Fiction 1976

Roots by Alex Haley - The saga of the author's ancestor known as Kunta Kinta, a Gambian Prince captured by African slave slave traders in 1767. The story follows each generation in the family through slavery, the civil war to the beginning of the Civil Rights era. It went on to become a hugely popular 12-hour television miniseries, Roots, followed by a 14-hour sequel, Roots: The Next Generations. Roots the story of the book

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin - Living in South America, the infamous Holocaust "Angel of Death," Dr. Josef Mengele has cloned 94 duplicates of Adolf Hitler and is killing off their fathers. The Mossad and the Simon Wiesenthal Center foil the plan. Made into a popular movie staring Gregory Peck. Boys From Brazil.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - The good vampire Louis recounts the ups and down of his 200 history to reporter Daniel Molloy. From the New Orleans slave plantation in 1791 where he becomes a vampire after being seduced by Lesat the bad vampire until his life in present day San Francisco. It becomes a cult horror classic and makes a star of Anne Rice who goes on with the genre in great success. The Anne Rice Bookshelf

The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank by Erma Bombeck - This was the most popular of this American Humorist who for 30 years wrote her columns in 900 newspapers chronicling the trials of the American Suburban Housewife. She was also aa strong advocate of the failed Equal Rights Amendment. Erma Bombeck Woman.

Kurt Vonnegut - Slapstick

Frank Herbert - Children of Dune
Gore Vidal - 1876
Agatha Christie - Sleeping Murder

Kingsley Amis - The Alteration
Saul Bellow - To Jerusalem and Back
Marjorie Bowen - Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales
William F. Buckley - Saving the Queen
Ramsey Campbell The Height of the Scream
Raymond Carver Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
A. J. Cronin - Lady With Carnations
Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart
Judith Guest - Ordinary People
R. K. Narayan - The Painter of Signs
Robert Nye - Falstaff
Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time
Anthony Powell - Infants of the Spring
Manuel Puig - Kiss of the Spider Woman
Ishmael Reed - Flight To Canada
Hubert Selby Jr. - The Demon
Sidney Sheldon - A Stranger in the Mirror
Muriel Spark - The Takeover
Jacqueline Susann - Dolores
Leon Uris - Trinity
Melvin Van Peebles - Just An Old Sweet Song

1976 Tony Awards (theater)

Best Broadway Play: Travesties by Tom Stoppard
Best Actor Broadway Play: John Wood, Travesties
Best Actress Broadway Play: Irene Worth, Sweet Bird of Youth
Best Actor Featured Role Broadway Play: Edward Herrmann Mrs Warren's Profession
Best Actress Featured Role Broadway Play: Shirley Knight, Kennedy's Children
Best Director Broadway Play: Ellis Rabb, The Royal Family

Literary News 1976

Dame Agatha Christie(1890 – 1976) - English writer who penned 80 crime novels with such memorable detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Along with William Shakespeare, the best-selling writer of all time with only the Bible is having outsold her collected sales of four billion books. Agatha Christie writer

Nobel Prize for Literature: Saul Bellow

1976 Nobel Prize for Literature: Saul Bellow

The Pulitzer Prize:

Fiction: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
Drama: A Chorus Line conceived, choreographed and directed by Michael Bennett, with book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch, and lyrics by Edward Kleban
History: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan
Biography or Autobiography: Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis
Poetry: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
General Nonfiction: Why Survive? Being Old In America by Robert N. Butler

All 1976 Pulitzer Prizes

Non Fiction 1976

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Building upon the work of George C. Williams this book coins the phrase "Selfish Gene" to describe evolution maximizing copies toward population stability. Dawkins also coined the word "meme" to describe how the selfish gene emulates human society, which is called "memetics". Richard Dawkins is still a popular advocate of science, evolution and an even stronger advocate of the separation of church and science. Richard Dawkins Website.

The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal - The story of a dying SS Solider who asks then Holocaust camp inmate Wiesenthal to forgive him for his sins against the Jews. His refusal drives him to collect this book of essays on the pros and cons of revenge and forgiveness. The title refers to a German graveyard where each soldier had a sunflower planted with their marker while Jews were buried in mass without any markers at all. The Sunflower

The Final Days by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein - The sequel or better yet, part II of the 1974 blockbuster All the President's Men. The book takes up where the first left off and chronicles the events ends until the end of the Nixon Presidency. The whole Watergate Story from the authors

Arnold J. Toynbee - Mankind and Mother Earth
Michel Foucault - Histoire de la sexualité
Ryszard Kapuscinski - Another Day of Life
Arthur Koestler - The Thirteenth Tribe
Peter C. Newman - The Canadian Establishment
Jean-François Revel - The Totalitarian Temptation
Andrew Vachss - The Life-Style Violent Juvenile

Comedy 1976

Best Comedy Recording: Bicentennial Nigger - Richard Pryor