Noir: 10 Radical Books That Changed Noir History

10 Radical Books That Changed the World

Ever since the dawn of civilization, human beings have been collecting their thoughts on cave walls, stone tablets, papyrus, and in an ancient device once known as a BOOK. Oftentimes, publication of these items caused a seismic shift in the norms of their day, and society was forever changed. Nowadays, books don't exist, of course, BUT you can now download these revolutionary tomes to your e-Reader of choice. Oh, and they're FREE!

Number 1 Harrington's RED JUNGLE


One of top 10 Amazon picks for literature fiction!  *Starred Review* "He'd wanted to give up his self, the great monolith of his personality; he'd wanted to smash it, to pulverize it and walk away somehow different, or dead." Russell Cruz-Price achieves his goal and more in this utterly compelling blend of noir thriller and adventure novel. Shorn of that Indiana Jones can-do spirit, Harrington's story sends a dissolute journalist--think Fowler in The Quiet American--straight into the heart of darkness. Cruz-Price is marking time as a foreign correspondent in Guatemala--his mother, daughter of one of the country's coffee barons, was murdered there 30 years earlier--when two events change his life. He agrees to buy a coffee plantation, having been convinced by a fortune-hunting archaeologist that the mythical Red Jaguar, a giant Mayan sculpture made of jade, is buried on the grounds, and he falls hard for the wife of the head of Guatemala's secret service. Imagine if Fred C. Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre had had a femme fatale to deal with in addition to his greedy partners, and you'll have some idea how Cruz-Price gets "pulverized." But there is much more happening here than a hapless hero caught in a vice. Harrington draws us into Cruz-Price's passion completely--making us feel the irresistibility of both the woman and the jaguar--and he drenches us in the corruption of South American politics (the author's mother was a member of one of Guatemala's ruling families). The result is a thriller that twists its knife far deeper than most. An instant cult classic that just might vault into the mainstream. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Number 2 Harrington's THE GOOD PHYSICIAN



A top thiller pick by Amazon. *Starred Review* “Everyone runs out of luck some place. . . . It was just a question of where.” In the course of not quite 300 pages, that question is answered for most of the cast in Harrington’s superb thriller. Collin Reeves is a doctor at the American embassy in Mexico City; he’s also a CIA agent, but he’s largely ignored by the Company, left to spend his days playing at becoming a painter. Then the Muslim owner of a hotel across the street from Collin’s apartment asks the doctor to treat an American guest. So begins Collin’s transformation from dilettante to reluctant antiterrorist to disgusted man of action. It starts when he falls in love with the sick “American,” who  turns out to be a beautiful Iraqi woman who may be involved with terrorists who have brought a bomb into Mexico City. Every character in this gripping story—from the good doctor to his CIA superiors to the terrorists—is portrayed with remarkable subtlety, moments of heartbreaking vulnerability and humanity set against multiple forms of hatred. Curiously, this is not an overtly political novel, except in the sense that Harrington heaps plagues upon all the ideological houses whose bombs spray their shrapnel across our landscape. Duck if you can, the good doctor learns, but recognize when you’ve reached that place where your luck runs out, and try to act with as much grace as you can muster. This will remind many of John le Carré’s Absolute Friends (2004), but it is less ideological and more unflinching in its willingness to examine the humanity of the terrorist and the inhumanity of terrorism. --Bill Ott

"Nobody writes about the heart of darkness like Kent Harrington.  This to me is art."  Michael Connelly

 Number 3 Plato's REPUBLIC

Plato's most famous work and one of the most important books ever written on the subject of philosophy and political theory, "The Republic" is a fictional dialogue between Socrates and other various Athenians and foreigners which examines the meaning of justice. Written in approximately 380 BC, "The Republic" also discusses Plato's "Theory of Forms", the nature of the philosopher, the conflict between philosophy and poetry, and the immortality of the soul. An essential read for any student of philosophy or political science, "The Republic" is a monumental work of antiquity, which forms the foundation for much of our modern policy.

