15/88.

I thought I was more well-read than that, although I am proud to have NOT read some of those titles.

I've read 30 of them. Honestly, there were a couple I'd never heard of. I'd never heard of that Idaho book, for example.

18, not as many as I would have thought.

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987)

F*ck this book.

59/88.

mitchcumstein1: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987)

F*ck this book.

Yes. That, and On the Road. Though I will say I was glad to see The Great Gatsby, Dickinson's Poems, and The Sound and the Fury on there.

The English Major: mitchcumstein1: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987)

F*ck this book.

Yes. That, and On the Road.

I like On the Road.

Though I will say I was glad to see The Great Gatsby, Dickinson's Poems, and The Sound and the Fury on there.

Didn't see The Sound and The Fury, or Streetcar Named Desire. I love both of those books.

Were there qualifications that these had to be American books?

If not, then why wasn't 1984 on there? One could argue it did as much as anything to create the view of Communism that shaped American policy for 40+ years.

I've read quite a few on there. Beloved was ponderous. I tried 3 times and couldn't get through it, and this from someone who has read Dickens and Tolstoy novels multiple times over.

The Library of Congress' list of 88 books that shaped America, sorted by title:

"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 shiats (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)

EnviroDude: The Library of Congress' list of 88 books that shaped America, sorted by title:

TL;DR

For Whom The Bell Tolls isn't about America at all. It's a great book, but I fail to see how it shaped America.

The Jungle is one I can see having had a serious and long-lasting impact, though.

14/88....gawd I'm ignorant. The weird thing is, I was in advanced english classes throughout high school. Many of the books on the list were read by the regular classes, but not us.

I wonder if Tea Partiers are angry that The Bible isn't up there...har har

The Big Book!

/saved my life

anonymous... one of my favorite authors...

Good list, Library of Congress. I am pleasantly surprised.

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

Glad to see this there.

James Watson is an amazing individual.

24, and very glad to see Red Harvest included!

ChipNASA: EnviroDude: The Library of Congress' list of 88 books that shaped America, sorted by title:

TL;DR



especially this one.

AverageAmericanGuy: For Whom The Bell Tolls isn't about America at all. It's a great book, but I fail to see how it shaped America.

The Jungle is one I can see having had a serious and long-lasting impact, though.

I think the requisite was that the author either was an American citizen or has some big connection to the US (i.e. became a citizen or lived here for a time), not necessarily that the book was about America. "Tarzan" is on the list but also does not have much to do with America, but it influenced American culture and written by an American.

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

Yeah, no. No one's read this book. Chavez was important, but this was a stretch to make a political point, not an actually important book.

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (1957)

And this is accurate and a demonstration of what's wrong with America.

"Huckleberry FInn" and "Fear and Loathing" are missing.

Ahh, grapes of wrath. The book that everyone thinks is special because they can feel bad for the Joads, instead of hate them like they should.

tortilla burger: I wonder if Tea Partiers are angry that The Bible isn't up there...har har

Give them time for someone at Fox News/700 Club to mention it.

//Does Rush push the super Christian line, or is it token mentions?

14/88 and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Scarlet Letter can go fark themselves. Except for The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I haven't read something so pompous, arrogant, and full of shiat. He's a terrible writer and kids are better off reading the Cliff's Notes than the actual book.

But 15/88 if I'm forced to include that book.

"Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures" is the novel that "Showgirls" was based on.

Atlas Shrugged is awful and the library of congress should feel awful.

/on the road is one of my favorite books
//catcher in the rye sucks too

Nightsweat: "The Words of Cesar Chavez" by Cesar Chavez (2002)Yeah, no. No one's read this book. Chavez was important, but this was a stretch to make a political point, not an actually important book.
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (1957)And this is accurate and a demonstration of what's wrong with America.

"Huckleberry FInn" and "Fear and Loathing" are missing.

Retract the Huck Finn comment. Forgot the full title was "Adventures of..."

meat0918: tortilla burger: I wonder if Tea Partiers are angry that The Bible isn't up there...har har

Give them time for someone at Fox News/700 Club to mention it.

//Does Rush push the super Christian line, or is it token mentions?

Oh, and looking again, the Republican Bible is on the list, see?

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (1957)

Wasn't she Ukrainian?

