Books That Shaped America 2012

TOP 25: Favorites in 2012

1. Ayn Rand (1905–1982). Atlas Shrugged, 1957
2. Harper Lee (1926−2016). To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
3. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910). The Adventures of Huckleberry, 1884
4. Thomas Paine (1737–1809). Common Sense, 1776
5. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896). Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, 1852
6. The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, 1788
7. Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). The Jungle, 1906
8. J. D. Salinger (1919–2010). The Catcher in the Rye, 1951
9. John Steinbeck (1902–1968). The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
10. Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism, 1939
11. Ray Bradbury (1920–2012). Fahrenheit 451, 1953
12. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). The Great Gatsby, 1925
13. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, 1868
14. Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949). Gone With the Wind, 1936
15. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel, 1904–1991). The Cat in the Hat, 1957
16. Rachel Carson (1907–1964). Silent Spring, 1962
17. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Walden; or, Life in the Woods, 1854
18. Jack Kerouac (1922–1969). On the Road, 1957
19. Betty Friedan (1921–2006). The Feminine Mystique, 1963
20. L. Frank Baum (1856–1919). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
21. Herman Melville (1819–1891). Moby-Dick; or, the Whale, 1851
22. Dale Carnegie (1888–1955). How to Win Friends and Influence People, 1936
23. Joseph Heller (1923–1999). Catch-22, 1961
24. Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass, 1855
25. Benjamin Spock (1903–1998). The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, 1946
10. LOCAR_160817_037.JPG:

    America Reads 2016

    TOP 40: Nominations for 2016

    1. Ayn Rand (1905−1982). The Fountainhead, 1943
    2. Kurt Vonnegut (1922−2007). Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, 1969
    3. Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867−1957). Little House in the Big Woods, 1932 (Little House Series)
    4. Joseph Smith, Translator(1805−1844).The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, 1830
    5. Willa Cather (1873−1947). My Ántonia, 1918
    6. Alex Haley (1921−1992). Roots, 1976
    7. Ayn Rand (1905−1982). Anthem, 1938
    8. Alice Walker (b. 1944). The Color Purple, 1982
    9. John Steinbeck (1902−1968). Of Mice and Men, 1937
    10. John Steinbeck (1902−1968). East of Eden, 1952
    11. Sylvia Plath (1932−1963). The Bell Jar, 1963
    12. Tim O'Brien (b. 1946). The Things They Carried, 1990
    13. Carl Bernstein (b. 1944) and Bob Woodward (b. 1943). All the President's Men, 1974
    14. Arthur Miller (1915−2005). Death of a Salesman, 1949
    15. Arthur Miller (1915−2005). The Crucible, 1953
    16. Ernest Hemingway (1899−1961). The Old Man and the Sea, 1952
    17. Ken Kesey (1935−2001). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1962
    18. Hunter S. Thompson (1937−2005). Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1972
    19. Ernest Hemingway (1899−1961). The Sun Also Rises, 1926
    20. John F. Kennedy (1917−1963). Profiles in Courage, 1956
    21. Stephen King (b. 1947). The Stand, 1978
    22. Larry McMurtry (b. 1936). Lonesome Dove, 1985
    23. Judy Blume (b. 1938). Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, 1970
    24. Howard Zinn (1922−2010). A People's History of the United States, 1980
    25. James Fenimore Cooper (1789−1851). The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757, 1826
    26. Robert A. Heinlein (1907−1988). The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1966
    27. Wilson Rawls (1913−1984). Where the Red Fern Grows,1961
    28. Madeleine L'Engle (1918−2007). A Wrinkle in Time, 1962
    29. Frank Herbert (1920−1986). Dune, 1965
    30. Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937). Gravity's Rainbow, 1973
    31. Simone Beck (1904−1991), Louisette Bertholle (1905−1999), and Julia Child (1912−2004), Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 1961
    32. Kate Chopin (1850−1904). The Awakening, 1899
    33. Shel Silverstein (1930−1999). The Giving Tree, 1964
    34. Milton Friedman (1912−2006). Capitalism and Freedom,1962
    35. Milton Friedman (1912−2006) and Rose Friedman (1910−2009). Free to Choose, 1980
    36. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803−1882). Nature, 1836
    37. Napoleon Hill (1883−1970). Think and Grow Rich, 1937
    38. John Kennedy Toole (1937−1969). A Confederacy of Dunces, 1980
    39. Robert Penn Warren (1905−1989). All the King's Men, 1946
    40. Robert Pirsig (b. 1928). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
11. LOCAR_160817_042.JPG: The Federalist (1787) Now considered to be the most significant American contribution to political thought, The Federalist essays supporting the ratification of the new Constitution first appeared in New York newspapers under the pseudonym "Publius." Although it was widely known that the eighty-five essays were the work of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, the initial curious speculation about authorship of specific essays gradually developed into heated controversy. Hamilton left an authorship list with his lawyer before his fatal duel. In his copy, Madison identified the author of each essay with their initials. Thomas Jefferson penned a similar authorship list in his copy. None of these attributions exactly match, and the authorship of several essays is still being debated by scholars.
