88 books that shaped america

[pete]

as per the Library of Congress
an interesting list, though in place of "a stranger in a strange land" i would have included "slaughterhouse 5"

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain

Alcoholics Anonymous
anonymous

American Cookery
Amelia Simmons

The American Woman's Home
Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

And the Band Played On
Randy Shilts

Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Beloved
Toni Morrison

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown

The Call of the Wild
Jack London

The Cat in the Hat
Dr. Seuss

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

Charlotte's Web
E.B. White

Common Sense
Thomas Paine

The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
Benjamin Spock

Cosmos
Carl Sagan

A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible
anonymous

The Double Helix
James D. Watson

The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams

Experiments and Observations on Electricity
Benjamin Franklin

Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury

Family Limitation
Margaret Sanger

The Federalist
anonymous

The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan

The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

Goodnight Moon
Margaret Wise Brown

A Grammatical Institute of the English Language
Noah Webster

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Harriet, the Moses of Her People
Sarah H. Bradford

The History of Standard Oil
Ida Tarbell

History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark
Meriwether Lewis

How the Other Half Lives
Jacob Riis

How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie

Howl
Allen Ginsberg

The Iceman Cometh
Eugene O'Neill

Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures
Federal Writers' Project

In Cold Blood
Truman Capote

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

Joy of Cooking
Irma Rombauer

The Jungle
Upton Sinclair

Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy
Louisa May Alcott

Mark, the Match Boy
Horatio Alger Jr.

McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer
William Holmes McGuffey

Moby-Dick; or The Whale
Herman Melville

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass

Native Son
Richard Wright

New England Primer
anonymous

New Hampshire
Robert Frost

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

Our Bodies, Ourselves
Boston Women's Health Book Collective

Our Town: A Play
Thornton Wilder

Peter Parley's Universal History
Samuel Goodrich

Poems
Emily Dickinson

Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth
Benjamin Franklin

Pragmatism
William James

The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D.
Benjamin Franklin

The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey

The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
Alfred C. Kinsey

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson

The Snowy Day
Ezra Jack Keats

The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

Spring and All
William Carlos Williams

Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein

A Street in Bronzeville
Gwendolyn Brooks

A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams

A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America
Christopher Colles

Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

A Treasury of American Folklore
Benjamin A. Botkin

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Unsafe at Any Speed
Ralph Nader

Walden; or Life in the Woods
Henry David Thoreau

The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes

Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum

The Words of Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez

 

[shoulderblade]

88. A rather arbitrary number really. Must abmit I have not heard of many of them and some I have heard of I have never read.

I am wondering how this was put together. If an individual did it up it would be, more or less, a record of their own reading experience or preference. If a group did it there would be endless dispute probably going work to work.

I think you might be able to get maybe twenty books that would be beyond dispute but after that I think it gets a little hard to say.

Nice to see there is a rich literary tradition though. An interesting list.

 

[ChinaBandit]

No "Naked and The Dead" by Norman Mailer? The list is, indeed, very arbitrary.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

How they compile the list is: Collect all the Negro books nobody reads, toss in the Chicano and feminist books no one reads, add a few books by socialist reporters, and plug the holes with popular novels by fellow travelers.

 

[ChinaBandit]

"The History of Standard Oil", that is just ridiculous.

 

[loquere]

There’s a book that shaped America a lot, hmm what’s it called was it written by John Locke, no! It was written by multiple men. The bib… wait I got it. You read it on a Sunday, but if you’re a good American you read it every-day!

 

[ChinaBandit]

Anton LaVey?

 

[Liar]

There’s a book that shaped America a lot, hmm what’s it called was it written by John Locke, no! It was written by multiple men. The bib… wait I got it. You read it on a Sunday, but if you’re a good American you read it every-day!

Yeah, this. I figure the list has a "written in America" caveat or something. Or else we'd have a boatload of books from before there was an America to write them. Oh, and 1984.



Btw, is Gen. Petraeus counter-insurgency field manual technicaly a book?

