Great reading that provides a sense of the city, from the Traveler online Ultimate Travel Library.
|
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM
|
Uncle Remus; His Songs and His Sayings. The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, by Joel Chandler Harris (1880)
Based on African-American oral history, the folktales of Uncle Remus follow the trickster Br’er Rabbit and other characters the author picked up from hearing plantation stories as a child. Harris was a white newspaper journalist whose home, Wren’s Nest, is now a National Historic Site.
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her epic Civil War novel, which became one of the best-selling books of all time. Written while the journalist convalesced at her home on Peachtree Street (now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum), the story takes place in Tara, protagonist Scarlett O’Hara’s fictional home, and in war-ravaged Atlanta.
Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: A Saga of Race and Family, by Gary Pomerantz (1996)
Historical nonfiction that follows the multi-generational history of two eminent Atlanta families—one white, one black—from the Civil War to the 1996 Olympics.
A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe (1998)
This satirical portrayal from the author of The Bonfire of the Vanities is the sweeping tale of Charlie Croker, an Atlanta football star turned real estate mogul who suffers from a bad case of good old boy machismo. The story plunges into the weedy depths of Atlanta society, race, politics, and culture.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Clayborne Carson (1998)
Posthumous biography of the civil rights hero written by Clayborne Carson, renowned Stanford University historian, who effectively pieced together thousands of King’s writings, speeches, and sermons to create this definitive biography.