12. LOCAR_160817_049.JPG: James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826) Set during the French and Indian War, James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans is the second and most popular of the five novels in his Leatherstocking series. The main characters are Natty Bumppo, a courageous and heroic American raised in part by Native Americans, and his "brother" Chingachgook, a noble and wise Mohican whose son is killed in battle and is "the last of the Mohicans." The novel is notable for its focus on race and the converging of interests in a multi-racial society.
13. LOCAR_160817_053.JPG: Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon (1830) Joseph Smith (1805−1844), founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said that the angel Moroni (who was the last prophet to contribute to the Book of Mormon), returned to Earth in 1827 and revealed to him the location of ancient golden plates (in upstate New York) upon which the Book of Mormon was engraved in a variant of Egyptian. Smith said the angel told him to translate the plates into English. Mormons believe the plates contain the writings of prophets who lived from approximately 2200 BC to AD 421. In 1830, Smith published his text and founded his church. Since then, more than 150 million copies have been printed in more than 100 languages. Smith's claims are not without critics.
14. LOCAR_160817_060.JPG: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) Along with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the leading voices of the transcendentalist movement in America. Emerson's essay Nature advocates for the self-fulfilling promise of nature and individualism over the demands of society and conformity. Like his friend Thoreau, Emerson believed that solitude was necessary to experience the full beauty of nature, saying "to go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society." Emerson's essay greatly influenced what is known today as the back-to-nature movement, and his ideas are very apparent in Thoreau's most famous work, Walden. Throughout his career, Emerson wrote many poems as well as essays.
15. LOCAR_160817_069.JPG: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) Herman Melville's tale of the Great White Whale and the crazed Captain Ahab who declares he will chase him "round perdition's flames before I give him up" has become an American myth. Even people who have never read Moby-Dick know the basic plot, and references to it are common in other works of American literature and in popular culture, such as in the film the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
18. LOCAR_160817_085.JPG: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) With the intention of awakening sympathy for oppressed slaves and encouraging Northerners to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe began writing her vivid sketches of slave sufferings and family separations. The first version of Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared serially between June 1851 and April 1852 in the National Era, an antislavery paper published in Washington, D.C. The first book edition appeared in March 1852 and sold more than 300,000 copies in the first year. This best-selling novel of the nineteenth century was extremely influential in fueling antislavery sentiment during the decade preceding the Civil War. In her copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susan B. Anthony in 1903 acknowledges progress made in the last half-century, but regrets that blacks are still not treated fairly. Shown are the book plate and title page.
20. LOCAR_160817_095.JPG: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) When Kate Chopin penned her best-known work, The Awakening, "feminism" was not a commonly used word in the American lexicon. Edna is a Southern woman of the 1890s struggling between what society expects of her and what she herself wants for her life. Chopin tells her story in a naturalistic style that emphasizes inner feelings. This style is a precursor to the stream-of-consciousness technique employed in the great novels of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. It is not surprising that The Awakening met with harsh criticism when it was published in 1899. Its themes of infidelity and female sexuality pushed the boundaries of acceptability. From then on, Chopin never wrote another novel and faced much resistance to publishing any of her work.
