US society/history books and films

[Wernazuma III]

My wife organizes a high school trip to Raleigh and designs a task list for pupils, including a reading list and a films for a review. The books/films should be emblematic for certain aspects of US society/history.

Now, she has about 20 books on her list, + 30 films. Since there are 35 pupils, we need some more but lack good ideas, esp. for the books, so I'd be interested in your suggestions. The books should preferably not be overly long (e.g., "Of Mice and Men" is on the list "Grapes of Wrath" is not). It doesn't have to be "classic" literature but should be fiction and have some level.

It's no problem to "fill" the remaining 5 spots for the films but also there, maybe you have some good idea to contribute.

[notyoueither]

What's already on the list?

[Wernazuma III]

The problem is that I don't have it at hand, but here's some of it:

To kill a mockingbird
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
Call of the Wild
Catch-22
The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
Of mice and men
The Catcher in the Rye
Cold Mountain
Monster (Walter Dean Myers)
Pushing the Bear (Diane Glancy)
Looking for Alaska (John Green)

[giblets]

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. I've never read it but it was at the top of a bestseller list.

[Al B. Sure!]

At one time or another, the following works have been considered to be the Great American Novel:
19th century
1851: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (full title: Moby-Dick; or The Whale)[2]
1884: Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn[3]
20th century
1920: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (published in 1920, but set in 1870)
1925: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby[4]
1936: William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom![5]
1938: John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy[6]
1939: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath[7][8]
1951: J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye[9]
1952: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man[10]
1953: Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March[11]
1955: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita[12][13]
1957: Jack Kerouac's On the Road
1960: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird[14][15]
1969: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5.
1973: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow[16][17]
1975: William Gaddis's JR[18]
1985: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West [19]
1987: Toni Morrison's Beloved
1996: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest[20]
1997: Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon[21]
1997: Don DeLillo's Underworld[22

I have not read either but Invisible Man or Beloved would be good to add to your otherwise lily-white list.

[Wernazuma III]

Thanks Al. I'll suggest both works plus Kerouac to my wife.

gribbler: I'm pretty sure GoingRogue meets all requirements to count as "fiction", but no thanks.

[EPW]

Oh, you should definitely add Lolita.

I like The Circus of Dr. Lao, its a fantasy novel & social satire set in a small town in the 1930s. Its short too. I think it would be good for high school students.

[Main_Brain]

I know a Film: Menace 2 Society.. wait how old are these students?

[Wernazuma III]

Yeah, I thought about that film too (awesome). But they're only 15-16, so I feared the "what crazy sh** did you propose my pupils" reaction.