Geoffrey O'Brien: Hardboiled America: The Lurid Years of Paperbacks, 1997, expanded edition, paper. DeCapo Press. ISBN: 0306807734.
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep, 1992, paper. Vintage. ISBN: 0394758285.
Robert Towne: Chinatown & The Last Detail, 1997, paper. Grove Press. ISBN: 0802134017.
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon, 1992, paper. Vintage. ISBN: 0679722645.
James M. Cain: Double Indemnity, 1992, paper. Vintage. ISBN: 0679723226.
W. R. Burnett: High Sierra, 1979, paper. University of Wisconsin. ISBN: 0299079341.
James Dickey: Deliverance, 1994, paper. Delta. ISBN: 038531387X.
Articles in the reader 'ENG2575 Film and the Tragic Sense of American Life' (available at Kopiutsalget, Akademika):
Augustine, Jane. “Character and Poetry in the City” in Mary Caws, ed., City Images: Perspectives from Literature, Philosophy, and Film Gordon & Breach 1991 (pages 73-86)
Bowra, C.M. “The Heroic Outlook” from The Greek Experience, The New American Library, paperback edition, 1957 (pages 32-53)
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz, Vintage Books, 1990 ISBN 0-679-73806-1 (pages17-97)
MacCann, Richard Dyer, ed. Film: a Montage of Theories E.P. Dutton & Company, 1966:
- Introduction by R.D. McCann (pages 13-20)
- “Sight & Sound” by Gavin Lambert (pages 45-52)
- “Novels Into Film” by George Bluestone (pages 132-141)
- “Some Ideas on the Cinema” by Cesare Zavattini (pages 216-228)
Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies Random House, 1975 ISBN 0-394-48327-8 (pages 141-157, 175-194, 253-255).
Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History University of North Carolina Press, 2002 (pages 83-88, 121-125) ISBN 0-8078-5368-2