The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Graham, Sarah. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
New York: Continuum, c2007.

Kotzen, Kip, and Thomas Beller (Eds). With love and Squalor: 14 Writers Respond to the Work
of J.D. Salinger. New York: Broadway Books, c2001.

Pinsker, Sanford. The Catcher in the Rye: Innocence under Pressure.
New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, c1993.

_____. Understanding The catcher in the Rye: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents.
Westport, CT: Greenwood 1999. Good text for using the novel in the classroom.

Salzberg, Joel (Ed). Critical Essays on Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, c1990.

Salzman, Jack (Ed). New essays on The Catcher in the Rye. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Steinle, Pamela Hunt. In Cold Fear: The Catcher in the Rye Censorship Controversies and Postwar American Character.
Columbus : Ohio State University Press, c2000.

You won’t find nearly as many books about the novel’s reclusive author.
This is the most recent authoritative biography of Salinger – and it’s twenty years old:

Hamilton, Ian. In search of J.D. Salinger. New York: Random House, c1988.

For another point of view, you may want to look at this memoir by Salinger’s daughter:

Salinger, Margaret Ann. Dream Catcher: A Memoir. New York: Washington Square Press, c2000.

You’ll find an interesting body of literature about America in the 1950s. You and your students may
want to look at these two books mentioned in the essay you’ve just read:

Riesman, David, et al. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.

Whyte, William. The Organization Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956.

These recent studies of the decade will bring you up to date on changing interpretations of life and culture in the period:

Dunar, Andrew J. America in the Fifties. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006.
Good introduction to the subject by a recognized scholar.

Halliwell, Martin. American culture in the 1950s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, c2007.
Interesting study from a British author.

Super, John D. (Ed.). The Fifties in America. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, c2005.
Encyclopedia-format reference book for the decade.

Young, William H. The 1950s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Part of the “American Popular Culture Through History” series. Good introduction.

This book examines other books from the period that made their mark on our cultural history:

Castronovo, David. Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit: Books from the 1950s that Made American Culture. New York: Continuum, c2004.

This book doesn’t qualify as recent, but I’ve always liked it. It’s currently out of print, but you’ll find it at your local library:

Goldman, Eric Frederick. The Crucial Decade—and After: America, 1945-1960. New York, Vintage Books, c1960.

Internet

A Google search for “Catcher in the Rye lesson plans” produces hundreds of hits – most of them fee-based and many of the others easily ignored. For example, take a look at “Litplans” suggestions:

http://litplans.com/authors/J_D_Salinger.html

You might want to start by looking at “Dr. G.’s” comments on his Website at Monmouth College:

http://www.monmouth.com/~literature/#Catcher%20in%20the%20Rye

Apparently some of the best lesson plans on the novel were done by Aailise Lamoreux, but her Website with the complete group has vanished. Here are some individual examples that survive on other sites:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:PT64RiCckrQJ:
cwp.belmont.k12.ma.us/lrinder/handouts/Holden_s%2520
Obit.doc+Ailise+Lamoreux&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

and

http://pmrosen.tripod.com/room207/story.html

Full-scale “Catcher in the Rye” or J.D. Salinger Websites are scarce because all of Salinger’s writings are still covered by copyright, and the author is notoriously cautious about granting rights for other uses. You might be interested in this Website, based in Germany:

http://www.wahlbrinck.de/catcherintherye/index.htm

Wikipedia entry on Salinger is pretty good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger

Copyright issues limit Websites on the 1950s as well. See, for example, how few topics in this period American Memory’s “Education” page can address:

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/theme.html