The Books that Shaped America

[Dark Muse]

I heard a blurb on the news that the Library of Congress is opening an exhibit of the 88 books they believe shaped America. I thought that sounded like it could be interesting so I was able to find the full list online.

And let me just go on the record, (because I know there will be those who are not altogether satisfied with the list) I myself am posting this purely as a point of interest, and "condoning" the list.

Feel free to discuss, debate, add whatever books you think are missing, just don't shoot (or blame) the messenger :smilewinkgrin:



Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884
Alcoholics Anonymous anonymous 1939
American Cookery Amelia Simmons 1796
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
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
A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible anonymous 1788
The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968
The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907
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 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
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
McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer William Holmes McGuffey 1836
Moby-Dick; or The Whale Herman Melville 1851
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
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
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 E. 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
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

[Charles Darnay]

I fully support the idea that Cat in the Hat shaped America. (would Lincoln be the cat?)

[Calidore]

It's too late for me to absorb the whole list, but I think I'd replace Beloved with Alex Haley's Roots.

[stlukesguild]

Clearly Missing:

R.W. Emerson: Essays
E.A. Poe- Short Stories
T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland
Wallace Stevens- Harmonium
V. Nabokov- Lolita
and if we're going to include Dashielle Hammett it should be The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man

[Dark Muse]

Clearly Missing:

R.W. Emerson: Essays
E.A. Poe- Short Stories
T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland
Wallace Stevens- Harmonium
V. Nabokov- Lolita
and if we're going to include Dashielle Hammet it should be The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man

That is a good list. Quite shocking that The Great Gatsby was not on the list and Lolita is a good one to, while not a personal favorite of mine, it was certainly influential I think.

I have not read much of Hammet, but when I saw his name I was surprsied that it was not for The Maltese Falcon.

[MANICHAEAN]

No Raymond Chandler.

Strange choice of book for James Baldwin.

[TurquoiseSunset]

But, The Great Gatsby is on the list...

[Dark Muse]

But, The Great Gatsby is on the list...

Oh I must have just skipped over it.

I am not sure how they determined the order of the list of it is just random. But I wished it had been organized chronologically.

[rootinghog]

No Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather... but a pretty interesting idea for a list.

And who among us would be here were it not for A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible?

[Charles Darnay]

Oh I must have just skipped over it.

I am not sure how they determined the order of the list of it is just random. But I wished it had been organized chronologically.

Alphabetically by title

[KCurtis]

That is a good list. Quite shocking that The Great Gatsby was not on the list and Lolita is a good one to, while not a personal favorite of mine, it was certainly influential I think.

I have not read much of Hammet, but when I saw his name I was surprsied that it was not for The Maltese Falcon.

The Great Gatsby is on the list-look again!

[PabloQ]

It would be interesting to see how this list was determined and how they settled on 88. It's curious the number of items that I've never heard of, but I find it hard to believe that Wealth of Nations isn't a bit more influential in shaping America than, say, the Wizard of Oz.

[Dark Muse]

Alphabetically by title

Oy, I did not even pick up on that. I was looking too much at the dates/authors, but knowing that is helpful in finding items.

[Dark Muse]

This link provides more information about the list and the books selected

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-123.html

[iamnobody]

I would add Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Thomas Hobbe's Leviathan.

[Dark Muse]

I do not know about Hobbe's but I do know that Common Sense is on the list

[Charles Darnay]

It would be interesting to see how this list was determined and how they settled on 88. It's curious the number of items that I've never heard of, but I find it hard to believe that Wealth of Nations isn't a bit more influential in shaping America than, say, the Wizard of Oz.

I think they stuck to strictly American works

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think some may be missing the idea of the list. It's "Books that Shaped America," not "Pieces of Literature that Shaped America." Just sayin'.

One book that came to mind that could have been on that list is L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. It's had an impact, for better or worse.

[stlukesguild]

I think some may be missing the idea of the list. It's "Books that Shaped America...

I think the most obvious omission... if we are seeking "Books that shaped America..." and not merely "Books by Americans that Shaped America..." would have to be The Bible.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yep. That one popped into my head, too. As did Everyone Poops, but that's by a Japanese woman.

[OrphanPip]

The Book of Mormon probably should have been included if they were gonna put a religious text written by an American. Mormonism has at least had a significant impact on shaping Utah.

Edit: I also think the inclusion of Watson's self-aggrandizing cashing in on the publication of the double helix structure is a bit silly.

[Dark Muse]

I think some may be missing the idea of the list. It's "Books that Shaped America...

I think the most obvious omission... if we are seeking "Books that shaped America..." and not merely "Books by Americans that Shaped America..." would have to be The Bible.

The list is meant to be books by American Authors that Shaped America.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

... he said that.

[Dark Muse]

... he said that.

I guess I misunderstood. It was not clear to me if he was aware that it was books by American authors or not.

[qimissung]

Also, I didn't see "The Jungle." I think that was fairly influential. They may have chosen "Red Harvest" of Hammets novels because it was the first one, the one that signified a new genre, that of the hard-boiled detective. Just a guess.

[cyberbob]

I think some may be missing the idea of the list. It's "Books that Shaped America," not "Pieces of Literature that Shaped America." Just sayin'.


Would A Streetcar Named Desire really count as a book? If you're gonna have a play in there then I think it's just as legitimate to have a collection of poetry or of short stories.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I wasn't saying it's not legitimate to have literature in the list, just that it would be unrealistic to have the whole thing comprised of pieces of literature.

[Summer M]

The Jefferson-Adams correspondence was highly influential. John Cheever should have been mentioned as well.
Edit: and Sinclair Lewis. Mencken argued that Babbit was one of the most American novels ever written and that it captured the essence of capitalist, patriotic, rambunctious America. And what about Mencken himself? He was, by far, the most famous journalist in the history of the nation.