Around a decade ago, the Library of Congress came up with a really very good collection of 88 books that helped changed America. It covers landmarks in children’s literature, genre fiction, scientific writings, cookbooks, and more. Some of these titles are relatively obscure, today, but they were nevertheless very influential in shaping our nation.
That
said, the number, 88, was bugging me. So I went ahead and added the missing 12
entries, to make an even 100. The books are presented alphabetically, below,
with my additions in bold. (Incidentally, I have read exactly half of the list.)
Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884
Alcoholics
Anonymous, anonymous, 1939
American
Cookery, Amelia Simmons, 1796
American
Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa, 1921
The
American Woman's Home, Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1869
And the
Band Played On, Randy Shilts, 1987
Atlas
Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1957
The
Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965
Beloved,
Toni Morrison, 1987
Bury My
Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, 1970
The
Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903
Carrie,
Stephen King, 1971
The Cat
in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 1957
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller, 1961
The
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
Charlotte's
Web, E.B. White, 1952
Common
Sense, Thomas Paine, 1776
The
Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock, 1946
Cosmos,
Carl Sagan, 1980
The
Crucible, Arthur Miller, 1953
A
Curious Hieroglyphick Bible, anonymous, 1788
The
Double Helix, James D. Watson, 1968
The
Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams, 1907
Eichmann
in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt, 1963
Experiments
and Observations on Electricity, Benjamin Franklin, 1751
Fahrenheit
451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
Family
Limitation, Margaret Sanger, 1914
The
Federalist, anonymous, 1787
The
Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, 1963
The
Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
For
Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1940
Gone
With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
Goodnight
Moon, Margaret Wise Brown, 1947
A
Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Noah Webster, 1783
The
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939
The
Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Harriet,
the Moses of Her People, Sarah H. Bradford, 1901
The
Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, 1949
The
History of Standard Oil, Ida Tarbell, 1904
History
of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark, Meriwether
Lewis, 1814
How the
Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis, 1890
How to
Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie, 1936
Howl, Allen
Ginsberg, 1956
I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, 1969
The
Iceman Cometh, Eugene O'Neill, 1946
Idaho:
A Guide in Word and Pictures, Federal Writers' Project, 1937
In Cold
Blood, Truman Capote, 1966
Invisible
Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
Joy of
Cooking, Irma Rombauer, 1931
The
Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906
Leaves
of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855
The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving, 1820
Little
Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Louisa May Alcott, 1868
Mark,
the Match Boy, Horatio Alger Jr., 1869
Maus,
Art Spiegelman, 1991
McGuffey's
Newly Revised Eclectic Primer, William Holmes McGuffey, 1836
Moby-Dick;
or The Whale, Herman Melville, 1851
The
Mountains of California, John Muir, 1894
The
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass, 1845
Native
Son, Richard Wright, 1940
New
England Primer, anonymous, 1803
New
Hampshire, Robert Frost, 1923
On the
Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
Our
Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women's Health Book Collective, 1971
Our
Town: A Play, Thornton Wilder, 1938
A
People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
Peter
Parley's Universal History, Samuel Goodrich, 1837
Poems, Emily
Dickinson, 1890
Poor
Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth, Benjamin Franklin, 1758
Pragmatism,
William James, 1907
The
Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D., Benjamin Franklin, 1793
The Red
Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 1895
Red
Harvest, Dashiell Hammett, 1929
Riders
of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey, 1912
The
Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred C. Kinsey, 1948
Silent
Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
Slouching
Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion, 1968
The
Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats, 1962
The
Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903
The
Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
Spring
and All, William Carlos Williams, 1923
Stranger
in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
A
Street in Bronzeville, Gwendolyn Brooks, 1945
A
Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, 1947
A
Survey of the Roads of the United States of America, Christopher Colles, 1789
Tarzan
of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914
The
Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe, 1843
Ten
Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly, 1887
Their
Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
To Kill
a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
A
Treasury of American Folklore, Benjamin A. Botkin, 1944
A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, 1943
Uncle
Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852
Unsafe
at Any Speed, Ralph Nader, 1965
Walden;
or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau, 1854
The
Weary Blues, Langston Hughes, 1925
Where
the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963
The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 1900
The
Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002