21. LOCAR_160817_100.JPG: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Novelist Ernest Hemingway famously said, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. . . . All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." During their trip down the Mississippi on a raft, Twain depicts in a satirical and humorous way Huck and Jim's encounters with hypocrisy, racism, violence, and other evils of American society. His use in serious literature of a lively, simple American language full of dialect and colloquial expressions paved the way for many later writers, including Hemingway and William Faulkner.
22. LOCAR_160817_105.JPG: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (1868) This first edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women was published in 1868 when Louisa was thirty-five- years old. The novel was based on her own experiences growing up as a young woman with three sisters, and illustrated by her youngest sister, May. The book was an instant success, selling more than 2,000 copies immediately. Several sequels were published, including Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Although Little Women is set in a very particular place and time in American history, the characters and their relationships have touched generations of readers and still are beloved.
23. LOCAR_160817_114.JPG: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855) The publication of the first slim edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1855 was the debut of a masterpiece that shifted the course of American literary history. Refreshing and bold in both theme and style, the book underwent many revisions during Whitman's lifetime. For more than forty years Whitman produced multiple editions of Leaves of Grass, shaping the book into an ever-transforming kaleidoscope of poems. By his death in 1892, Leaves was a thick compendium that represented Whitman's vision of America over nearly the entire last half of the nineteenth century. Among the collection's best-known poems are "I Sing the Body Electric," "Song of Myself," and "O Captain! My Captain!," a metaphorical tribute to the slain Abraham Lincoln.
24. LOCAR_160817_120.JPG: Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) While living in solitude in a cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau wrote his most famous work, Walden, a paean to the idea that it is foolish to spend a lifetime seeking material wealth. In his words, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Thoreau's love of nature and his advocacy of a simple life have had a large influence on modern conservation and environmentalist movements.
25. LOCAR_160817_128.JPG: L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, is the first fantasy written by an American to enjoy an immediate success upon publication. So powerful was its effect on the American imagination, so evocative its use of the forces of nature in its plots, so charming its invitation to children of all ages to look for the element of wonder in the world around them that author L. Frank Baum was forced by demand to create book after book about Dorothy and her friends -- including the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and Glinda the Good Witch.
28. LOCAR_160817_140.JPG: Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918) My Ántonia is the last novel of Willa Cather's "prairie trilogy" (preceded by O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark). The book received high praise when it was first published, and it catapulted Cather into the pantheon of notable American writers. Finally, a writer had written about the American West as a desirable and interesting place to live. An aura of nostalgia is ever-present in the narrator Jim's reflection on his childhood in Nebraska, which he has left behind for a career as a high-powered New York lawyer. Similarly, his friend Ántonia misses her native Bohemia. Ultimately, although the characters come to realize one can never return to the past, they likewise realize that it cannot be forgotten, and that it has an inexorable influence on the future.
29. LOCAR_160817_146.JPG: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the major American writers of the twentieth century, is a figure whose life and works embody powerful myths about the American Dream of success. The Great Gatsby, considered by many to be Fitzgerald's finest work and the book for which he is best known, is a portrait of the Jazz Age (1920s) in all its decadence and excess. Exploring the themes of class, wealth, and social status through the story of the self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby and the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald takes a cynical look at the pursuit of wealth among a group of people for whom pleasure is the chief goal. Depicting some of Fitzgerald's (and his country's) most abiding obsessions -- money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings -- The Great Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned a permanent place in American mythology.
32. LOCAR_160817_158.JPG: Gone with the Wind. Color poster for motion picture, 1939.
33. LOCAR_160817_163.JPG: Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937) One of the early works in the genre of "self-improvement" books, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich was published during the Great Depression. The author himself most likely grew rich from the book, as it had sold more than 20 million copies when Hill died in 1970; since then it has sold at least another 50 million. According to Hill, "Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." Hill certainly lived what he preached, as he grew up in poverty in a one-room cabin in Virginia. Hill was a onetime adviser to industrialist Andrew Carnegie, whom he credited with playing a major role in his success.
34. LOCAR_160817_167.JPG: Ayn Rand, Anthem (1938) Some might view Ayn Rand's Anthem as a precursor of such contemporary dystopian works as Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Rand's novella, set sometime in the future, is thematically linked to many of her more famous works, such as The Fountainhead, where individuality is subjugated by collectivism. The main character, Equality 7-2521, grew up separated from his parents in a communal home. He wanted to be a scholar when he grew up but instead was ordered to be a street sweeper by the Council of Vocations. Rand was twelve when she witnessed the revolution in her native Russia, with the events having a profound effect on her writing. Anthem, her second work of fiction, is Rand's manifesto and her unequivocal rejection of the tyranny she associated with communism.
