Best of the Decade: 1990s

Editor’s Note: This year, our Half Price Books calendar once again features lists of books, movies and music. We’re heading into a new decade with a new focus…the past. Each month, we’ll share a list of events, inventions and, of course, books, movies and music, from every decade since the 1900s right here on the blog. Enjoy!

The internet is made available to the public and a wizard kid named Harry takes the reading world by storm. We mosey right on into the next decade with events, books, music and movies that made the 1990s memorable.

Best of the Decade: 1930s

Editor’s Note: This year, our Half Price Books calendar once again features lists of books, movies and music. We’re heading into a new decade with a new focus…the past. Each month, we’ll share a list of events, inventions and, of course, books, movies and music, from every decade since the 1900s right here on the blog. Enjoy!

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The Chrysler Building makes its mark on the Big Apple and up in the sky, it was a bird, a plane! This time it’s everyone’s favorite reporter turned caped hero…given that there’s a place to change nearby. Superman swoops in to save the day and we showcase a slew of other things that capture the hearts, and bookshelves, of the nation in the 1930s.

The Inside Story: This Is Ann

In this blog series, HPB Buy Guy Steve Leach takes a closer look at the unique curiosities that we see in our stores.

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Most fans of The Cat in the Hat and other characters created by Dr. Seuss are not aware of his wartime stint producing pamphlets and animated training films for director Frank Capra’s Signal Corps, but we’re happy to introduce you to Seuss’s mosquito Ann, whom he put to work in service of her country.

Best of the Decade: 1920s

Editor’s Note: This year, our Half Price Books calendar once again features lists of books, movies and music. We’re heading into a new decade with a new focus…the past. Each month, we’ll share a list of events, inventions and, of course, books, movies and music, from every decade since the 1900s right here on the blog. Enjoy!

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Something cool came along when jazz was introduced to the masses and the literary scene got a leg up from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Get a good look at the grandstanding books, music and movies from the decade that left dancers flapping in the wind…see what we did there? You guessed it. It’s the 1920s!

BOOKS

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Inside Story: The Underground Railroad

In this blog series, HPB Buy Guy Steve Leach takes a closer look at the unique curiosities that we see in our stores.

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Critics and readers praised Colson Whitehead’s sixth novel, The Underground Railroad, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 and the National Book Award in 2016. Its fanciful reimagining of the historic escape route for runaway slaves revived popular interest in the subject.

Here’s a look at Reverend W.M. Mitchell’s Underground Railroad, published in England in 1860, among the most significant items we’ve ever acquired: a book written by a black minister about the slave rescue network during the time it was in operation, and the first book to use the term Underground Railroad in print.

Have Books, Will Travel: Through African-American History

There is something to be said about a community of people who have been able to endure enslavement, the centuries of inequitable treatment that followed and the derivative systemic racism that continues to exist. In spite of the odds, African Americans have managed to create a fascinating, and often coveted, culture heavily influenced by their unique American experience, all the while rooted in the land they were stolen from; a culture that has impacted the nation at every turn, from music to medicine, literature to legislature and all manner of areas in between. Make no mistake: African-American history, though set aside to be celebrated during the month of February each year, is American history.

In this edition of Have Books, Will Travel, we present books that capture that history; depicting what it means to endure the trial and triumph, pain and promise, heartache and hope that is commonly found in the stoic African-American experience.

Behind the Book: Home for Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler

Inspired by historical events and a follow-up to the bestselling Calling Me Home, Home for Erring and Outcast Girls follows the deep friendship between two women at an early 20th-century rehabilitation home for cast-out single mothers and the reclusive librarian who discovers their story a century later. Read on to discover author Julie Kibler’s recommendations, inspirations and influences as we go Behind the Book.

Behind the Book: Hope Rides Again by Andrew Shaffer

Editor’s Note: Do you ever read a book and think- there’s no way this could get better? And then the author comes out with a sequel?! Well, we are thrilled to tell you that Andrew Shaffer, author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery, has come out with its sequel Hope Rides Again. The New York Times bestselling author answers our burning questions as part of our Behind the Book series.

“Space Oddity” and Other Oddities: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Moonwalk

This July will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, when a transfixed world watched American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first people to walk on the moon—that we know of.

To celebrate, we’re offering up this brief and non-comprehensive round-up of some interesting pop culture bits and pieces related to that “giant leap for mankind.”

Behind the Book: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Our current Half Price Books Book Club pick for June/July is Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. This bestselling book (over a million copies sold!) is based on the true story of one of America’s most notorious adoption agency scandal

Lisa stopped by our Dallas Flagship on May 21 to celebrate the paperback release of Before We Were Yours. While she was here, she took a few minutes to discuss the book. Take a look!