18 books like The Birds of America

What to read after The Birds of America — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde · 1893 · ★ 4.2 · 94p · ≈ 3h · Challenging Set in England during the late Victorian era, the play's humour derives in part from characters maintaining fictitious identities to escape unwelcome social obligations. It is replete with witty dialogue and satirises some of the foibles and hypocrisy of late Victorian society. It has proved Wilde's most enduringly popular play. - [Wikipedia][1] [1]:… Shares: Community pick

The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde · 1896 · ★ 4.3 · 49p · ≈ 1h · Challenging The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from HM Prison Reading on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. Shares: Community pick

The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti John Addington Symonds · 1892 · 520p · ≈ 17h · Challenging This is a story of Buonarroti Simoni, to whom Michelangelo belonged, were a Florentine family of ancient burgher nobility. Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

Bluebeard Kurt Vonnegut · 1987 · ★ 4.2 · 293p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or… Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

The Maine Woods Henry David Thoreau · 1803 · ★ 3.9 · 127p · ≈ 4h · Challenging The Maine Woods is a characteristically Thoreauvian book: a personal account of exploration, of exterior and interior discovery in a natural setting, conveyed in taut, workmanlike prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are valuable in themselves. But his impassioned protest against despoilment in the name… Shares: Nature, Pictorial works, Biography & Memoir

The Agony and the Ecstasy Irving Stone · 1958 · ★ 4.1 · 664p · ≈ 22h · Moderate Mr. Stone gives his signature style and thought to this story of Michelangelo. He points out often in this book that Michelangelo, before beginning a work, asks what it is he is trying to capture in the moment of his painting, sculpture, or poem. So it is with Mr. Stone. He wants to portray, as close as he can find, the moments of the life of this artist. What shaped him, what he loved, what (and… Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

Classification Library of Congress. Subject Cataloging Division. · 1904 · ★ 5.0 · 233p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identifying spam emails and deciding whether to give someone a driving license. Shares: Classification, Biography & Memoir

The Land of Little Rain Mary Austin · 1903 · 66p · ≈ 2h · Challenging Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934) moved with her family from Illinois to the desert on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley in 1888. In the next fifteen years she moved from one desert community to another, working on her sketches of desert and Indian life. Spending the last years of her life in Santa Fe, Austin remained a lifelong defender of Native Americans and was recoginzed as an expert in Native… Shares: Nature, Pictorial works

Eyewitness DK Publishing · 2000 · ★ 4.1 · 64p · ≈ 2h · Moderate Witches and magic-makers for children Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

H.J. Heinz Company Debbie Foster & Jack Kennedy · 2006 · 129p · ≈ 4h · Moderate A photographic history of one of America's oldest and best-loved companies, and a study in how to "do the common thing uncommonly well." In 1869, the American diet was a dreary affair. Kitchen staples included bread, potatoes, other root vegetables, and meat. Tomatoes—at the time called "love apples"—were an exotic fruit. Then, twenty-five-year-old Henry J. Heinz helped to change all of that.… Shares: Pictorial works, Biography & Memoir

My first summer in the Sierra John Reid Muir · 1911 · ★ 4.1 · 164p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Introduction by Mike Davis; Illustrated with photographs by Herbert W. Gleason and drawings by the author Shares: Nature, Biography & Memoir

The Library of American Biography Jared Sparks · 1846 · 402p · ≈ 13h · Challenging This book itself comprises and also is a collection of letters by varied political and social personalities in reference with the American Revolution. These letters are also concerned with the foreign relations of United States during the whole revolution. Also, it reflects the political framing in the United States. Shares: Biography & Memoir

A history of autobiography in antiquity Georg Misch · 1950 · 364p · ≈ 12h · Moderate This is Volume IV of 9 historical works from the International Library of Sociology. This is part one of two looking at the history of the autobiography. Appearing in isolation as they do, autobiographies demand for their description and appreciation, a comprehensive view of the development of the human mind. This volume covers the conception and the origin of autobiography, looking at ancient… Shares: Biography & Memoir

Mr. Nice Howard Marks · 1996 · 468p · ≈ 15h · Moderate This candid crime memoir by Britain's most famous drug baron is "frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often surreal" (GQ).   During the mid-1980s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies throughout the world. From local bars to recording studios to offshore banks—all of his "businesses" were in fact money laundering vehicles serving his one true business:… Shares: Biography & Memoir

Autobiography Anderson L Staff · 2001 · 166p · ≈ 5h · Moderate Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote ''Confessions'', the first Western autobiography ever written, around AD 400. Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century.]] Shares: Biography & Memoir

Two Sisters Gore Vidal · 1970 · ★ 4.0 · 236p · ≈ 7h · Moderate Originally published in 1970 this fairly short novel (174 pages) contains, according to the blurb on the dust jacket of the first edition, “Gore Vidal’s singular speculations on love, sex, death, literature and politics.” Shares: Biography & Memoir

Missing Persons Mary Evans · 1998 · 176p · ≈ 5h · Moderate Auto/biography is currently one of the most popular literary genres, widely supposed to illuminate the study of the individual and his or her personal circumstances. Missing Persons suggests that auto/biography is, in fact, based on fictions, both about the person and about what it is possible to know about any one individual. Organised into chapters which consider particular kinds of… Shares: Biography & Memoir

Marse Henry : An Autobiography Henry Watterson · 1919 · 325p · ≈ 10h · Challenging "Marse Henry: An Autobiography" is a fascinating memoir by Henry Watterson, a prominent American journalist, and editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. The book details Watterson's life from his birth in Kentucky in 1840 to his rise as a prominent political figure and newspaper editor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Watterson's memoir is full of vivid anecdotes and colorful… Shares: Biography & Memoir

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