which F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. It thus identifies for contemporary readers the crazes and events, the celebrities and the criminals, the... more
Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellThis is a collection of historical documents from which The Great Gatsby emerged. There are many references in Gatsby to actual events. (Source)

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2
Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellThis book is interested in Fitzgerald’s development – how he transitions from a writer of satire and short stories into the artist who produced Gatsby. (Source)

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3
In her exuberant new work, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers - Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St.Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber- whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s.

These literary heroines did what they wanted and said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Here are the social and literary triumphs...
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Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellIf you want an introduction to the Jazz Age, this tells the story of the 1920s through the lives and careers of these women who all knew each other. (Source)

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4
Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellI think Mizener does a good job of suggesting Fitzgerald’s intelligence, his subtlety and complexity, but also, of course, his darker side. (Source)

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5

A Life in Letters

A vibrant self-portrait of an artist whose work was his life. In this new collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's letters, edited by leading Fitzgerald scholar and biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, we see through his own words the artistic and emotional maturation of one of America's most enduring and elegant authors. "A Life in Letters" is the most comprehensive volume of Fitzgerald's letters -- many of them appearing in print for the first time. The fullness of the selection and the chronological arrangement make this collection the closest thing to an autobiography that Fitzgerald ever wrote. more
Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellIf you really want to understand Fitzgerald you need to hear his own voice. What I love about this book is that it clearly conveys his sense of humour. (Source)

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6
For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining—or shadowy—counterparts. Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities. It is as if the city itself, its inescapable gritty reality and elbow-to-elbow nature, demands we call into being some alternative, yearned-for better place.
 
This book is about those cities. It’s neither a history of grand plans nor a literary exploration of the utopian impulse, but rather something different, hybrid, idiosyncratic. It’s a magpie’s book, full of characters and incidents and ideas drawn from...
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Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah ChurchwellWish I’d clocked this before my event today on history of America First for @FavershamLit. I’d most def have shouted out to the great man, & let’s add Black Reconstruction in America as a book that rewrote US history, tho white America refused to see it for half a century. https://t.co/z332g57G4Q (Source)

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7

The Impostor

A True Story

From the award-winning author of Soldiers of Salamis, a propulsive and riveting narrative investigation into an infamous fraud: a man who has been lying his entire life.

Who is Enric Marco? An elderly man in his nineties, living in Barcelona, a Holocaust survivor who gave hundreds of speeches, granted dozens of interviews, received important national honors, and even moved government officials to tears. But in May 2005, Marco was exposed as a fraud: he was never in a Nazi concentration camp. The story was reported around the world, transforming him from hero to...
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Recommended by Sarah Churchwell, and 1 others.

Sarah Churchwell@HadleyFreeman @janemerrick23 Have you read Javier Cercas’s The Impostor, about Enric Marco? Astonishing. (Also, congrats on the book - that’s an amazing achievement.) (Source)

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8
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their...
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Isabelle Khurshudyan.@HallieRubenhold is awesome and you should check this book out! https://t.co/RL8L1xF8xZ (Source)

Sarah ChurchwellMassive congratulations to @HallieRubenhold for being longlisted for the @BGPrize for her brilliant book The Five!! So well deserved and a complete thrill for #twitterstorians! 🎉🎊📚💃 (Source)

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