100 Best Americana Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best americana books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Featuring recommendations from Oprah Winfrey, Malcolm Gladwell, Walter Isaacson, and 237 other experts.
1

To Kill a Mockingbird

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and...
more

Eric BerkowitzThe case is about racism, but it’s also about white sexual fear of the black man, and the failed effort of white America to stop intermixing. I think the notion of the scary black man still permeates the American justice system today. I don’t think To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever, but it is a very good window into the ingrained sexual fear that permeated at... (Source)

Scott TurowIt’s dated in many ways; it’s extremely sentimental. But it’s beautifully done – you can’t take a thing away from it. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonReally liking this one so far. I’m sure a lot of people here probably read it in high school or whatever, but it wasn’t on the Danish curriculum, so here I am! (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2

The Great Gatsby

A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married. less

Barack ObamaWhen he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.” (Source)

Bill GatesMelinda and I really like [this book]. When we were first dating, she had a green light that she would turn on when her office was empty and it made sense for me to come over. (Source)

Marvin LiaoFor Non-Business, I'd have to say Dune (Herbert), Emergency (Strauss), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) or Flint (L'Amour). I re-read these books every year because they are just so well written & great stories that I get new perspective & details every time I read them. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3

The Catcher in the Rye

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this... more

Bill GatesOne of my favorite books ever. (Source)

Woody AllenIt was such a relief from the other books I was reading at the time, which all had a quality of homework to them. (Source)

Chigozie ObiomaHe sees everybody as phony because they take life too seriously. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4

Educated

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no...
more

Bill GatesTara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I never thought I’d relate to a story about growing up in a Mormon survivalist household, but she’s such a good writer that she got me to reflect on my own life while reading about her extreme childhood. Melinda and I loved this memoir of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a Ph.D.... (Source)

Barack ObamaAs 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Alexander StubbIf you read or listen to only one book this summer, this is it. Bloody brilliant! Every word, every sentence. Rarely do I go through a book with such a rollecoaster of emotion, from love to hate. Thank you for sharing ⁦@tarawestover⁩ #Educated https://t.co/GqLaqlcWMp (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5

The Grapes of Wrath

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic...
more

Elizabeth Tsurkov@Maysaloon great book! (Source)

Jonathan EvisonThis is the great American novel for me—the humanity, the landscapes, the progressive and political and social ethos of the novel, not to mention the amazing characters. Steinbeck is the American Dickens, at least in terms of social consciousness. (Source)

John KerryWhile there is a story that takes place between characters, the hardship and unfairness is a central element of the book. It shows how fiction can create progressive change as well. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

6

East of Eden

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most... more

Oprah WinfreyIt's the perfect summer read...a novel so rich and full of drama you won't be able to turn the pages fast enough! (Source)

John Lilly@ben_mathes @kevinakwok @samhinkie @aweissman Amazing book. Ive always liked it better than Grapes of Wrath. (Source)

Steve BenjaminsMy favorite non-business book is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I think all of John Steinbeck’s books are uplifting. He sees the best in humanity and it leaves me feeling warm and generous. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

7
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a... more

Walter IsaacsonRead [this book]. (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Michael VossI enjoy nearly everything Mark Twain ever wrote, but my favorite is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel showcases Twain at the top of his game in terms of acerbic wit, sharp societal observations and the use of regional dialects - for which he initially garnered great criticism, before the passage of time enabled critics to understand and acknowledge its authenticity. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

8

In Cold Blood

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. At the center of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be...
more

Lynda La PlanteOne of the reasons I like this true crime novelisation is down to the fact it was so out of character for Capote and took everyone by surprise. It is also an excellent, almost biographical, insight into the two young killers’ minds. (Source)

Ben ShapiroTruman Capote's best book. It's a really, really good book. (Source)

R J ElloryI think in all honesty it is one of the finest books ever written. It took him six years to finish it because he had to wait for the court case and the final verdict which was the two perpetrators being executed. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

9
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story...
more

Bill GatesThe disadvantaged world of poor white Appalachia described in this terrific, heartbreaking book is one that I know only vicariously. Vance was raised largely by his loving but volatile grandparents, who stepped in after his father abandoned him and his mother showed little interest in parenting her son. Against all odds, he survived his chaotic, impoverished childhood only to land at Yale Law... (Source)

Ryan HolidayIn terms of other surprising memoirs, I found JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to be another well-written gem. (Source)

Ben ShapiroA very well-written book. [...] The whole thing is a critique of individual decisions. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

10

Of Mice and Men

The compelling story of two outsiders striving to find their place in an unforgiving world.

Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie have nothing in the world except each other and a dream -- a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California’s Salinas Valley, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie, struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy, becomes a victim of his own strength.

Tackling universal themes such as the friendship of a shared vision,...
more
Recommended by Barack Obama, Steve Benjamins, and 2 others.