35. LOCAR_160817_173.JPG: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Few novels can claim that their message led to actual legislation, but The Grapes of Wrath did just that. Its story of the travails of Oklahoma migrants during the Great Depression ignited a movement to press Congress to pass laws benefiting farm workers. When Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, the committee specifically cited this novel as one of the main reasons for the award.
36. LOCAR_160817_180.JPG: Alcoholics Anonymous (1939) The famous 12-step program for stopping the cycle of alcohol addiction has sold more than 30 million copies. Millions of men and women worldwide have turned to the program co-founded by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith to recover from alcoholism. The "Big Book," as it is known, spawned similar programs for other forms of addiction.
37. LOCAR_160817_185.JPG: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, (1943) Ayn Rand's first major literary success did not find an easy path to publication. A dozen publishers rejected the novel for being "too intellectual," and it was not until Rand's lucky thirteenth try that Bobbs-Merrill published the book in May 1943. Sales were slow at first but grew through word of mouth. By August 1945, the book reached number six on the New York Times Best Sellers list -- more than two years after its initial publication. According to Rand, the major theme of the book is "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics but within a man's soul." Since its publication, The Fountainhead and many of Rand's novels have become touchstones for those who believe individualism always takes precedence over collectivism. The novel has sold nearly seven million copies.
38. LOCAR_160817_191.JPG: John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) One of John Steinbeck's most popular works, Of Mice and Men is a novella that reads like a play. That structure has resulted in many stage and screen adaptations of the book. Throughout Steinbeck's body of work, empathy for the powerless in society -- the poor, the uneducated, the victimized -- is of uppermost importance. Of Mice and Men is no exception. Set during the Great Depression, it tells the story of two migrant workers and their plan to purchase land and how their dream fared against harsh realities. Although Steinbeck received a writer's highest honor, the Nobel Prize, in 1962, his works have not fared well over the years, with many critics citing the flatness of his characters and the predictability of his plots.
39. LOCAR_160817_198.JPG: Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (1936) The most popular romance novel of all time was the basis for the most popular movie of all time (if calculated in today's dollars). Margaret Mitchell's book set in the South during the Civil War won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and it remains popular, despite charges that its author had a blind eye regarding the horrors of slavery.
40. LOCAR_160817_203.JPG: Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) The mother of all self-help books, Dale Carnegie's volume has sold 15 million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages. How to Win Friends and Influence People has also spawned hundreds of other books, many of them imitators, written to advise on everything from improving one's relationships to improving one's bank account. Carnegie acknowledged that he was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, a young man who proclaimed that "God helps them that help themselves" as a way to get ahead in life.
41. LOCAR_160817_207.JPG: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (1932) The autobiographical first novel of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, was an enormous success, and spawned a series of Little House novels. The series is based on Wilder's experiences growing up in the early 1870s in western Wisconsin as part of a settler family. The books also inspired the long-running television series Little House on the Prairie (1974−1982). In Big Woods, Wilder relates tales from her early years, spending much time addressing the hard work required for survival in the wilderness. As Wilder matured, so did the themes of her later books. Nearly one hundred years after its publication, Big Woods is still taught in elementary schools.
42. LOCAR_160817_214.JPG: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) Many readers and critics consider Ernest Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, to be his best. Using the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona as a backdrop for his story, Hemingway focuses on American and British expatriates, who have recently arrived in Spain from Paris. While on the surface a love story, The Sun Also Rises is also a morality tale of World War I's "Lost Generation." Hemingway's characters represent the lives of many people who came of age during the war and were left with a lack of purpose and meaning. As with many of Hemingway's works, the novel was simultaneously praised and reviled. The Atlantic called the characters "amazingly real and alive." His mother thought otherwise, saying in a letter: "Every page fills me with a sick loathing"
43. LOCAR_160817_219.JPG: On Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: No... drama was so completely... reflected the post-WWII period and the definition of the American Dream... than has Miller's play. ... It is still studied as the best... example of modern tragedy in American dramatic literature.
