Cart's Top 200 Adult Books for Young Adults
This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
Book, 201 Books
"Michael Cart, former YALSA president and the best-selling author of Young Adult Literature, applies his considerable expertise as one of the nation's leading experts on YA literature to identify exceptional adult books"
In his own words: "I started by revisiting the adult books I had reviewed since 1994... to search back issues of the three major youth review media, Booklist, School Library Journal, and VOYA. I consulted other book lists and readers’ guides and surveyed lists of award-winning books; I browsed in bookstores, got lost in the maze that is Amazon.com...followed by winnowing and discarding, until I had assembled the list of two hundred fiction and nonfiction titles".
Total is 126 fiction and 77 non fiction, the total is 203 as he treated certain works as one, e.g. Cormac McCarthy's works are discussed/treated separately but then counted as the Border Trilogy.
This list was originally published in 2013 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3609 | Winter's Bone | Daniel Woodrell | 2006 | American | English | |
| 13259 | Wonder When You’ll Miss Me | Amanda Davis | 2003 | American | English | |
| 13220 | The Year Of Ice | Brian Malloy | 2002 | American | English | |
| 14138 | Youth In Revolt | M. D. Payne | Unknown | Unknown | ||
| 13716 | Age Of Bronze | Eric Shanower | 2007 | American | English | |
| 2698 | All Over But The Shoutin' | Rick Bragg | 1997 | American | English | |
| 6590 | American Shaolin | Matthew Polly | 2007 | American | English | |
| 13886 | American Voyeur | Benoit Denizet-Lewis | 2009 | American | English | |
| 12470 | And The Pursuit Of Happiness | Maira Kalman | 2010 | American | English | |
| 1643 | Angela's Ashes | Frank McCourt | 1996 | American | English | |
| 13886 | Anne Frank | Francine Prose | 2009 | American | English | |
| 14025 | Ardency | Kevin Young | 2011 | American | English | |
| 12149 | Awkward And Definition | Ariel Schrag | 1997 | American | English | |
| 12588 | Potential | Ariel Schrag | 2000 | American | English | |
| 13772 | Likewise | Ariel Schrag | 2008 | American | English | |
| 13772 | Beautiful Boy | David Sheff | 2008 | American | English | |
| 3282 | Blankets | Craig Thompson | 2003 | American | English | |
| 13971 | The Bridge | David Remnick | 2010 | Unknown | English | |
| 13567 | Butterfly Boy | Rigoberto González | 2006 | American | English | |
| 11610 | The Complete Calvin And Hobbes | Bill Watterson | 2005 | American | English | |
| 13340 | Candyfreak | Steve Almond | 2004 | American | English | |
| 4588 | Columbine | Dave Cullen | 2009 | American | English | |
| 12588 | Counting Coup | Larry Colton | 2000 | American | English | |
| 1542 | The Devil In The White City | Erik Larson | 2003 | American | English | |
| 13971 | Doonesbury And The Art Of G.B. Trudeau | Brian Walker | 2010 | American | English | |
| 6444 | Eaarth | Bill McKibben | 2010 | American | English | |
| 3494 | Eating Animals | Jonathan Safran Foer | 2009 | American | English | |
| 12251 | The Endurance | Caroline Alexander | 1998 | Unknown | English | |
| 5344 | Epileptic | David B | 1996 | French | French | |
| 13886 | Essential Pleasures | Robert Pinsky | 2009 | American | English | |
| 11620 | Every Living Thing | James Herriot | 1992 | British | English | |
| 5573 | Fast Food Nation | Eric Schlosser | 2001 | American | English | |
| 11937 | Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun | Geoffrey Canada | 1995 | American | English | |
| 1060 | Fun Home | Alison Bechdel | 2006 | American | English | |
