Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passion, this double memoir marries the authors' distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s.
Novelist Anne Bernays, born in 1930, and biographer Justin Kaplan, born in 1925, both natives of New York, came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Back Then, written in two separate voices, is the candid, anecdotal account of two children of privilege, one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side, pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books. They both sought self-knowledge and realization through years of psychoanalysis. They brushed shoulders with celebrities like William Faulkner, Somerset Maugham, Marlene Dietrich, and Anatole Broyard.
Before Bernays and Kaplan met and married, each had enjoyed the sexual and social freedom that, along with the dark shadow of McCarthyism and the Cold War, was among the distinguishing marks of the 1950s. In many other respects, the story they tell could almost as well be about an earlier era.
This vibrant, balanced memoir offers an indelible portrait of postwar New York -- exhilarating, hospitable, and affordable. A striking collaboration by two prominent figures in American letters, Back Then surprises and delights as Bernays and Kaplan recall their youthful pursuits, the merging of their lives, and the city's underlying influence on them.

Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York

Biographies & Memoirs

KAPLAN, Justin

Bernays, Anne

Arts & Literature

William Morrow

“Whitman emerges from this biography alive and kicking―hugely human, enormously attractive.” ―Newsweek A moving, penetrating, sharply focused portrait of America’s greatest poet―his genius, his passions, his androgynous sensibility―an exuberant life entwined with the turbulent history of mid-nineteenth century America. In vivid detail, Justin Kaplan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, examines the mysterious selves of this enigmatic man whose bold voice of joy and sexual liberation embraced a growing nation…and exposes the quintessential Whitman, that perfect poet whose astonishing verse made “words sing, dance, kiss, copulate” for an entire world to hear.

Walt Whitman: A Life (Perennial Classics)

Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan - both native New Yorkers - came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Written in two separate voices, Back Then is thecandid, anecdotal account of these two children of privilege - one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side - pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books. Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on the transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passions, this double memoir marries the authors' distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s.

Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950s New York

William Morrow Paperbacks

Harper American Literature, Volume I (2nd Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Minter, David

McQuade, Donald

Atwan,Robert

Banta, Martha

Steptoe, Robert

United States

Longman

A richly diverse gathering of new and familiar voices, on subjects new and old, The Harper Single Volume American Literature takes the reader on a journey through America's literary past and ever-projecting future. Eleven cultural portfolios provide windows into historic moments in our literary past and present; superbly informative and readable period introductions further deepen the reader's understanding of the America from which this literature evolved. Five great plays, an unprecedented wealth of complete works, approximately one hundred carefully chosen black and white images - a collection both deeper and broader than other single volume anthologies.

Harper American Literature, Volume II (2nd Edition)

Vendler, Helen

Tichi, Cecelia

Harper American Literature, Native Son (Textbook and Paper Packaged Together)

Vendler, Helen Hennessy

Stepto, Robert

Harpercollins College Div

Lincoln Steffens: a biography

Professionals & Academics

JONATHAN CAPE.

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age. Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior. Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure

When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

Humor & Entertainment

Penguin??Books

Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark Twain's story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice. Influencing subsequent generations of writers -- from Sherwood Anderson to Twain's fellow Missourian, T.S. Eliot, from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to J.D. Salinger -- "Huckleberry Finn," like the river which flows through its pages, is one of the great sources which nourished and still nourishes the literature of America.

Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Everyman's Library)

Children's Books

Classics

Tuttle Pub

Whitman's genius, passions, poetry, and androgynous sensibility entwined to create an exuberant life amid the turbulent American mid-nineteenth century. In vivid detail, Kaplan examines the mysterious selves of the enigmatic man who celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man.

Walt Whitman: A Life

BANTAM BOOKS

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Books by KAPLAN, Justin