Literature in the 1970s "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, a juvenile novel about a family of rabbits which found a home in mainstream literary circles. Joseph Heller's dramatic novel of middle age, "Something Happened", was the author's first book since "Catch-22" in 1961. James A. Michener also returned to prominence in the seventies, first with "Chesapeake", a story of four families interwoven throughout their interactions in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, and later with "Centennial", a historical novel about a family living in Colorado in the time of the 1870s. In 1976, "Centennial" was adapted to a popular television miniseries. John Jakes would
Richard Adams it as a book. He began writing in 1966, taking two years to complete it. In 1972, after four publishers and three writers' agencies turned down the manuscript, Rex Collings agreed to publish the work. The book gained international acclaim almost immediately for reinvigorating anthropomorphic fiction with naturalism. Over the next few years "Watership Down" sold over a million copies worldwide. Adams won both of the most prestigious British children's book awards, one of six authors to do so: the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. In 1974, following publication of his second novel, "Shardik", he left the