Barack ObamaWhen he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.” (Source)

Steve BenjaminsI think all of John Steinbeck’s books are uplifting. He sees the best in humanity and it leaves me feeling warm and generous. I always love this paragraph in Of Mice and Men that hints at the tension between business and humanity: "It has always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honestly, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11

The Road

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the...
more

Oprah WinfreyIt's got everything that's grabbing the headlines in America right now. It's about race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the us-versus-them mentality. And underneath it all, pumps the heart and soul of family love, the pursuit of happiness, and what home really means. (Source)

James MillerIt is such a powerful story … against an utterly bleak scenario you have the father and the son, and the novel builds up this incredibly emotive relationship. (Source)

Mark BoyleIn my view, The Road is the greatest novel ever written, and McCarthy one of the most important writers of the last hundred years. Its bleakness is interspersed with sentences so beautiful I wept. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

12

Between the World and Me

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER [[ LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD [[ Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by "the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States" (The New York Observer)

"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it."

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates...
more

Barack ObamaThe president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Jack DorseyQ: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

Doug McMillonHere are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

13

The Help

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss...
more
Recommended by Twin Mummy And Daddy, and 1 others.

Twin Mummy And DaddyI love a good book and The Help is exactly that! In fact it’s an amazing book! Read my review over on the blog today! https://t.co/efaf9aRGOK #TheHelp #KathrynStockett #bookreview #bookblogger #mummybloggers #daddybloggers #pbloggers #mbloggers @UKpbloggers @UKBloggers1 #books (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

14

On the Road

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.

Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a...
more
Recommended by Ev Williams, Bogdan Iordache, and 2 others.

Bogdan IordacheMy favourite book is "On the road" by Jack Kerouac. Apart from being probably one of the best well written books in the world, I appreciate Kerouac's philosophy to dedicate himself entirely to what was important to him, something that I have applied in my life as much as possible. I've simplified my life in many ways, and stay focused on what I think it's really important. For Jack it was the... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

15

Little Women

A beautiful unabridged 150th Anniversary Edition with 200 original illustrations and a Foreword by Alice L. George entitled "Why Little Women Endures 150 Years Later."

Little Women was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. This edition contains both volumes. It follows the lives of the four March sisters--Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy-- from childhood to womanhood and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Although Little Women was a novel for girls, it differed notably from the current writings for children, especially...
more

Amy ChuaMarmee is a character that really resonates for me. She’s obviously not Chinese, but she believes that integrity and hard work are the most important things in life. She holds her daughters to very high standards. She doesn’t sugarcoat much. She also reveals to her rebellious daughter Jo, the star of the book and a character loosely modeled on Louisa May Alcott herself, that she had a bad temper... (Source)

Anne Thériault@mmarmoset I love that book so much, and then I got to see Patty Smith perform the year I read it, and she made a Little Women reference during the show, and my heart overflowed (Source)

Jay KleinbergNancy Drew is another series which follows in those footsteps. The book is all led by her. I think if one looks in the magazine literature it would be hard to find a similar character at that time. These were stories initially published in a magazine and then bound together as a book. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

16

Slaughterhouse-Five

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. less

Carlos EireEven though he is no philosopher Vonnegut is still able to ask the questions that all of us think about – how time affects our lives. (Source)

Dan Christensen@MetaHumean Love that book. (Source)

Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

17
First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic—an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this tenth anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece by the one, the only, Neil Gaiman.

A storm is coming . . .

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day...
more

Ricky WhittleNobody can break my family.I’m proud to be apart of this diverse cast & crew who are working their butts off to deliver a fantastic season 3 continuing to tell Shadows story and the awesome characters he meets along the way as in @neilhimself incredible book #readit #details🤔 https://t.co/PahPC9j3HB (Source)

Scott JohnsonAmerican Gods by Neil Gaiman. This is a brilliant thought experiment about what happens to a god when its believers stop believing. My preferred edition is the 10th Anniversary release with expanded text. (Source)

Marko RakarBasically, first of all, I am a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy books and I grew up with Douglas Adams and Arthur C Clarke. For me, this is the best of Gaiman’s books and I’ve got all of them. It’s set in the present time and talks about settlers who have settled a continent and have brought their gods with them. So, if you are Swedish and you cherish Nordic gods and move to the US, the... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

18

Americanah

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Source: chimamanda.com
less

Barack ObamaAs 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Angelica Ross@WarnerMediaGrp @tressiemcphd @Lupita_Nyongo @DanaiGurira LOVE THIS BOOK! Can’t wait for this!!!! (Source)

Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

19

Stoner

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within... more
Recommended by Simon Winchester, and 1 others.

Simon WinchesterIt is a story of intellectual determination and the ability of a man to find love simply in what he does. It is a book about love of learning. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

20

Where the Crawdads Sing

A novel about a young woman determined to make her way in the wilds of North Carolina, and the two men that will break her isolation open.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark.

But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes...
more
Recommended by Reese Witherspoon, Kris Crocker, and 2 others.

Reese WitherspoonGreat article about the success of Where the Crawdads Sing. Did you read the book? ⁦@ReesesBookClub⁩ 🤗 https://t.co/w1ZgQLRzsx (Source)

Kris Crocker@spokanelibrary I love this book!! (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
21

Gone with the Wind

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the...
more

Ted TurnerI enjoyed "Gone with the Wind" and history books of all types. (Source)

Annie Parker@mariesornin @Twitter @goodreads @colinismyname @lonelyplanet @AmazonKindle @nytimestravel @TravelLeisure @Delta @BNBuzz Shantaram, The Beach, Round Ireland with a Fridge, and please read Gone with the Wind (not really a travel book but very awesome & needs a good chunk of time!) (Source)

Kris ReidI’m a hopeless romantic, Gone With the Wind is an epic love story based around a tale of an empowered woman struggling to success in a time of extreme adversity. There is a reason it’s a classic! (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

22

Moby-Dick

Journey to the heart of the sea with this larger-than-life classic.