 

[shoulderblade]

How they compile the list is: Collect all the Negro books nobody reads, toss in the Chicano and feminist books no one reads, add a few books by socialist reporters, and plug the holes with popular novels by fellow travelers.

Don't forget a travel guide: Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures.

 

[run_silent]

I would call the list "Books that a lot of Americans read or heard about". Shaping America not so much.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

"The History of Standard Oil", that is just ridiculous.

Ida Tarbell rode Rockefellers ass hard but the truth is he did much to improve America. The least he did was eradicate hook-worm disease in the South, and donated 500 million (in sound dollars) to charitable projects across America.

Mostly, though, people hated Rockefeller because they opted for cash when he offered payment in cash or Standard Oil stock. The folks who took SO stock became wealthy, even one share of SO stock was enough to raise you to the top.

 

[ChinaBandit]

I like Brown's library. It's the closest I've come to a Rockerfeller.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I cant find the Bible on any list of influential books, and found one reference to COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine.

 

[killallhippies]

cat in the hat my ass. yertle the turtle, the butter battle book and did i ever tell you how lucky you are all much better than that fucking evil cat.

also, the lack of vonnegut makes me want to hurt people.

 

[SalviaDivinorum]

88 books that shaped america

I don't think books have shaped any society. Some may contain imagery that become self-fulfilling prophecies in part, but mostly they describe the society in which they were written.

 

[pete]

88. A rather arbitrary number really. Must abmit I have not heard of many of them and some I have heard of I have never read.

I am wondering how this was put together. If an individual did it up it would be, more or less, a record of their own reading experience or preference. If a group did it there would be endless dispute probably going work to work.

I think you might be able to get maybe twenty books that would be beyond dispute but after that I think it gets a little hard to say.

Nice to see there is a rich literary tradition though. An interesting list.

you gotta go to the link and click on each book, it'll explain why they feel the book was influential to the country at that time.

obviously there's a human element to it, so it's arbitrary in that sense. but some choices were the most read, or most widely distributed publications at that time, so were included for those reasons

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

you gotta go to the link and click on each book, it'll explain why they feel the book was influential to the country at that time.

obviously there's a human element to it, so it's arbitrary in that sense. but some choices were the most read, or most widely distributed publications at that time, so were included for those reasons

Feelings arent thoughts or cognition, theyre senses like hunger, fatigue, anger, joy, lust, thirst. The value of influence isnt a feeling, its a judgment.

 

[pete]

Feelings arent thoughts or cognition, theyre senses like hunger, fatigue, anger, joy, lust, thirst. The value of influence isnt a feeling, its a judgment.

i feel that you're a bit of an uptight douchebag who needs a pint, or a lay, or both. it's a sense, like hunger.

 

[blobfish]

I think that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Jungle" both changed America in a pretty big way, but the others, not so much.

 

[blobfish]

Also, I agree that The Bible and "Common Sense" should be included. In addition, I suggest "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, which pretty much laid the groundwork for modern capitalism.

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

I cant find the Bible on any list of influential books, and found one reference to COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine.

I first thought as much too. However, if you click the OP's link and see the Librarian of Congress James H. Billington statement, you will see the list is about books written by Americans. The Bible was around long before we became a nation.

That list is also subject to change. It is actually a starting point to spark a national debate on America's most influential writers.

 

[pete]

Also, I agree that The Bible and "Common Sense" should be included. In addition, I suggest "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, which pretty much laid the groundwork for modern capitalism.

common sense IS on that list, yo

 

[blobfish]

I first thought as much too. However, if you click the OP's link and see the Librarian of Congress James H. Billington statement, you will see the list is about books written by Americans. The Bible was around long before we became a nation.

In that case, ignore my suggestion of "The Wealth of Nations". Adam Smith was Scottish.

 

[blobfish]

common sense IS on that list, yo

So it is! My apologies. I missed that whilst reading through.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

i feel that you're a bit of an uptight douchebag who needs a pint, or a lay, or both. it's a sense, like hunger.

What you advocate are infinite parallel universes where everyone has his own special dictionary of word meanings. We'll call your special place BABEL1.