The Greatest Books of All Time Set in United States

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
143 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
168 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
170 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
187 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene 1940 British English
189 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
259 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 1959 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
271 The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899 American English
273 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni 1827 Italian Italian
274 The Stand Stephen King 1978 American English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
291 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
308 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 1970 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
312 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
347 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West 1939 American English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
362 Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor 1952 American English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
407 The World According to Garp John Irving 1978 American English
411 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
418 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
433 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 1970 American English
434 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
437 Passing Nella Larsen 1929 American English
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
441 The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon 1966 American English
443 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2013 Nigerian English