Regarded as a Great American Novel, "Moby Dick" is the ultimate tale of seeking vengeance.

Narrated by the crew member Ishmael, this epic whaling adventure follows the crew of the "Pequod," as its captain, Ahab, descends deeper and deeper into madness on his quest to find and kill the white whale that maimed him. Beyond the surface--of ship life, whaling, and the hunt for the elusive Moby Dick--are allegorical references to life--and even the universe--in this masterpiece by Herman Melville.
more

Steve JobsJobs told me that "Moby-Dick" was among his favorite books and he reread it a lot when he was a teen. (Source)

Barack ObamaAccording to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. (Source)

Rebecca GoldsteinI actually have quite an idiosyncratic reading of this great metaphysical masterpiece. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

23

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea, an apparently simple fable, represents the mature Hemingway at his best. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature soon after its publication, and half a century later it is still one of his most read books. less

Jack DorseyI keep coming back to it. I love the straightforwardness, the tightness, and the poetry. I think it shows a common struggle that is repeated over and over in so many narratives both fictional and nonfictional. (Source)

Jordan B PetersonThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/7dJE4Pfn56, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

May WitwitI taught this book to my students in Iraq during the economic sanctions. And I feel like it gave me some kind of strength to continue. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

24

Lolita

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's...
more

Richard CohenIt’s more imbued with references to the sun and using the sun as symbol or metaphor – almost a kind of character in the novel – than any other work in literature. (Source)

Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)

Steven AmsterdamWhat’s spectacular for me is the triumph of the humour over his loathsomeness. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

25
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a...
more
Recommended by Lawrence Kaplan, and 1 others.

Lawrence KaplanIt’s a beautifully written book and I would suggest it for anyone interested in why American foreign policy matters. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

26

Beloved

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement...
more

Esi EdugyanI was shocked by the blunt force of its subject matter and its exquisitely torqued prose. It remains one of my most adored novels. (Source)

Bianca Belair@ylc130 I went to the library when I was in the 3rd grade and read Beloved... I remember being so confused and my Mama having to explain it to me... I later read it as an adult and it hit me completely different. GREAT BOOK! (Source)

Farah Jasmine GriffinBeloved was Morrison’s fifth novel. It’s a gripping story, inspired by a famous abolitionist case, the true story of a woman who runs away from slavery with her children, but when the slave catchers catch up with her, she kills one of her own and tries to kill the others, rather than returning them to slavery. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

27

The Color Purple

The Color Purple is a classic. With over a million copies sold in the UK alone, it is hailed as one of the all-time 'greats' of literature, inspiring generations of readers.

Set in the deep American South between the wars, it is the tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker - a woman who has taken charge of her...
more
Recommended by Emma Watson, and 1 others.

See more recommendations for this book...

28

Middlesex

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal."

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days...
more
Recommended by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Alex Stojkovic, and 2 others.

Lisa Feldman BarrettEugenides does a really nice job of illustrating the complexity of emotional life, the emotional life that doesn’t necessarily fall into neat categories. (Source)

Alex StojkovicI don’t. But I would. Books love to be used up. (Related: Middlesex is the best book I read in 2019. If you’re look… (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

29

The Glass Castle

A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

30
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light— these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. less
Recommended by Richard Branson, and 1 others.

Richard BransonI wanted to include an older book that has been on my bookshelves for decades, and is a less obvious example of reading to lead. John Steinbeck took a road trip with his dog Charley for company across the length and breadth of the US, and recorded what he saw, who he met and what he learned. With his inimitable charm, it opens your eyes to the small pleasures of life, and the great wonders of... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
31

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with... more
Recommended by Stephen Dubner, Tracy Chevalier, and 2 others.

Stephen DubnerI read it over and over in part because I felt it was describing to me what my parents’ life was like when they were kids. (Source)

Tracy ChevalierIt’s about an Irish-American family living in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 20th century. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

32

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is...
more

Bryony GordonAs a teenage girl, you have to read The Bell Jar. It’s a rite of passage. (Source)

The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form)One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 (Source)

Tim KendallDespite its subject matter, The Bell Jar is often a very funny novel. Perhaps we miss it because the pall of Plath’s biography descends across the whole work and reputation. But The Bell Jar is viciously funny. There are people still alive today who won’t talk about it because they were so badly hurt by Plath’s portrayal of them. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

33
The novel follows the lives of the title characters, a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born writer named Sam Clay—both Jewish—before, during, and after World War II. Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the nascent comics industry during its "Golden Age." less

Anne Thériault@luzbianca417 Phew! I loved that book so much and then the ending I was just like .... what??? No one is making decisions with this child’s best interests in mind! (Source)

Natasha Lyonne@sepinwall I love this book so much. ♥️ (Source)

Sean Seton-RogersSprawling, well researched, historical story. A true pleasure to read. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

34

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? It’s something every child should experience and every child will love. From Tom’s sly trickery with the whitewashed fence—when he cleverly manipulates everyone so they happily do his work for him—to his and Becky Thatcher’s calamities in Bat Cave, the enjoyment just never ends. The illustrations for this series were created by Scott McKowen, who, with his wife Christina Poddubiuk, operates Punch & Judy Inc., a company specializing in design and illustration for theater and performing arts. Their projects often... more
Recommended by Richard Branson, Ovidiu Drugan, and 2 others.

