America Reads

In 2012, a group of curators and subject experts in the Library of Congress developed the institution's popular exhibition, Books That Shaped America. The books chosen were not intended to be a list of the "best" books published in the United States. Rather, the group chose eighty-eight core books by American authors that had, for a wide variety of reasons, a profound effect on American life. Knowing that opinions can be as varied as the number of people you ask, we urged the public to name "other books that shaped America" and to tell us which of the eighty-eight core books on our list were most important to them. That survey forms the basis of this exhibition, America Reads.
~from the America Reads exhibition overview

We're far away from the Library of Congress, so most likely you missed their Books That Shaped America exhibition (and its follow-up, America Reads), as we did. But it's a fascinating idea, isn't it? What books have "shaped America" - have been influential, or have had a "profound effect on American life"? There are probably as many answers to that question as there are American readers, and while we applaud the Library of Congress for taking on such a project, we don't envy them the work of sifting, compiling, deciding, and then sorting through the inevitable backlash as people weigh in their own opinions. But the folks at the Library of Congress didn't just accept criticism of their list - they embraced it, creating "possibly the first sequel exhibition at the Library of Congress".

The list of the Books That Shaped America is quite lengthy and and the America Reads list runs to 65 items, so we have opted not to reproduce them here. However, we will share with you the top America Reads titles, chosen by public survey, and the top titles from the Books That Shaped America list, chosen by "[c]urators and experts from throughout the Library of Congress".  These lists were both created by the Library of Congress. What do you think of these lists? Are there other books you think have shaped America more, or books you think don't belong on these lists? Do you think it's impossible to come up with an all-inclusive list in the first place? Let us know in the comments!

America Reads - New Titles Chosen by the Public

• Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
• Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon
• Willa Cather, My Ántonia
• Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family
• Ayn Rand, Anthem
• Alice Walker, The Color Purple
• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
• John Steinbeck, East of Eden
• Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
• Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
• Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men
• Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
• Arthur Miller, The Crucible
• Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
• Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
• Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
• John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
• Stephen King, The Stand
• Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
• Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
• James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757
• Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows
• Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
• Frank Herbert, Dune
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
• Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening
• Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
• Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
• John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
• Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
• Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

America Reads - The Public’s Top Choices from the Original 2012 List

• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Thomas Paine, Common Sense
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly
• The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution
• Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
• J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
• Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
• Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), The Cat in the Hat
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
• Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods
• Jack Kerouac, On the Road
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
• L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale
• Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Photo Credit:

Books. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 29 Jul 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/132_1258202/1/132_1258202/cite