title: Hardboiled America: Lurid Years of Paperbacks
author:  Geoffrey O'Brien 
description: Here's the lowdown on the 25 paperbacks, the books that laid bare the sordid underside of American life - and brought to millions the best in hardboiled fiction. This is the book that tells it all: From the California of Dashiell Hammett to the Florida of John D. MacDonald... From wartime morale-building to lurid postwar exploitation... From the roadside romance of The Postman Always Rings Twice to the big-city paranoia of Kiss Me, Deadly.... It's all here - the tough guys and the brassy dolls, the hoods and the lost waifs of America's subterranean legends, as transcribed by the masters of hardboiled prose and packaged by the paperback industry of the Forties and Fifties - all illustrated by the extraordinary images of America's most unsung artists.
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  Praise for The Waste Lands
  
  
  “The reigning King of American popular literature.”
  
  
  —Los Angeles Daily News
  
  
  “Enjoyable…whets the appetite for more.”
  
  
  —Bangor Daily News
  
  
  “Splendidly tense—rip-roaring.”
  
  
  —Publishers Weekly
  
  
  “Gripping…compelling…King mesmerizes the reader.”
  
  
  —Chicago Sun-Times
  
  
  ![Images](../Images/00013.jpeg)
  
  
  ## CONTENTS
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  [INTRODUCTION](../Text/part0006.html#5N3C0-3e251c45835b45d4af9e363fd1017d8e)
  
  
  [ARGUMENT](../Text/part0008.html#7K4G0-3e251c45835b45d4af9e363fd1017d8e)
  
  
  [BOOK ONE JAKE:](../Text/part0009.html#8IL2