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Ovidiu DruganQuestion:What books had the biggest impact on you? (perhaps changed the way you see things, dramatically changed your career path) Answer: Dune – Frank Herbert Write It Down, Make It Happen – Henriette Anne Klauser Two years vacations – Jules Verne (and all the well known books) – navigation & cast away story The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey Huckleberry Finn – Mark... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

35
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that 'The Devil in the White City' is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.

Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to...
more
Recommended by Melissa Jacobs, and 1 others.

Melissa Jacobs@Turk0219 Agree, that book was amazing! (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

36

The Secret History

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil. less

Kelly Ellis@elanpin @Nicole_Cliffe Like a favorite song, just thinking about this book immediately takes me back to the point in my life when I first read it. I really enjoyed The Goldfinch, as well. (Source)

Jess Brammar@StigAbell Love that book (Source)

Dave ChildIn my 20s, it would have been The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It's a shame you can only read a book for the first time once, because this doesn't fare so well the second time around, when you already know what happens. I'm not sure I've found another book quite like it since, but then I'm not really sure what sort of book it is. It isn't a murder mystery, except when it is. It isn't a crime... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

37

The Corrections

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award
An American Library Association Notable Book

Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies...
more
Recommended by Oprah Winfrey, Ev Williams, and 2 others.

Oprah WinfreyThe Correctionsis a grandly entertaining novel for the new century —a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious and deeply humane, it confirms that Jonathan Franzen is one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and American soul (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

38
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where...
more
Recommended by Jacqueline Novogratz, and 1 others.

Jacqueline NovogratzReads like a novel while giving a deeper understanding of both the good and the terrible that humans are capable of. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

39

Catch-22

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Now a Hulu limited series starring Christopher Abbott, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie.

Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the...
more

Mark BittmanI used to buy [this book] for a lot of people because I just thought if you hadn’t read it, you had to but maybe that era is over. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

40

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Read the cult-favorite coming of age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic.

The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and...
more

Richard Speight Jr.A pal for 30 years, @StephenChbosky ‘s first book #ThePerksofBeingaWallflower had a MASSIVE impact on me & countless others. Then came his great movies. Now..THE NEXT BOOK! Be like me & buy it THE DAY it comes out. (Then harass him until he agrees to put me in the movie! 🎥 🤠) https://t.co/02bMKPgF9A (Source)

Jamie GraysonHoly shit there’s no way this book is that old because that really ages me but I COMPLETELY agree. This book is a masterpiece and a must-read. Lessons about being human are in there and those are important right now. https://t.co/fF1spEFrUH (Source)

Rae EarlIt is a tremendously powerful study of PTSD, a mental health issue that isn’t talked about enough (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
41

The Underground Railroad

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere...
more

Barack ObamaJust like us, the president enjoys a good beach read while relaxing in the sun. In 2016, he released his list of summer vacation books: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins Seveneves, Neal Stephenson The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Source)

Joshua M. BrownChicago Tribune called @colsonwhitehead “the best living American novelist.” Really blown away by the writing in this, first book of his I’ve read. https://t.co/ePhD64ZPR5 (Source)

Bogdana ButnarCurrently reading two things: one is The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, which is a Man Booker nominee, and to be very honest, I'm just reading this because it's really good so my expectation is to just get the sheer satisfaction of a good piece of fiction. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

42

Fahrenheit 451

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television 'family'. But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people did not live in fear and to a present...
more
Recommended by Timothy Ferriss, Ryan Holiday, and 2 others.

Timothy FerrissThis classic work on state censorship remains as relevant in today’s world of digital delights as it was when published in the black-and-white world of 1953. In a futuristic American city, firefighter Guy Montag does not put out blazes; instead, he extinguishes knowledge and promotes ignorance by conducting state decreed book burnings. After an elderly woman chooses a fiery death with her books... (Source)

Ryan HolidayI’m not sure what compelled me to pick Fahrenheit 451 back up but I’m so glad I did because I was able to see the book in a very different context. Bradbury’s message (made explicit in his 50th Anniversary Afterword) is much less a warning against government control and much more about a road to hell paved by people attempting to rid the world of offensive speech and conflicting ideas. In a world... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

43
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

Publisher's Note: The 25th Anniversary Edition has been reset, causing the text to reflow. Page references...
more

Jocko WillinkThe other book that I've read multiple times is Blood Meridian [by Cormac McCarthy]. (Source)

Esi EdugyanA difficult read that I savour for its wondrous prose and stark vision of humanity. (Source)

Robert MacfarlaneIt’s wild in the astonishing indifference of the desert landscape to human practice – McCarthy evokes this more purely than any other writer. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

44
All the Pretty Horses tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons—beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. less

Meg RosoffA book that explores that whole subject of finding out where you belong in the world, which is not a search that starts and ends between 18 and 21. (Source)

Devon SawaThis is the best book I’ve ever read. https://t.co/AUJLuRAadm (Source)

Daniel ButtnerCormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, specifically The Border Trilogy. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

45

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead... less
Recommended by Sarah Perry, Lucy Atkins, and 2 others.

