88 Books That Shaped America (= USA)

[KenW]

The Library of Congress in Washington DC has released a selected list of 88 books that shaped the modern culture and literary heritage of the USA. (America is used yet again as a grossly exaggerated descriptor).

My news comes from a Facebook extract from the Los Angeles Times. The original source is apparently a blog:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/07/88-books-that-shaped-america-at-the-library-of-congress.html

One could no doubt get similarly interesting lists for such places as Australia or the UK & Ireland too. Other places? Canada? Mexico? Bolivia?

Makes me smile to think how hopeless such an exercise would be in SEAsia. Imagine many books that shaped Vietnam? Indonesia? Cambodia? Thailand?

Nguyen Du's Tale of Kieu is one for VN. Can't think of any others though.

And please - please - don't post suggesting those books written about the horrid M verb and noun. OK post away, just to annoy me.

[pdogg]

Catch 22 is on Street 136 here in Phnom Penh. One of the girls came up to me and asked my name. I replied Major Major. She looked at me as if I was from Uranus.

Interesting list. Only read about 15 of them though.

A notable ommision is the Bible. Though it wasn't written by an American, it certainly shaped the USA.

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain (1884)

"Alcoholics Anonymous" by anonymous (1939)

"American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons (1796)

"The American Woman's Home" by Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869)

"And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts (1987)

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (1957)

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987)

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown (1970)

"The Call of the Wild" by Jack London (1903)

"The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss (1957)

"Catch-22" by Joseph Heller (1961)

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger (1951)

"Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White (1952)

"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine (1776)

"The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" by Benjamin Spock (1946)

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1980)

"A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible" by anonymous (1788)

"The Double Helix" by James D. Watson (1968)

"The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams (1907)

"Experiments and Observations on Electricity" by Benjamin Franklin (1751)

"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury (1953)

"Family Limitation" by Margaret Sanger (1914)

"The Federalist" by anonymous/ thought to be Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1787)

"The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan (1963)

"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin (1963)

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway (1940)

"Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown (1947)

"A Grammatical Institute of the English Language" by Noah Webster (1783)

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939)

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

"Harriet, the Moses of Her People" by Sarah H. Bradford (1901)

"The History of Standard Oil" by Ida Tarbell (1904)

"History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark" by Meriwether Lewis (1814)

"How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Riis (1890)

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (1936)

"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (1956)

"The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O'Neill (1946)

"Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures" by Federal Writers' Project (1937)

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote (1966)

"Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison (1952)

"Joy of Cooking" by Irma Rombauer (1931)

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair (1906)

"Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman (1855)

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving (1820)

"Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy" by Louisa May Alcott (1868)

"Mark, the Match Boy" by Horatio Alger Jr. (1869)

"McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer" by William Holmes McGuffey (1836)

"Moby-Dick; or The Whale" by Herman Melville (1851)

"The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass (1845)

"Native Son" by Richard Wright (1940)

"New England Primer" by anonymous (1803)

"New Hampshire" by Robert Frost (1923)

"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac (1957)

"Our Bodies, Ourselves" by Boston Women's Health Book Collective (1971)

"Our Town: A Play" by Thornton Wilder (1938)

"Peter Parley's Universal History" by Samuel Goodrich (1837)

"Poems" by Emily Dickinson (1890)

"Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin (1758)

"Pragmatism" by William James (1907)

"The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D." by Benjamin Franklin (1793)

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane (1895)

"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey (1912)

"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

"Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" by Alfred C. Kinsey (1948)

"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson (1962)

"The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats (1962)

"The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

"The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner (1929)

"Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams (1923)

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert E. Heinlein (1961)

"A Street in Bronzeville" by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)

"A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams (1947)

"A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America" by Christopher Colles (1789)

"Tarzan of the Apes" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (1960)

"A Treasury of American Folklore" by Benjamin A. Botkin (1944)

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith (1943)

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

"Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader (1965)

"Walden; or Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau (1854)

"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes (1925)

"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak (1963)

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (1900)

"The Words of Cesar Chavez" by Cesar Chavez (2002)

[deepthroat]

I'm ashamed to admit I've only read 6 of these, and 4 of those were required reading in High School English classes.