44. LOCAR_160817_223.JPG: Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1946) Robert Penn Warren wrote All the King's Men while teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The highly controversial Louisiana governor, Huey P. Long, was said to have been the inspiration for Warren's central character, Willie Stark. Like Long, Stark wields enormous power and he uses that power, to strong-arm any and all who get in his way. Long was assassinated in the state Capitol building, as is Stark in the novel. The novel became a successful movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1950. Warren based his title on the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty": "All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty together again." Also known as a poet, Warren served as U.S. Poet Laureate, 1944−1945, and won Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry in 1958 and 1979.
45. LOCAR_160817_227.JPG: Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) Dr. Benjamin Spock's guidebook turned the common wisdom about child-rearing on its head. Spock argued that babies did not have to be on a rigid schedule, that children should be treated with a great deal of affection, and that parents should use their own common sense when making child-rearing decisions. Millions of parents worldwide have followed his advice.
46. LOCAR_160817_233.JPG: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949) Regarded as one of America's greatest plays, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award in 1949, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is about the search for the American Dream and what happens to those who never realize it. Willy Loman is the not-so-successful salesman whose dreams are his mechanism for survival. His wife, Linda, is Loman's enabler and his two sons, Biff and Happy, inhabit a similar world of dreams. What Miller ultimately concludes is that the original American Dream was not defined by material success but by success based on moral values and personal relationships. For Miller, the dream has been corrupted, with the result being that many Americans die disappointed, believing they were failures in life.
47. LOCAR_160817_240.JPG: J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Since his debut in 1951 as the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with adolescent rebellion and angst. The influential story concerns three days after Holden has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he wanders New York City searching for truth and rails against the phoniness of the adult world. Holden is the first great American antihero, and his attitudes influenced the Beat Generation of the 1950s as well as the hippies of the 1960s. The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most translated, taught, and reprinted books in the world and has sold more than 65 million copies.
48. LOCAR_160817_251.JPG: Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) The Old Man and the Sea reestablished Ernest Hemingway's reputation as one of the world's greatest writers. In fact, this Pulitzer Prize winner was specifically cited when its author won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style." Some critics, however, claimed it was the worst book Hemingway had ever written, and that it read as a parody of the author's famously spare prose. Despite the controversy, Hemingway's economical style has undeniably influenced countless writers who came after him.
49. LOCAR_160817_256.JPG: John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952) Of the many novels that John Steinbeck wrote, East of Eden was his favorite and the one of which he was proudest. It takes its title from a chapter of the Bible's Book of Genesis about the struggle between brothers Cain and Abel (Cal and Aron in the novel): "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." The theme of good versus evil is universal, according to Steinbeck, who said, "there is no other story." However, the author believed that everyone is given free will to choose whether or not to do what is right or wrong and the interplay between these two extremes forms the narrative's basis. When first published, the reception to East of Eden was mixed. The public loved it, making it a bestseller; while critics said the biblical references were unsophisticated and clumsy.
50. LOCAR_160817_262.JPG: Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1953) A thinly veiled critique of the second Red Scare and the government effort to root out communist sympathizers, The Crucible is set in 1692−93, when mass hysteria led to the Salem witch trials, in which twenty people were executed under suspicion of practicing witchcraft. During the early to mid-1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee staged investigations of suspected communists, many of whom were actors, directors, and writers in the performing arts. Arthur Miller himself was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to identify colleagues as suspected communists. The Crucible demonstrates how paranoia can lead to dangerous consequences in any period.
52. LOCAR_160817_273.JPG: Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury's disturbing vision of a future United States in which books are outlawed and burned. Even though interpretations of the novel have primarily focused on the historical role of book burning as a means of censorship, Bradbury has said that the novel is about how television reduces knowledge to factoids and destroys interest in reading. The book inspired a 1966 film by François Truffaut and a subsequent BBC symphony. Its name comes from the minimum temperature at which paper catches fire by spontaneous combustion.