Sarah PerryThis is a masterpiece in atmosphere and Gothic empathy. It challenges your idea about what wickedness is. (Source)

Lucy AtkinsIt has a barely contained, unhinged feel to it that I find completely gripping. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

46

Nine Stories

Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor". (Nine Stories is the U.S. title; the book is published in many other countries as For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories.)

The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé – with...
more
Recommended by Ben Stiller, and 1 others.

Ben StillerWhen I was a teenager, my mother gave me [this book]. The story 'For Esmé—with Love and Squalor' affected me deeply. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

47

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. less
Recommended by Bill Earner, Matthew O’Brien, and 2 others.

Bill EarnerMy favorites [novels] are 100 Years of Solitude, All the King's Men, The Last Samurai, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Source)

Matthew O’BrienIt’s one of my favourite books and probably my favourite Las Vegas-related book. Hunter S Thompson came out here in the early 70s to cover the Mint 400 off-road race for Sports Illustrated. He ended up writing a 10,000-word riff on his visit. In 1971, Jann Wenner ultimately published two long sections of it in Rolling Stone. Those two stories were the foundation for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

48
This lyrical, evocative, thought-provoking journal of a man's quest for truth - and for himself - has touched and changed an entire generation, and is ready to reach out to a new one. At its heart, the story is all too simple: a man and his son take a motorcycle trip across America. But this is not a simple trip at all, for around every corner, through mountain and desert, wind and rain, and searing heat and biting cold, their pilgrimage leads them to new vistas of self-discovery and renewal.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an elemental work that has helped to...
more

Brad FeldI think every entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur should read the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was written in the 1970s by a guy named Robert Pirsig. It was his first book, it's kind of a hippie philosophy treatised journey. The word that sort of came out of it was Chautauqua, he's like having a conversation with his son as they do a motorcycle trip across the country, and... (Source)

Drew Houston[There are] engineers who [dismiss] all these things that can’t be fit into an algorithm, or that don’t have some kind of mathematical rigor underpinning them, [this book] is about that question. (Source)

Tyler CowenHonorable mentions: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Joy of Sex, all given to me by my mother. I believe they helped inculcate some of the 1960s-70s ethos of individual freedom into my thinking. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

49

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.

With THE SCARLET LETTER, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and...
more
Recommended by Carol Gilligan, and 1 others.

Carol GilliganThe Scarlet Letter is a tragic love story, but it’s also a story about resistance and transformation. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

50

Invisible Man

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.

As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist...
more

Barack ObamaAs a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller. (Source)

Jacqueline NovogratzI read it as a 22-year-old, and it made me think deeply about how society doesn’t “see” so many of its members. (Source)

Dan BarreiroRiveting time capsule material. Literary giant Ellison on the blues, on race, on his powerful book, Invisible Man. https://t.co/iS6xQ7ojE8 (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
51
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the...
more

Bill GatesI loved Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and highly recommend this one too. (Source)

Barack ObamaThe Oval office can be a lonely place, so reading about your forefather’s experience could only help. “The biographies have been useful, because I do think that there’s a tendency, understandable, to think that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” said President Obama in an interview. (Source)

Kobe BryantI loved Team of Rivals, and Leadership really built on the things I had taken away from that book. Moving from basketball to building a company, I needed to learn new and different leadership skills, and Goodwin outlines the different skill-sets of Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and Lyndon Johnson, accessibly. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

52

Fight Club

"THE FIRST RULE ABOUT FIGHT CLUB IS YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT CLUB."

Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support...
more
Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Van Badham, and 2 others.

Ryan HolidayI’m amazed how many young people haven’t read this book. Truly life-changing. This is the classic of my generation; it is the book that defines our age and ultimately, how to find meaning in it. It’s a cautionary tale too—about being too caught up in revolutionary ideas. (Source)

Van BadhamSUPER EXCITED to receive my copy of “Solved! How Other Countries Have Cracked the World’s Biggest Problems and We Can, Too” by Andrew Wear. SO GREAT to read a political book that’s about both pragmatic action *and* hope. Squee! #auspol https://t.co/jIYgr36kZO (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

53

Breakfast at Tiffany's

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

This edition also contains three stories: 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory'.
less
Recommended by Merve Emre, and 1 others.

Merve EmreSo much of that novella is about personality, and about the way one is liberated by personality or burdened by it. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

54
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets... more
Recommended by Carl Zimmer, A.J. Jacobs, and 2 others.

Carl ZimmerYes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

55
After more than three decades, the peerless wit and indulgent absurdity of A Confederacy of Dunces continues to attract new readers. Though the manuscript was rejected by many publishers during Toole's lifetime, his mother successfully published the book years after her son's suicide, and it won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This literary underdog and comic masterpiece has sold more than two million copies in twenty-three languages.



