Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell — Atlanta's defining novel and one of the world's bestselling books. Its racial politics are unredeemed, but as an account of how Atlanta saw itself in the 1930s — and what the city carried from the Civil War into the twentieth century — it is essential and indispensable. Read alongside something more honest.
The Color of Water by James McBride — McBride's memoir of his Black-Jewish family includes formative scenes from Atlanta in the 1960s and 70s.
Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn by Gary Pomerantz — a long, careful joint biography of the Allen and Dobbs families, the white and Black political dynasties of twentieth-century Atlanta. The best single account of how the city negotiated the civil rights years.
Bombingham by Anthony Grooms — a coming-of-age novel set in Birmingham and Atlanta during the early 1960s, written by a Georgia academic, that reads like a quieter southern parallel to Toni Morrison.
The Wedding by Dorothy West — set in upper-middle-class Black Atlanta of the 1950s, by the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance generation, who wrote it at the age of 88.