12/88 need to read more than just the 50 shades and Sookie Stackhouse crap books I have been reading

/And the Band Played on is my fav...
// followed by The Great Gatsby
//The Jungle was probably the most depressing book I have ever or will ever read

B b b but where's the Bible?

Well, I'm glad we all still agree that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap.

/get a hit Crash
//shut up

I'd agree that a lot of the politically motivated books did have the desired effect, but I'd argue just about all the others had about as much to do with shaping Americas as a bag of toenail clippings.

I'd be impressed if someone found any proof that U.S. policy was influenced by Cosmos or Where the Wild Things Are. They're good books, but politicians aren't the type to be inspired.

Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying.

What? No "Slaughterhouse-Five" or "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by Mssrs. Vonnegut and Poe? No "Dune" by Frank Herbert?

Not even Neal Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" or Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer"?

Fark, I am disappoint.

One of my favorite anecdotes about Catch-22:

A reporter was interviewing Joseph Heller.

Reporter: "Why haven't you written anything as good as Catch-22 since then?"

Heller: "Who has?"

9/88


Here's hoping that "The Blind Watchmaker" is on the list 50 years from now.

Pleased and actually shocked that

- Stranger is a Strange Land
- Tarzan of the Apes

Actually made the list

Orange Rhyming Dictionary: Atlas Shrugged is awful and the library of congress should feel awful.

Awful books can shape America too. The article even says they're not necessarily the 'best' American books.

dr;tl

The English Major: Though I will say I was glad to see The Great Gatsby

Ah yes, the only book more pointless than the era it celebrates.

dragonchild: I'd agree that a lot of the politically motivated books did have the desired effect, but I'd argue just about all the others had about as much to do with shaping Americas as a bag of toenail clippings.

I'd be impressed if someone found any proof that U.S. policy was influenced by Cosmos or Where the Wild Things Are. They're good books, but politicians aren't the type to be inspired.

Yep. I think that a better name for a lot of the books on this list would be "Books that people have on their coffee tables to impress their friends, but don't actually read."

88?

Heil Hitler

Philimus: What? No "Slaughterhouse-Five" or "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by Mssrs. Vonnegut and Poe? No "Dune" by Frank Herbert?

Not even Neal Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" or Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer"?

Fark, I am disappoint.

As much as I love Dune, and I do love that book, I'm not sure it's shaped America all that much, but it was written in 1965, so maybe it did have a bigger effect back then. I'm only 31, so I can't really say.

phreezen: 88?

Heil Hitler

lulz

What a dumb list. I mean who the hell has ever heard of this "Malcolm The Tenth" guy?

34/88. Why Fahrenheit 451 but no 1984?

"History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark" by Meriwether Lewis (1814) - haven't read it, but want to. I have read the edited diaries of Lewis and Clark. Amazing and really worth the read. I read the diaries over 15 years ago and I still think about them all the time.

Reading "Moby Dick" right now. My opinion of the book changes depending on which chapter I am reading. Some of it is magical and awe-inspiring, some of it is dreck. I think I'll need to read it again to really understand it, though.

I think the more historical books (The Jungle, Common Sense, etc) are spot-on. Those are likely more well-agreed upon in the field at large. It's the relatively recent books where some are kind of questionable what their impact on this country is. But overall it's a pretty strong list.

This text is now purple: The English Major: Though I will say I was glad to see The Great Gatsby

Ah yes, the only book more pointless than the era it celebrates.

The thing that really kills The Great Gatsby for me is how hard Fitzgerald is trying to write a great book. Every word is perfectly selected and every sentence is perfectly formed. He must have labored for hours to find the right phrasing to tell his story.

Contrast that with Nabokov's Lolita, another book with perfect word selection. Nabokov has a real story to tell, and the words seem to flow effortlessly without a single wasted letter.

It may just be a difference in their writing styles, but Fitzgerald comes off like Gatsby, trying too hard for so little result.

dragonchild: I'd agree that a lot of the politically motivated books did have the desired effect, but I'd argue just about all the others had about as much to do with shaping Americas as a bag of toenail clippings.

I'd be impressed if someone found any proof that U.S. policy was influenced by Cosmos or Where the Wild Things Are. They're good books, but politicians aren't the type to be inspired.

That is sort of how I feel on this topic. Highly read books or classics usually have no lasting impact on society. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

Oh, and based on one of yesterday's topics, it seems that Covey's "7 Habits" book should be on the list.