The 35th anniversary edition of A Confederacy of Dunces celebrates Toole's novel as well as one of the most memorable...
more

Jerrod CarmichaelThe language is so good. (Source)

Jesse WilliamsF*cking funny, vivid, and adventurous. Sometimes that’s what we need. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

56

No Country for Old Men

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.

As Moss tries...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

57

Walden

At Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau reflected on simpler living in the natural world. By removing himself from the distractions of materialism, Thoreau hoped to not only improve his spiritual life but also gain a better understanding of society through solitary introspection.

In Walden, Thoreau condenses his two-year, two-month, two-day stay into a single year, using the four seasons to symbolize human development—a cycle of life shared by both nature and man. A celebration of personal renewal through self-reliance, independence, and simplicity, composed for all of us living...
more

Laura Dassow WallsThe book that we love as Walden began in the journal entries that he wrote starting with his first day at the pond. (Source)

Roman KrznaricIn 1845 the American naturalist went out to live in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Thoreau was one of the great masters of the art of simple living. (Source)

John KaagThere’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

58

The Handmaid's Tale

Before The Testaments, there was The Handmaid’s Tale: an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times).

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the...
more

Grady BoochI read this several years ago but — much like Orwell’s 1984 — it seems particularly relevant given our current political morass. (Source)

Cliff Bleszinski@HandmaidsOnHulu Done. Love the show, book is a classic, can't wait for season 2. (Source)

Jason Kottke@procload Not super necessary, since you've seen the TV show. This first book is still a great read though...different than the show (tone-wise more than plot-wise). (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

59

Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest is the name of a movie said to be so entertaining that anyone who watches it loses all desire to do anything but watch. People die happily, viewing it in endless repetition. The novel Infinite Jest is the story of this addictive entertainment, and in particular how it affects a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts and a nearby tennis academy, whose students have many budding addictions of their own. As the novel unfolds, various individuals, organisations, and governments vie to obtain the master copy of Infinite Jest for their own ends, and the denizens of... more
Recommended by Chad Harbach, Rebecca Goldstein, and 2 others.

Chad HarbachI think Infinite Jest is the major American novel of the past 25 years…It’s the book on which his reputation will rest, and I think people are going to read it for a long time. (Source)

Rebecca GoldsteinIt’s an extraordinary book…One of the things that he is examining in the novel is the various games that we play, many of them recursive. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

60

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the civil rights movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the 1960s. As voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one voice sounded more urgently, more passionately, than the rest. Malcolm X—once called the most dangerous man in America—challenged the world to listen and learn the truth as he experienced it. And his enduring message is as relevant today as when he first delivered it.

In the...
more

Casey NeistatAside from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Casey's favorite book is The Second World War by John Keegan. (Source)

Ryan HolidayI forget who said it but I heard someone say that Catcher in the Rye was to young white boys what the Autobiography of Malcolm X was to young black boys. Personally, I prefer that latter over the former. I would much rather read about and emulate a man who is born into adversity and pain, struggles with criminality, does prison time, teaches himself to read through the dictionary, finds religion... (Source)

Keith EllisonMalcolm X is somebody that everybody in America’s prisons today could look at and say, ‘You know what, I can emerge, I can evolve' (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
61

Lonesome Dove

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize— winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

Series in order of...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

62

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. less
Recommended by Farah Jasmine Griffin, and 1 others.

Farah Jasmine GriffinHurston gives us one of the first true love stories in African American writing. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

63

Portnoy's Complaint

The famous confession of Alexander Portnoy, who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Hilariously funny, boldly intimate, startlingly candid, Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel...
more
Recommended by Kushanava Choudhury, and 1 others.

Kushanava ChoudhuryThe paradigmatic novel of New Jersey for me is Portnoy’s Complaint. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

64

Just Kids

In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry. less

Malcolm GladwellI finished it in one sitting, then wept. It's that good. (Source)

Seth GodinThis is the single best audiobook ever recorded by Patti Smith. It is not going to change the way you do business, but it might change the way you live. It's about love and loss and art. (Source)

Academic BatgirlThis book helped me to see how my life as an academic is artful and creative, and gave me renewed faith in embracing risks, innovation, and taking on art with love and strength even when it’s frustrating or “success” is not assured. Recommend! 8/end https://t.co/tkWtSVY6b9 (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

65

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
 
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s...
more

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Bianca BelairFor #BlackHistoryMonth I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 5th Book: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By: Maya Angelou Another autobiography classic that will be hard to not find on any must- read book list! https://t.co/mGRG76lLRn (Source)

Julia EnthovenI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is beautifully written, and I really enjoy the voice of the protagonist and think it’s sad and fascinating to read about her time in history. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

66

Franny and Zooey

The short story, Franny, takes place in an unnamed college town and tells the tale of an undergraduate who is becoming disenchanted with the selfishness and inauthenticity she perceives all around her.

The novella, Zooey, is named for Zooey Glass, the second-youngest member of the Glass family. As his younger sister, Franny, suffers a spiritual and existential breakdown in her parents' Manhattan living room -- leaving Bessie, her mother, deeply concerned -- Zooey comes to her aid, offering what he thinks is brotherly love, understanding, and words of sage advice.
more

See more recommendations for this book...

