100 Best 20th-Century American Books

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

About this list

Hungry Mind Review, 100 Books

Yet another reaction to the now notorious Modern Library 100 list. This is from the discontinued Hungry Mind Review, the history of which can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminator_Review

What the Hungry Mind Review of Spring 1999 had to say about its list:
The books were chosen by five writers: Mary Moore Easter, Heid E. Erdrich, Bill
Holm, David Mura, and George Rabasa, under the direction of Bart Schneider,
editor of the Hungry Mind Review, and J. Otis Powell of The Loft Literary Center in
Minneapolis.

The Hungry Mind Review list provides a compelling alternative to the Modern
Library's selection of "100 Best Novels published in the English language since
1900," announced last July. Although the Modern Library list was criticized for
including only six books by nonwhite writers, only nine books by women, and very
few books published after 1960, it initiated a lively national discussion. The HMR list
reflects a far more realistic race and gender balance, and includes a good number
of contemporary books. Our list is however limited to books written by Americans.

While the Modern Library list is restricted to novels, the Hungry Mind Review
includes distinguished books of nonfiction and collections of short fiction. "Opening
the list to nonfiction makes sense in a literary century that has witnessed the
blurring of the line between fiction and nonfiction," according to Hungry Mind
Review editor Bart Schneider. "It's thrilling to have James Agee's Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, as well as the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Alice B.
Toklas, on this list," Schneider adds. "Essential 20th-century writers like James
Baldwin, Joan Didion, and Gore Vidal, who each have collections of nonfiction
included on the list, are commonly thought to have done their best writing in the
essay form."

This list was originally published in 1999 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
722 Bastard Out of Carolina Dorothy Allison 1992 American English
1507 Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya 1972 American English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
6316 Borderlands/La Frontera Gloria Anzaldúa 1987 American English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
8066 The Price Of A Ticket James Baldwin 1985 American English
12940 Slaves In The Family Edward Ball 1998 American English
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
619 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949 American English
259 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 1959 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
1331 Cathedral Raymond Carver 1983 American English
1654 O Pioneers! Willa Cather 1913 American English
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
680 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
1634 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros 1984 American English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
1020 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
9568 Custer Died For Your Sins Vine DeLoria, Jr. 1969 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
1318 Love Medicine Louise Erdrich 1984 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
1714 Go Down, Moses William Faulkner 1942 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
8508 The Art Of Eating M. F. K. Fisher 1954 American English
14008 The Ordinary Seaman Francisco Goldman 1997 American English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
655 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
13292 My Life Of Absurdity Chester Himes 1990 American English
3931 Mean Spirit Linda Hogan 1990 American English
4202 Ain't I A Woman? bell hooks 1981 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
261 Wings of the Dove Henry James 1902 American English
9044 Blues People Leroi Jones 1963 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
1889 Annie John Jamaica Kincaid 1985 Antiguan English
1037 The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston 1976 American English
1181 The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosinski 1965 Polish English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
13799 The Winged Seed Li-Young Lee 1995 American English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
2285 The Crossing Cormac McCarthy 1994 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
6441 The Magic Barrel Bernard Malamud 1958 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
10992 Love And Will Rollo May 1969 American English
1068 The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1948 American English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
2868 House Made of Dawn N. Scott Momaday 1968 American English
6871 The Field of Vision Wright Morris 1956 American English
560 Sula Toni Morrison 1973 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
2537 Jazz Toni Morrison 1992 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1985 Black Elk Speaks John G. Neihardt 1932 American English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
9764 Call Me Ishmael Charles Olson 1947 American English
2125 Tell Me a Riddle Tillie Olsen 1961 American English
6340 No No Boy John Okada 2024 American English
5256 The Collected Stories Grace Paley 1994 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
3579 Flowering Judas and Other Stories Katherine Anne Porter 1930 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
11616 On Lies, Secrets And Silence Adrienne Rich 1979 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
12159 At Seventy May Sarton 1984 American English
1002 Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko 1977 American English
1796 Collected Stories Isaac Bashevis Singer 1982 Polish English
395 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
803 Sophie's Choice William Styron 1979 American English
3244 The Thurber Carnival James Thurber 1945 American English
854 Cane Jean Toomer 1923 American English
7926 Letters From The Earth Mark Twain 1962 American English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
10628 United States Gore Vidal 1993 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
347 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West 1939 American English
11436 Philadelphia fire John Edgar Wideman 1990 American English
3515 In the American Grain William Carlos Williams 1925 American English
1872 To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson 1940 American English
7705 You Can't Go Home Again Thomas Wolfe 1940 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
13746 Songs My Mother Taught Me Wakako Yamauchi 1994 American English