Context, my US history teacher has assigned a book report. The requirements for the books are, it must be based in fact, it must be set between 1870-1929, and has to be ~200 pages. I know this is specific, but I need help. I hate nonfiction. I prefer fantasies, horror, and mysteries. Things that, most likely, wouldn't happen in real life. But this is something I need to do. Any suggestions?
by Naive_Handle_8269
24 Comments
Does it have to be set in the US? If not: Good-bye to All That by Robert Graves
Devil in the White City could work!
Radium Girls is what you want. It’s longer than 200 pages, but it’s so absorbing that you won’t care.
What about Erik Larson’s *Devil in the White City*? It’s about the 1893 World’s Fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes.
There’s also *The Man on the Train* by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James, which tries to solve some turn-of-the-century cold cases.
*The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp* by W. H. Davies. From wiki:
> A large part of the book’s subject matter describes the way of life of the tramp in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States in the final decade of the 19th century.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but it’s 500ish pages.
If your teacher does another assignment like this for a later period of time, Truman Capote’s *In Cold Blood* is set in 1959 and is about a family that is murdered. It’s based on a real story and blends literary storytelling with journalism. It’s a seminal American book.
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Allen. It’s actually engrossing.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It’s fiction, based in fact (difficulties of immigrant working in a meat processing factory). I loved it but I’m an adult.
I know you say you don’t like nonfiction, but do extraordinary events/people count in that? If not, you could consider reading a book that was written during that time — for instance:
You could read a memoir from a survivor of the Titanic. There are several of them and they should all be in the public domain, so free to download on sties like the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. You can probably find some for free on Amazon as well.
You can find a thread with names of survivors who wrote books after the sinking here: [https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/threads/survivors-who-wrote-memoirs.54435/](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/threads/survivors-who-wrote-memoirs.54435/)
If the Wild West is more your thing, you could also read a memoir/autobiography/biography of a figure from that time. Many of them wrote about their lives or had their lives written about.
Here, for example, is “An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill”, for free on Project Gutenberg: [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12740/12740-h/12740-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12740/12740-h/12740-h.htm)
Overall, if none of these interest you, I’d say try to find a historical event or person from that period and see if they wrote a book or had a book written about them in those years.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair it is about labor conditions
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (same guy who wrote 1984) writes about his time working in kitchens and living in poverty in 1927. It’s an interesting portrait of both cities between world wars.
One of Teddy Roosevelt’s memoirs….
Up from slavery – Booker T Washington
Lenin – The state and revolution
Tarka the otter – henry Williamson
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.
America, 1908
The Vertigo Years
One Summer
Silent Night
The King is Dead, Long Live the King!
The Facemaker
The Husband Hunters or The Transatlantic Marriage Bureau
American Eve
Black Sun
Sargent’s Women or Strapless
edit: Sorry, I missed the page count. Some of these are longer but others will work!
Here’s a nonfiction book that seems like fiction: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K Jerome and published in 1889. It is the story of the author and his two friends taking a boating trip down the Thames, and while it’s nearly 150 years old it is a happy, whimsical, and surprisingly relatable read.
Sample quote
“I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.”
It’s around 400 pages, but you might try *The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral* about one of the most famous gunfights of the old West and subject of the film Tombstone.
*A Night to Remember* [the R.M.S. *Titanic*: 1912] by Walter Lord.
*Six Days or Forever?: Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes* [1925] by Ray Ginger.
*The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm* by Bruner Carr. Carr relates much about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
*Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane* [the 1900 Galveston hurricane] by Erik Larson.
*Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History* by S. C. Gwynne.
*The Last Voyage of the Lusitania* [1915] by A. A. Hoehling and Mary Hoehling.
*America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918* by Alfred W. Crosby.
*Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI* [early 1920s] by David Grann.
*The Teapot Dome Scandal* [1923]: *How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country* by Laton McCartney.
*Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America* by John M. Barry.
*Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee* by Dee Brown.
*The Wolves at the Door* reads like a thriller. True story of a female spy during WWII.
The Endurance by Afred Lansing—the story of Shackleton’s arctic expedition gone horribly wrong.
Tough one, most great books about that period are longer than 200 pp, and everyone is ignoring that requirement! I can recommend great subjects: Spanish American War, WW1, Edison, Tesla, Teddy Roosevelt, JP Morgan (and other robber barons) Harry Houdini. I bet you’d like Houdini if you can find a book short enough. He spent a lot of time debunking mystics and clairvoyants.
The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan – about the construction of the Biltmore estate.
Why are so many people suggesting The Jungle? That is a novel.
Guns of August is a good one.