| 12588 | Geeks | Jon Katz | 2000 | American | English | |
| 13886 | Googled | Ken Auletta | 2009 | American | English | |
| 12438 | High Exposure | David Breashears | 1999 | American | English | |
| 9592 | I Am An Emotional Creature | Eve Ensler | 2010 | American | English | |
| 11488 | I Shall Not Be Moved | Maya Angelou | 1990 | American | English | |
| 12588 | The Ice Master | Jennifer Niven | 2000 | American | English | |
| 1817 | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot | 2010 | American | English | |
| 10057 | In the Heart of the Sea | Nathaniel Philbrick | 2000 | American | English | |
| 2424 | Into Thin Air | Jon Krakauer | 1997 | American | English | |
| 13513 | Jesus Land | Julia Scheeres | 2005 | American | English | |
| 13567 | Johnny Cash | Reinhard Kleist | 2006 | German | German | |
| 10883 | Kampung Boy | Lat | 1979 | Malaysian | Malay | |
| 12470 | The Last Boy | Jane Leavy | 2010 | American | English | |
| 13772 | Logicomix | Apostolos Doxiadis | 2008 | Greek | English | |
| 5267 | A Long Way Gone | Ishmael Beah | 2007 | Sierra Leonean | English | |
| 13886 | Louisa May Alcott | Harriet Reisen | 2009 | Unknown | English | |
| 11860 | Makes Me Wanna Holler | Nathan McCall | 1994 | American | English | |
| 1895 | Me Talk Pretty One Day | David Sedaris | 2000 | American | English | |
| 13340 | Name All The Animals | Alison Smith | 2004 | American | English | |
| 12251 | Needles | Andie Dominick | 1998 | American | English | |
| 1204 | Nickel And Dimed | Barbara Ehrenreich | 2001 | American | English | |
| 13513 | The Norton Anthology Of Latino Literature | Ilan Stavans | 2005 | Multiple | English | |
| 13220 | One Hundred Demons | Lynda Barry | 2002 | American | English | |
| 5374 | Packing For Mars | Mary Roach | 2010 | American | English | |
| 3261 | The Perfect Storm | Sebastian Junger | 1997 | American | English | |
| 670 | Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | 2000 | French | French | |
| 4996 | Persepolis Two | Marjane Satrapi | 2004 | Iranian | French | |
| 13259 | The Photographer | Emmanuel Guibert | 2003 | French | English | |
| 13340 | The Radioactive Boy Scout | Ken Silverstein | 2004 | American | English | |
| 13340 | Rats | Robert Sullivan | 2004 | American | English | |
| 12251 | Rocket Boys | Homer Hickam | 1998 | American | English | |
| 12149 | The Secret Family | David Bodanis | 1997 | Unknown | English | |
| 6352 | The Shallows | Nicolas Carr | 2010 | American | English | |
| 13259 | She’s Not There | Jennifer Finney Boylan | 2003 | American | English | |
| 12251 | Ship Of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea | Gary Kinder | 1998 | American | English | |
| 8972 | A Short History Of Nearly Everything | Bill Bryson | 2003 | American | English | |
| 13259 | The Spoken Word Revolution | Mark Eleveld | 2003 | Unknown | English | |
| 13886 | Stitches | David Small | 2009 | American | English | |
| 11860 | Swimming To Antarctica | Lynne Cox | 1994 | American | English | |
| 2670 | This Boy's Life | Tobias Wolff | 1989 | American | English | |
| 3171 | The Tipping Point | Malcolm Gladwell | 2000 | American | English | |
| 13259 | True Notebooks | Mark Salzman | 2003 | American | English | |
| 13716 | Tweak | Nic Sheff | 2007 | American | English | |
| 11417 | Waiting for Snow in Havana | Carlos Eire | 2003 | Cuban | English | |
| 11812 | When I Was Puerto Rican | Esmeralda Santiago | 1993 | American | English | |
| 12251 | Almost A Woman | Esmeralda Santiago | 1998 | American | English | |
| 11292 | You Are Not A Gadget | Jaron Lanier | 2010 | American | English |