I was thrilled to see Randy Shilt's "And The Band Played On" included. I've been singing the praises of this to anyone who'll listen for the last 15 years. It's a fantastic history of the Aids Epidemic, but written like a mystery novel or crime thriller, not an epidemiological study.

The only other voluntary read on the list was a famous Dr. Seuss novel.

Yes, I'm ashamed.

[TEXASMAC]

WOW, from Facebook, so it must be legit. LOL.

[TEXASMAC]

I have read 22. Which half were related to University. Plus I do love to read. Of this list to me The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was the best.

[KenW]

Interesting list. Only read about 15 of them though.

A notable ommision is the Bible. Though it wasn't written by an American, it certainly shaped the USA.

I'm ashamed to admit I've only read 6 of these, and 4 of those were required reading in High School English classes.

I have read 22. Which half were related to University.

Yes, the demand was that author had to be from the USA. And while Matthew, Mark et al. strut their stuff hard in the culture of the good ol' land, I doubt they ever had green cards.

As a mere street boy from Down Under I have read a dozen of them, so some of you Yanks need to lift your collective games. For me only 1 was mandatory primary school, 1 more mandatory junior high school. Rest: choice.

[Hefe]

Interesting that it's not the best but the most influential books. I've read 20.... but it's been a long time since I've read them. As long as Huck Finn is there I'm satisfied.

[williethepimp]

Ive read 7 of them,but as I never grew up in the US,its to be expected.

[Jimslim]

I've only read four from that list but all decent books .

The Autobiography Of Malcolm X

The Grapes Of Wrath

Catch 22

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (Which is one of my all time favourite books ) Anyone with an interest in the history of the USA should read this .

[seven]

I feel so illiterate. Ive only read 3 of these.

Catcher in the rye, On the road and, Grapes of wrath.

I first read On the road in my 20´s, and it was fantastic. Read it again 3-4 years ago and .....yikes!

Funny how your perspectives changes as years go by. I couldn't understand what i thought was so great about it when i read it 20 years ago. Could it be age?

[Rukki]

I've read:

Huck Finn

The Cat in the Hat ( i'm sure 20 times as a kid)

Catcher in the Rye

Charlotte's web

For whom the bell tolls (recommend)

How to win friends and influence people

On the road

To kill a mockingbird

Only 8 but i don't read books much. Cause when I do I can't put them down until it's finished, even if it sucks. It really interferes with work and life. Hahaha!

That being said, it doesn't mean it's a list of books every american should read. I have many others on my to-read list.

[thaibound]

whew, i feel so much better having read thru this entire thread.

being a voracious reader for half a century and thinking of myself as "well-read" i was fairly dismayed to discover i'd only read 1/3 of the books on the list.

until i saw comments from other bm's i confidently believe to possess a distinctly above average education who'd read even fewer.

so i gave the list a second look--a cookbook? really? then again, if you're talking about the actual physical shape of the embarassingly obese population in america currently, the whole fucking list should have been cookbooks. and throw in the menus at denny's and mcdonald's while you're at it.

i confess there are a dozen on this list i have never heard of and wouldn't bet against the possibility that some dweeb on facebook made them up altogether.

fucking facebook.

and btw, how could they leave out "The Book of Mormon"???? that shyster was american. and his book may well have shaped the next prez of these us of a. and it makes the Bible look like non-fiction.

almost.

and of course i could bitch about the fact that some of the greatest writers who ever lived are american and *none* of their books on the list...

as for the books actually on the list:

the most clever and entertaining: "Catch-22".

the most appropriate to a bunch of old socially-unacceptable ladyboy-fuckers on an internet forum mocked by most of the world: "Catcher in the Rye"

but maybe the best of the lot--and right up there on the "obscure" meter:

The Invisible Man--and no it's not scifi. it's fucking heart-breaking. and brilliant.

so read it, sucka.