67

Ask the Dust

Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer lodging in a seedy LA hotel. While basking in the glory of having had a single short story published in a small magazine, he meets local waitress Camilla Lopez and they embark on a strange and strained love-hate relationship. Slowly, but inexorably, it descends into the realm of madness.

Ask the Dust is one of the truly great, yet unsung, American novels of the twentieth century. A tough and unsentimental story with a soft and tender heart, it remains as fresh and affecting as the day it was written.
less

Neil Strauss[Neil Strauss recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans".] (Source)

Ryan HolidayI found John Fante through Neil Strauss, who considers Ask the Dustone of his favorite books. I read it in one day, LOVED it and subsequently read everything by Fante I could get my hands on. In 2011, I read seven Fante novels, one biography by his son and a book of letters between John and H.L Mencken. I utterly immersed myself in his world, from spending hours in Downtown LA where the books are... (Source)

Jonathan EvisonI won’t say this is the book that made me want to be a writer, because I always wanted to be that, but it solidified my insistence on becoming some hopelessly young, starving misfit awash in an urban landscape somewhere, working my ass off, just really throwing my heart out there and getting it kicked around. Ask the Dust is just a really powerful book for me. It’s a chronicle of the immigrant... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

68

Winesburg, Ohio

A modern American classic, Winesburg, Ohio mixed Sherwood Anderson's memories of his boyhood in Clyde, Ohio, and his observations in turn-of-the-century Chicago, where he wrote advertising copy. It was a book that, for its time, broke all conventions. Its introduction and twenty-one loosely connected stories defied the genteel tradition that omitted anything sexual, harsh, or abberant from print. It embraced frankness and truth and dealt with people whose deeply moving lives were filled with secrets. Here are the inhabitants of small-town America: young George Willard, the newspaper... more
Recommended by Simon Winchester, and 1 others.

Simon WinchesterIt was very modern and groundbreaking for its time, an entirely new form of writing. He draws about 20 portraits of people who lived in this mythical town. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

69

Little House on the Prairie (Little House, #2)

Classic tales by Laura Ingalls Wilder about life on the frontier and America's best-loved pioneer family. The sun-kissed prairie stretches out around the Ingalls family, smiling its welcome after their long, hard journey across America. But looks can be deceiving and they soon find that they must share the land with wild bears and Indians. Will there be enough land for all of them? Little House on the Prairie is the sequel to Little House in the Big Woods and On the Banks of Plum Creek. less
Recommended by Jean Webb, and 1 others.

Jean WebbIn this book a family has to negotiate and find out what the rules are for living in the wilds of the American West. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

70

Cannery Row

Cannery Row is a book without much of a plot. Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live "up the hill" in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme... more

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
71
"A wonderful, splendid book--a book that should be ready by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." --Howard Fast

With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home and the workplace.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research,...
more
Recommended by Lisa Ling, Alex Honnold, and 2 others.

Lisa LingI credit this book with propelling me to dig deeper, and to not always believe the narrative. (Source)

Alex HonnoldTotally changed the way I look at politics. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

72

Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a friend's copy of Tender Is the Night, "If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God's sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of faith." Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness.
In Tender Is...
more
Recommended by Leo Babauta, and 1 others.

See more recommendations for this book...

73
Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia. less

See more recommendations for this book...

74

The Sound and the Fury

This is an alternate cover ed. for ISBN 0679732241.

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
less

See more recommendations for this book...

75

Underworld

A finalist for the National Book Award, Don DeLillo’s most powerful and riveting novel—“a great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner” (San Francisco Chronicle)—Underworld is about the second half of the twentieth century in America and about two people, an artist and an executive, whose lives intertwine in New York in the fifties and again in the nineties.

With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor, “this is DeLillo’s most affecting novel…a dazzling, phosphorescent work of art”...
more
Recommended by Chad Harbach, Hermione Hoby, and 2 others.

Chad HarbachThis is DeLillo’s big, thick novel which ranges over several decades of American history. It’s a book about waste, about trash, about what society sweeps under the rug. But it begins with a long overture set in perhaps the most famous professional baseball game of all time – “The Shot Heard Round The World,” the famous home run hit by Bobby Thomson in 1951. It’s an incredibly virtuosic piece of... (Source)

Hermione HobyIt’s such an extraordinarily vast and all-reaching book. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

76

The Secret Life of Bees

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel... more

See more recommendations for this book...

77

Cat's Cradle

Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to...
more
Recommended by Ev Williams, Andy Stern, and 2 others.

Andy SternI think it's something that progressives need to think about, because the book talks a lot about two tendencies that people can adopt, to try to find meaning and purpose. One is kind of a sheer technological approach, and the other is more of a spiritual and religious approach. The book talks about the perils and challenges of each way. Sometimes we as progressives defend technology and science... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

78

The Plot Against America

In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.
more

Nate Bowling (Is Thankful For A/c)@Sifill_LDF @soledadobrien The first and best Philip Roth book I read was called "The Plot Against America." It's wild as hell to watch it unfold IRL. https://t.co/ZWLkHjs5a2 https://t.co/shcD2kJ3Zi (Source)

Steven AmsterdamThe best way to tell stories of horrific times is not through the central players amassing power, but through the lives of the people off to the side, simply trying to survive. (Source)

Sam BourneRoth’s what if? in this book is imagining that Roosevelt is no longer president, and Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist and anti-war politician, is president instead. So the idea is, What if America had stayed out of the war and was morally on the wrong side? (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

79

Half Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony,...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

80
The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America—majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way—and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in). less

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
81

The New York Trilogy

The remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels – from the author of 4 3 2 1: A Novel

The New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster’s work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.” Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

82

The Goldfinch

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this "extraordinary" and beloved Pulitzer Prize winner that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review).

