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1950s Books
Showing 1-50 of 12,553
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 309 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.80 — 4,012,994 ratings — published 1951
Fahrenheit 451 (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 271 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,991,446 ratings — published 1963
Lord of the Flies (Paperback)
by (shelved 247 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.71 — 3,316,143 ratings — published 1954
Lolita (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 215 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.87 — 978,957 ratings — published 1955
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 189 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.82 — 1,376,330 ratings — published 1952
The Haunting of Hill House (Paperback)
by (shelved 178 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.81 — 424,243 ratings — published 1959
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
by (shelved 177 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.41 — 3,237,914 ratings — published 1954
Giovanni’s Room (Paperback)
by (shelved 164 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.34 — 301,429 ratings — published 1956
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 162 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.61 — 460,315 ratings — published 1957
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
by (shelved 150 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.24 — 3,228,456 ratings — published 1950
Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
by (shelved 140 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.75 — 426,355 ratings — published 1958
East of Eden (Paperback)
by (shelved 133 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.46 — 725,657 ratings — published 1952
The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)
by (shelved 128 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.51 — 1,180,503 ratings — published 1954
Charlotte’s Web (Paperback)
by (shelved 124 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.21 — 2,106,290 ratings — published 1952
The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)
by (shelved 123 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.59 — 1,089,847 ratings — published 1955
Invisible Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 117 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.93 — 206,843 ratings — published 1952
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 109 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.85 — 257,207 ratings — published 1958
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
by (shelved 105 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.82 — 182,460 ratings — published 2009
Foundation (Foundation, #1)
by (shelved 101 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.17 — 615,752 ratings — published 1951
Night (Paperback)
by (shelved 99 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.38 — 1,402,963 ratings — published 1956
The Crucible (Paperback)
by (shelved 97 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.61 — 476,785 ratings — published 1953
Waiting for Godot (Paperback)
by (shelved 96 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.84 — 228,827 ratings — published 1952
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
by (shelved 95 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.96 — 128,372 ratings — published 1955
The Martian Chronicles (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 93 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.16 — 293,890 ratings — published 1950
Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2)
by (shelved 85 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.98 — 500,132 ratings — published 1951
The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6)
by (shelved 84 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.06 — 628,927 ratings — published 1955
The Quiet American (Paperback)
by (shelved 84 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.98 — 75,462 ratings — published 1955
Mexican Gothic (Hardcover)
by (shelved 81 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.66 — 466,956 ratings — published 2020
The Briar Club (Hardcover)
by (shelved 81 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.27 — 329,658 ratings — published 2024
The Price of Salt (Paperback)
by (shelved 80 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.02 — 89,179 ratings — published 1952
I, Robot (Robot, #0.1)
by (shelved 78 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.21 — 390,457 ratings — published 1950
Lessons in Chemistry (Paperback)
by (shelved 75 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.28 — 1,903,297 ratings — published 2022
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)
by (shelved 75 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.09 — 520,303 ratings — published 1952
The Lincoln Highway (Hardcover)
by (shelved 73 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.22 — 327,108 ratings — published 2021
Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey, #1)
by (shelved 72 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.75 — 169,433 ratings — published 2009
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.46 — 100,849 ratings — published 1959
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Hardcover)
by (shelved 71 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.39 — 4,435,232 ratings — published 2017
The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)
by (shelved 71 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.55 — 749,038 ratings — published 1955
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.06 — 87,983 ratings — published 1953
The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia, #5)
by (shelved 70 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.91 — 405,496 ratings — published 1954
The Sirens of Titan (Paperback)
by (shelved 69 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.15 — 164,084 ratings — published 1959
A Raisin in the Sun (Hardcover)
by (shelved 67 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.86 — 115,145 ratings — published 1959
A Separate Peace (Paperback)
by (shelved 67 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.60 — 236,338 ratings — published 1959
The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia, #4)
by (shelved 67 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.96 — 341,334 ratings — published 1953
Where the Crawdads Sing (ebook)
by (shelved 64 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.37 — 3,795,062 ratings — published 2018
The Day of the Triffids (Paperback)
by (shelved 63 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.01 — 120,658 ratings — published 1951
I Am Legend (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 62 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.05 — 160,756 ratings — published 1954
Go Set a Watchman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 61 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.31 — 296,655 ratings — published 2015
Nine Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 61 times as 1950s)
avg rating 4.18 — 150,521 ratings — published 1948
Franny and Zooey (Paperback)
by (shelved 60 times as 1950s)
avg rating 3.95 — 246,374 ratings — published 1957
“Then, it was easier to build the need for love and sex into the end-all purpose of life, avoiding personal commitment to truth in a catch-all commitment to "home" and "family." . . . . Irwin Shaw, who once goaded the American conscience on the great issues of war and peace and racial prejudice now wrote about sex and adultery; Norman Mailer and the young beatnik writers confined their revolutionary spirit to sex and kicks and drugs and advertising themselves in four-letter words. It was easier and more fashionable for writers to think about psychology than politics, about private motives than public purposes. Painters retreated into an abstract expressionism that flaunted discipline and glorified the evasion of meaning. Dramatists reduced human purpose to bitter, pretentious nonsense: "the theater of the absurd." Freudian thought gave this whole process of escape its dimension of endless, tantalizing, intellectual mystery: process within process, meaning hidden within meaning, until meaning itself disappeared and the hopeless, dull outside world hardly existed at all. As a drama critic said, in a rare note of revulsion at the stage world of Tennessee Williams, it was as if no reality remained for man except his sexual perversions, and the fact that he loved and hated his mother.”
― The Feminine Mystique
― The Feminine Mystique
“Think of everything cliché you know about the 1950s: housewives spent their days vacuuming with martinis in hand and a look of existential horror in their eyes, and every home was outfitted with a TV set.”
― Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History
― Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History