53. LOCAR_160817_279.JPG: John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (1956) John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage comprises eight brief biographies of U.S. senators and the courageous actions they took despite losing popularity. The earliest senator profiled is John Quincy Adams and the last, Robert Taft. The book was published during Kennedy's term as a Massachusetts senator. Although Kennedy is said to have overseen the book's production and overall focus, it is generally acknowledged that his speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, wrote the book. The book was not initially nominated for the Pulitzer; however, Kennedy's father intervened by asking columnist Arthur Krock to urge the prize board to vote for it. Profiles in Courage was a bestseller.
54. LOCAR_160817_290.JPG: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957) Although mainstream critics reacted poorly to Atlas Shrugged it was a popular success. Set in what novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand called "the day after tomorrow," the book depicts the United States caught up in a crisis caused by a corrupt establishment of government regulators and business interests. The book's negative view of government and its support of unimpeded capitalism as the highest moral objective have influenced libertarians and those who advocate for less government.
55. LOCAR_160817_297.JPG: On Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree: A book that crosses all age groups. Each person at different stages of life can appreciate the joy and sadness.
56. LOCAR_160817_300.JPG: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Color poster for Broadway production.
57. LOCAR_160817_308.JPG: Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962) ilton Friedman and the term "free market" are nearly synonymous. As an adviser to both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, Friedman's views on trade, monetary policy, and taxation reigned supreme. The idea that the best government is the most minimal government was central to his economic theories. Many of Friedman's ideas, such as an all-volunteer military, free-floating currency, and school vouchers have seen varying degrees of implementation. However, his beliefs that doctors should not have to be licensed and that corporate income tax should be abolished have few advocates. Friedman, the 1976 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was one of the leading voices in the Chicago school of economics, which rejects the Keynesian theory that government intervention in the economy is desirable and often necessary.
58. LOCAR_160817_319.JPG: Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961 Joseph's Heller's Catch-22, an irreverent World War II novel and a satiric treatment of military bureaucracy, has had such a penetrating effect that its title has become synonymous with "no-win situation." Heller's novel is a black comedy about airmen dutifully following logical orders, not based on reason, from superiors and a main character, Yossarian, who just wants to stay alive. He pleads insanity but is caught in the famous catch: "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy." Although the novel won no awards upon its release, it soon became a cult classic, especially among the Vietnam War generation, for its biting indictment of war.
61. LOCAR_160817_333.JPG: Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows (1961) This children's classic is about a boy, his two hunting dogs, and the bonds of friendship and trust they forge. Billy and his coonhounds are caught up in a series of increasingly challenging raccoon-hunting adventures that test their mettle. The lesson Red Fern gives its young readers is that persistence and adherence to the straight-and-narrow path almost always result in a good outcome. Rawls' novel initially met with lukewarm sales, and after about six years nearly went out of print. An agent who believed strongly in the book's merit marketed it heavily, and it went on to great success. Since its initial publication, three film adaptations have been produced.
62. LOCAR_160817_340.JPG: Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) More than any other cookbook, restaurant, or celebrity chef, Mastering the Art of French Cooking opened America's eyes to a new world of food. Its three authors wrote the book specifically for the U.S. market. They wanted to teach Americans how to make classic French fare, such as cassoulet and beef bourguignon, and for them to see that such dishes could be successfully produced without formal training. The book's success led to Julia Child's television series of the same name, in which she demonstrated many of the recipes. She was notable for her fearlessness in the kitchen: her mistakes were left in her broadcasts, as a way of showing that even a French-trained chef does not always achieve perfection. The second volume of the book was published in 1970.
63. LOCAR_160817_350.JPG: Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) This 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner was an immediate critical and financial success for its author, with more than thirty million copies in print to date. Harper Lee created one of the most enduring and heroic characters in all of American literature in Atticus Finch, the small-town lawyer who defended a wrongly accused black man. The book's importance was recognized by a 1961 Washington Post book reviewer: "A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere eighteen ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird."
64. LOCAR_160817_353.JPG: On the omission of All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the original exhibition: A grave oversight. Their groundbreaking book, for better or worse, fundamentally changed public opinion of government and ushered in the era of true investigative journalism. America has not been the same since.
