Books That Shaped America

The Library of Congress, the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information, began a multiyear “Celebration of the Book” with an exhibition on “Books That Shaped America.” The initial books in the exhibition are displayed below.

“This list is a starting point,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.”

We hope you will view the list, nominate other titles, and most importantly, choose to read and discuss some of the books on this list, reflecting America’s unique and extraordinary literary heritage, which the Library of Congress makes available to the world.

More information: Read the news release
Visit the online exhibition
Give your input by completing the online survey.

Title	Author	Date
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 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
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