Books That Shaped America

Books That Shaped America

Thanks to my reader, Clint Bradford, who sent me a heads-up to this in a private e-mail.

The Library of Congress (LOC) has a list of “Books That Shaped America”:

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-123.html

It’s an interesting set. Naturally, I think most people reading will notice omissions, question some inclusions…and be introduced to some titles that are new to them.

I also know that there are people who will want to read the entire set. 🙂

Clint “hinted” that I could make a list with links to the books in the Kindle store, and I’m going to do that. Some of these books will be free public domain titles, and available from other sources as well.

I do often get my free PD titles from Amazon, because I like their back-up of my notes and highlights, and syncing between devices.

Note that not all of these books are free: check the price before ordering.

The books are in alphabetical title order…and I do think that the phrase “shaped America” is interesting. They aren’t saying these are the best books, just ones that influenced our culture.

You can sort the books by author or year here:

http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/

If the book was only available in the Kindle store as audiobook (that’s a recorded performance…no text), I marked it as unavailable.

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• American Cookery
• American Woman’s Home
• And the Band Played On
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X (does not appear to be in a Kindle edition)
• Beloved (text-to-speech access blocked, so I don’t link)
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (not available)
• The Call of the Wild
• The Cat in the Hat (not available)
• Catch-22 (TTS access blocked)
• The Catcher in the Rye (not available)
• Charlotte’s Web (not available)
• Common Sense
• Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, 9th Edition
• Cosmos
• Curious hieroglyphick Bible
• The Double Helix (TTS access blocked)
• The Education of Henry Adams
• Experiments and Observation on Electricity (only available in a Kindle edition in French)
• Fahrenheit 451 (TTS access blocked)
• Family Limitation
• The Federalist
• The Feminine Mystique (TTS access blocked)
• The Fire Next Time (not available)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (TTS access blocked)
• Gone with the Wind (TTS access blocked)
• Goodnight Moon (not available)
• A Grammatical Institute of the English Language (not available)
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Great Gatsby (TTS access blocked)
• Harriet, the Moses of Her People
• The History of the Standard Oil Company (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)
• History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark
• How the Other Half Lives
• How to Win Friends and Influence People (TTS access blocked)
• Howl (not available)
• The Iceman Cometh
• Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures (not available)
• In Cold Blood (TTS access blocked)
• Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
• Joy of Cooking (not available)
• The Jungle
• Leaves of Grass
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Little Women
• Mark, The Match Boy
• McGuffey’s Newly Revised Eclectic Primer (not available)
• Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Native Son
• The New England Primer (1777)
• New Hampshire (Robert Frost) (not available)
• On the Road
• Our Bodies, Ourselves (TTS access blocked)
• Our Town (not available)
• Peter Parley’s Universal History (not available)
• Poems by Emily Dickinson
• The Way to Wealth, or Poor Richard Improved
• Pragmatism
• The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin (not available)
• The Red Badge of Courage
• Red Harvest
• Riders of the Purple Sage
• The Scarlet Letter
• Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (not available)
• Silent Spring
• The Snowy Day (Keats) (not available)
• The Souls of Black Folk
• The Sound and the Fury
• Spring and All (not available)
• Stranger in a Strange Land
• A Street in Bronzeville (not available)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (not available)
• A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America (not available)
• Tarzan of the Apes
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• To Kill a Mockingbird (not available)
• A Treasury of American Folklore (not available)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Unsafe at Any Speed (not available)
• Walden
• The Weary Blues (not available)
• Where the Wild Things Are (not available)
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• The Words of Cesar Chavez (not available)

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.