Reading List
Isaac Butler
Author and Theatre Director
Isaac Butler wrote The Method, a history of how Stanislavski’s ideas travelled from Moscow to the Group Theatre to Hollywood and changed what audiences accept as truthful acting. It won the Marfield Prize in 2023. Before that he co-wrote The World Only Spins Forward, an oral history of Angels in America, and he has directed theatre and written criticism for Slate. His reading leans toward art made under political pressure, and toward critics who put themselves in the argument.
Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong · 1973 · Fiction
“When I started reading Fear of Flying , I knew that it was a landmark feminist novel and that it was the subject of a congressional inquiry.” — via Article
The Devil Finds Work
by James Baldwin · 1976 · Essays
“The Devil Finds Work is a slim volume that will have you rethinking the relationship between film, politics, and identity over and over again.” — via Article
The Wars of the Roses
The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
by Dan Jones · 2015 · History
“Beginning with the usurpation of Richard II and ending with the ascension of the Tudors, Jones manages a massive story with superhuman clarity and storytelling bravado.” — via Article
The History of White People
by Nell Irvin Painter · 2010 · History
“Painter weaves thousands of years of history together, telling the complex story of why we invented whiteness and how its meaning has both shaped and been shaped by world events.” — via Article
Fire in the Belly
The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
by Cynthia Carr · 2012 · Biography
“Her portrait of Wojnarowicz and his era brilliantly captures what it means to lead a fiercely principled life in a corrupt world.” — via Article
It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful
How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic
by Jack Lowery · 2022 · History
“Drawing on interviews and archives, Lowery shows how artists and activists banded together to fight two plagues” — via Article