Fiction 1960

To Kill a Mockingbird

34 year old Alabama novelist Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel decrying racism. Ms. Lee took the subject of criminal justice for Black Americans from William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, mixed it with Mark Twain's use of seeing race from a child's point of view in Huckleberry Finn, and with the help of her cousin and best friend, Truman Capote, wrote one of the great books of the 20th Century.

Rabbit, Run

John Updike with  his first book in the Rabbit series captures the tedium of middle class life in this acclaimed best seller.

Hawaii

James Michener finds his template for his long list of historical novels which follow. Spanning often thousands of years, he picks a few periods and connects them by family and region. His story telling and impeccable research finds more people learning history from his books than from any other source.     

Green Eggs and Ham

Dr. Seuss writes the 3rd Best Selling children's book of all time using only 50 words.

Irving Wallace - The Chapman Report

Henry Farrell - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Ian Fleming - For Your Eyes Only
Chinua Achebe - No Longer at Ease
Kingsley Amis - Take a Girl Like You
Lynne Reid Banks - The L-Shaped Room
Hamilton Basso - The Light Infantry Ball
Morley Callaghan - The Many Colored Coat
Carlo Coccioli - The White Stone
Lawrence Durrell - CleaI
Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
Nancy Mitford - Don't Tell Alfred
Edna O'Brien - The Country Girls
Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
Scott O'Dell - Island of the Blue Dolphins
Wilder Penfield - The Torch
Anthony Powell - Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
Nevil Shute - Trustee from the Toolroom
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar
Raymond Williams - Border Country

More on each new book of 1960 at Wikipedia

Comedy 1960

Shelly Berman wins Grammy for best Comedy Album

Jonathan Winters' first album creates controversy as it covers some of his experiences in a mental institution.

Literary News 1960

D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) was banned until 1960 when Penguin Books was acquitted of publishing an obscene book in both Britain and the US. It sold 2 million copies in that one year in just England alone. The governments of both England and America losing  this case put an end to the censorship of literature.

Henry Miller completes his trilogy, Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus.

Albert Camus, French existentialist novelist and philosopher, who hated riding in automobiles, died at 46 in one when his nephew talked him into a road trip to Paris and hit a tree. A train ticket to Paris was found in Camus' pocket.

Pulitzer prize for fiction awarded to Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

Non Fiction 1960

Conscience of a Conservative

Barry Goldwater defines American Conservatism in this prequel to running for President in 1964.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

 William Shirer

Light in my Darkness

Helen Keller

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

Albert Camus

Critique of Dialectical Reason Jean-Paul Sartre

1960 Tony Awards (theater)

Play - A Raisin in the Sun
Actor - Melvyn Douglas, The Best Man
Actress - Anne Bancroft, The Miracle Worker
Supporting Actor - Roddy McDowall, The Fighting Cock Supporting Actress - Anne Revere, Toys in the Attic
Director - Arthur Penn, The Miracle Worker

A Raisin in the Sun

First play on Broadway written and directed by African Americans. Staring Sidney Poitier. 

The Miracle Worker

The story of Helen Keller portrayed by Patty Duke, with Anne Bancroft

Toys in the Attic

Lillian Hellman's play of a frivolous man doted upon by his wife and sisters, comes into money, and to the sorrow of the women around him, grows up and moves on. Arthur Penn directs Jason Robarts, Maureen Stapleton and Anne Revere.