Books That Shaped America

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Library of Congress, 99 Books

As part of a multi-year Library of Congress “Celebration of the Book,” the list – initially 88 books, now expanded by the Library to 100 – and its accompanying exhibition at the Library last June 25-Sept. 25 engendered months of public dialogue. Some 165,400 people attended the exhibit and more than 9,000 responded to a survey about “Books That Shaped America” posted by the Library on its National Book Festival website.

This list was originally published in 2012 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
6767 The Bay Psalm Book Stephen Daye 1640 American English
6767 Experiments And Observations On Electricity Benjamin Franklin 1751 American English
6767 Poor Richard Improved, The Way To Wealth Benjamin Franklin 1758 American English
3424 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
6767 A Grammatical Institute Of The English Language Noah Webster 1783 American English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
6767 A Curious Hieroglyphic Bible Isaiah Thomas 1788 American English
6767 A Survey Of The Roads Of The United States Of America Christopher Colles 1789 American English
689 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
6767 American Cookery Amelia Simmons 1796 American English
6767 New England Primer Unknown 1687 American English
2300 Journals Meriwether Lewis, William Clark 1804 American English
3288 Stories of Washington Irving Washington Irving 1820 American English
5351 The Book Of Mormon Unknown 1830 American English
6767 Mc Guffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer William Holmes McGuffey 1836 American English
6767 Peter Parley's Universal History Samuel Goodrich 1837 American English
913 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass 1845 American English
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
6767 Mark, The Match Boy Horatio Alger Jr. 1869 American English
6767 The American Woman's Home Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine E. Beecher 1869 American English
6767 The Common Law Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1881 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
5349 How the Other Half Lives Jacob A. Riis 1890 Danish English
1929 The Frontier in American History Frederick J. Turner 1920 American English
552 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895 American English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
6767 Harriet, The Moses Of Her People Sarah H. Bradford 1886 American English
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
4168 The History of the Standard Oil Company Ida Tarbell 1904 American English
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
1721 Pragmatism William James 1907 American English
886 Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Grey 1912 American English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
6767 Family Limitation Margaret Sanger 1914 American English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
3175 Spring And All William Carlos Williams 1923 American English
5354 New Hampshire Robert Frost 1923 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
1810 The Weary Blues Langston Hughes 1926 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
536 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 1929 American English
675 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
1207 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
6767 Idaho Federal Writers' Project 1937 American English
3052 Our Town Thornton Wilder 1938 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
6767 A Treasury Of American Folklore Benjamin A. Botkin 1944 American English
5349 A Street In Bronzeville Gwendolyn Brooks 1945 American English
795 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
2261 The Iceman Cometh Eugene O'Neill 1946 American English
636 Goodnight Moon Margaret Wise Brown 1947 American English
599 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams 1947 American English
945 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Alfred C. Kinsey 1948 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
748 Howl and Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
778 The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss 1957 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
2799 Goodbye, Columbus Philip Roth 1959 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
823 The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats 1962 American English
320 Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak 1963 American English
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
5495 Unsafe At Any Speed Ralph Nader 1965 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
558 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
4676 Our Bodies, Ourselves Unknown 1970 American English
1507 Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya 1972 American English
1037 The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston 1976 American English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
6519 Free to Choose Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman 1980 American English
1038 Cosmos Carl Sagan 1980 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
1873 And the Band Played On Randy Shilts 1987 American English
10439 The Words Of César Chávez César Chávez 2002 American English