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by a longing...
more
Recommended by Kaci Lambe Kai, and 1 others.

Kaci Lambe KaiMore modern, I recently read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and I love the way it was written. A great story brought to life with long, descriptive, sometimes frenetic sentences. She paints some scenes and some ideas that are unlike anything I've ever read. It's like watching magic on the page. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

83

Revolutionary Road

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model American couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is now about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only... more

See more recommendations for this book...

84
Based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams.

Little House in the Big Woods takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She shares the cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their lovable dog, Jack.

Pioneer life isn’t easy for the Ingalls...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

85

American Psycho

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and he works on Wall Street, he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to head-on collision with America's greatest dream—and its worst nightmare—American Psycho is bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognise but do not wish to confront. less
Recommended by Pavel Tsatsouline, Jay McInerney, and 2 others.

Pavel TsatsoulineMost people exist between the on and off switch. They are unable to turn on and put out high power, and they are unable to turn off completely and enjoy true rest. To learn how to control your on and off switch, read the book Psych by Dr. Judd Biasiotto. He is one of the most successful power lifters in history, having squatted over 600 pounds at a bodyweight of 132... drug free, at the age of... (Source)

Jay McInerneyIt’s a brilliant satire of greed and the mindlessness of popular culture, of American life and of New York in the 80s. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

86

Cathedral

Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another.  These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s career and “overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life. . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. . . . his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World).


more

See more recommendations for this book...

87

White Noise

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback

For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

88

Gilead

Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human...
more

Barack ObamaAccording to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. (Source)

Kathleen TaylorIt’s a remarkably empathetic and beautifully written book…It deals with a lot of the anxieties about physical failings, and anxieties about legacy. It really makes you feel that you’re being put in the mind of someone who hasn’t got long and is coping with that. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

89

True Grit

True Grit is his most famous novel--first published in 1968, and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.


True Grit is eccentric, cool,...
more
Recommended by Andy Borowitz, and 1 others.

Andy BorowitzI urge everyone who wants a good laugh to read it. Plus it’s very short – a good quality in a comic novel. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

90
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town an aging Classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would astonish even his most virulent accuser.

Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to...
more
Recommended by Claire Fox, Selina O'Grady, and 2 others.

Claire FoxThe main focus of the novel is a professor of Classics and faculty dean called Coleman Silk. It is a liberal university, and the reason why I chose this novel is to show how doing things in the name of tolerance can lead to a right old mess. (Source)

Selina O'GradyThe book is about the violence that you do to yourself, and to your identity, when you try and imitate the in-group, the majority. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
91

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to... more
Recommended by Bryan Callen, and 1 others.

Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

92

The Hate U Give

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What...
more
Recommended by Bianca Belair, and 1 others.

Bianca BelairFor #BlackHistoryMonth  I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 7th Book: The Hate U Give By: Angie Thomas @angiecthomas The movie was really great, but it just hits different when you read the book! https://t.co/rxMH5Uu6JN (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

93

The Stand

Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
 
A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder,...
more
Recommended by Harry Khachatrian, and 1 others.

Harry Khachatrian@redsteeze great book though (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

94
It's first the story of two women in the 1980s, of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women-of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. less

See more recommendations for this book...

95

A Farewell to Arms

The Hemingway Library Edition

Presented by Patrick and Seán Hemingway, this augmented edition of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of love during wartime features early drafts and, for the first time, all of the author’s alternate endings.

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—weary, demoralized men marching in...
more

Jordan B PetersonA Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/dwAYVoKl3K, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

Jordan Peterson[Jordan Peterson recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

96

11/22/63

Life can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake is blown away...but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping... more

See more recommendations for this book...

97
Upon its publication in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem confirmed Joan Didion as one of the most prominent writers on the literary scene. Her unblinking vision and deadpan tone have influenced subsequent generations of reporters and essayists, changing our expectations of style, voice, and the artistic possibilities of nonfiction.
        
"In her portraits of people," The New York Times Book Review wrote, "Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naïve acid-trippers, left-wing ideologues and snobs of...
more
Recommended by Peter Hessler, Liz Lambert, and 2 others.

Peter HesslerI like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. (Source)

Liz LambertI love [this book] so much. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

98

The Nickel Boys

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is “as good as anyone.” Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his...
more
Recommended by Sean Lahman, and 1 others.

Sean Lahman@DanTelvock Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. The MVP Machine is a great book about what’s happening in baseball. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

99

Water for Elephants

Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Award for Most Popular Book.

An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932, by the bestselling author of Riding Lessons.

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

100

As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as...
more

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read the top Americana books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.