Number 4  The Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana

"Life necessitates three kinds of activity: to assure its survival, its means of existence, and its nourishment; to realise its reproduction according to forms of activity generally connected with sexuality; and, lastly, to establish rules of behaviour that allow different individuals to perform their roles within the framework of the species. In human society, this is represented as three necessities, three aims of life: material goods (artha) assure survival; erotic practice (kama) assures the transmission of life; and rules of behaviour, a moral nature (dharma), assure the cohesion and duration of the species. (The Complete Kamasutra, translated by Alain Danielou, 1994)




Number 5  Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton

In his monumental 1687 work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known familiarly as the Principia, Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical science. Even after more than three centuries and the revolutions of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics continues to account for many of the phenomena of the observed world, and Newtonian celestial dynamics is used to determine the orbits of our space vehicles.

Number 6  Common Sense by Thomas Paine

'Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense was signed "Written by an Englishman", and the pamphlet became an immediate success. In relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and circulation of any book in American history. Common Sense presented the American colonists with a powerful argument for independence from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as, “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.”' -- Wikipedia

Number 7  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

As scholarship has made its importance to American letters more manifest, editions of the 1855 version of Whitman's masterpiece have multiplied. This one, prepared in honor of the poem's 150th anniversary, will be hard to beat. Edited by major Americanist Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America, etc.), it comes as close as possible, without being a facsimile, to reproducing Whitman's original text, which he famously self-published. The familiar litho of the young rough with open collar opens the book, and Reynold's terrific and informative afterword closes it, along with contemporary reviews (some written by Whitman himself) and Emerson's famous letter ("I greet you at the beginning of a great career..."). Those who know Whitman only through the beautiful but bloated 1892 "deathbed" edition of Leaves of Grass will find here a lean, searing celebration of self.This guy was an f-in genius. He figured out how to merge romanticism and realism in his transcendent free verse, delivering poetry to the masses. Needless to say, he was up to his beard in poontang. What was radical: He ushered in a new era of contemporary poetry. Who was influenced: Usher.

Number 8  The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

“When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to [Sinclair’s] novels.” —George Bernard Shaw.  This intrepid reporter set out to detail the harsh lives of the immigrant workers, but most people only cared that these filthy immigrants were dying on top of the meat. Why it was radical: Exposed the disgusting conditions of meat packing plants. What it influenced: “All Employees Must Wash Hands” sign now in every restaurant and slaughterhouse in America. 

 Number 9 The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's..."Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled. --Craig E. Engler  When this novel burst on to the scene over 100 years ago, most books were about waistcoated pansies or petulant whores. H.G. Wells literally invented the genre of Science Fiction, as well as stimulating the imagination of countless children who would grow up to become inventors, physicists, or Trekkies. Why it was radical: No one had yet written a book about alien invasions. Who it influenced: Tom Cruise 

Number 10 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

This is one of those books that everybody has heard about but few people these days have actually read. It deserves to be read - not simply because it is the basis for symbols so deeply ingrained in American culture that we no longer realize their source, nor because it is one of the bestselling books of all time. This is a book that changed history. Harriet Beecher Stowe was appalled by slavery, and she took one of the few options open to nineteenth century women who wanted to affect public opinion: she wrote a novel, a huge, enthralling narrative that claimed the heart, soul, and politics of pre-Civil War Americans. It is unabashed propaganda and overtly moralistic, an attempt to make whites - North and South - see slaves as mothers, fathers, and people with (Christian) souls. In a time when women might see the majority of their children die, Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays beautiful Eliza fleeing slavery to protect her son. In a time when many whites claimed slavery had "good effects" on blacks, Uncle Tom's Cabin paints pictures of three plantations, each worse than the other, where even the best plantation leaves a slave at the mercy of fate or debt. By twentieth-century standards, her propaganda verges on melodrama, and it is clear that even while arguing for the abolition of slavery she did not rise above her own racism. Yet her questions remain penetrating even today: "Is man ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? --review by Erica Bauermeister Speaking of powerful girls, this chick takes the cake. Her book exposed the terrible scourge of slavery, and its publication helped spark the Civil War. It became the best selling novel of the 19th Century. Why it was radical: Gave slaves a voice. What it influenced: Civil rights.