65. LOCAR_160817_359.JPG: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963) Poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar, is a semiautobiographical work originally published in the United Kingdom in 1963, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. In 1967 the book was published with Plath's name, but it was not released in the United States until 1971. The Bell Jar documents a young woman's mental decline, her stay at an institution where she receives electroconvulsive therapy, and her feelings of being stifled under a bell jar -- unable to breathe. A month after the book's initial publication, Plath committed suicide. Her tempestuous relationship with her husband, British poet Ted Hughes, has often been cited as the major cause of Plath's death. However, Plath had been clinically depressed for most of her life and had attempted suicide before her relationship with Hughes.
66. LOCAR_160817_364.JPG: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963) By debunking the "feminine mystique" that middle-class women were happy and fulfilled as housewives and mothers, Betty Friedan inspired the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Friedan advocates that women need meaningful work and encourages them to avoid the trap of the "feminine mystique" by pursuing education and careers. By 2000 this touchstone of the women's movement had sold three million copies and was translated into several languages.
67. LOCAR_160817_370.JPG: Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962) Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy novel tells the story of a young girl, Meg, and her search for her father, a government scientist, who mysteriously disappears. In L'Engle's world, there are no shades of gray, and all the characters can be easily classified as either good or evil. The "wrinkle" in the novel is the passage through space and time that young Meg and her friends travel through to rescue Meg's father. Written in 1963, the subject of death was not a common theme in children's books, but the author confronts the topic without artifice. A Wrinkle in Time garnered a Newbery Medal and several other prestigious awards.
68. LOCAR_160817_375.JPG: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962) A marine biologist and writer, Rachel Carson is considered a founder of the contemporary environmental protection movement. She drew attention to the adverse effects of pesticides, especially the use of DDT, in her book Silent Spring, a 1963 National Book Association Nonfiction Finalist. At a time when technological solutions were the norm, she pointed out that man-made poisons introduced into natural systems can harm not only nature but also humans. Her book met with great success and, as a result of heightened public awareness, DDT and other pesticides were banned.
69. LOCAR_160817_384.JPG: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's (1962) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an immediate success for its author, Ken Kesey, who based much of the novel on his experiences working in a mental institution and a Veterans Administration hospital. Through characters as memorable as inmates Randle McMurphy and Chief Bromden, and the notoriously hateful Nurse Ratched, Kesey presents an unvarnished indictment of mental institutions and their treatment of patients. The oppression and control practiced inside Kesey's fictional institution can also be seen as a metaphor for the rigid societal constraints of the times. The rebelliousness of McMurphy and Bromden mirror the turmoil of 1960s America. The 1975 film adaptation was also an enormous success, winning the top five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
70. LOCAR_160817_392.JPG: Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (1964) The Giving Tree's conceit is that a boy and a tree can talk to each other. In School Library Journal's 2012 listing of the "Top 100 Picture Books," Silverstein's book is ranked number eighty-five. The Journal called it "one of the most divisive in children's literature. . . . You are either a Giving Tree fan or you loathe and abhor it." Why so much controversy? The boy asks many things of the tree until it has nothing else to give. At the end of every request is the sentence, "And the tree was happy." When the tree is left with nothing more than a stump, the book concludes with the same sentence. Is this a story of unconditional love or unbridled selfishness? Only the reader can decide.
71. LOCAR_160817_401.JPG: Frank Herbert, Dune (1966) With more than twenty million copies sold, Frank Herbert's Dune is one of the best-selling novels of any genre and perhaps the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. The initial success of Dune spawned five sequels by Herbert and more than a dozen by other writers. The series' scope and grandeur have resulted in the books being called science fiction's answer to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Herbert's themes are as far-reaching as the environment, the decline of empires, and gender equality. The filmed version of Dune, directed by David Lynch, received very mixed reviews. Countless books have taken their inspiration from Dune, and its influence can be found in television shows as well as films such as Star Wars.
72. LOCAR_160817_409.JPG: Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) Robert A. Heinlein, often called the dean of science fiction writers, wrote The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress as his vision of a libertarian lunar colony. The novel was awarded a Hugo award in 1967, the fourth of his Hugo awards. The most memorable character is a supercomputer named Mike, who has a distinct personality and is referred to in the book as "our man John Galt," a direct reference to the main character in Ayn Rand's 1957 Atlas Shrugged, another novel that extols the virtues of libertarianism.
73. LOCAR_160817_413.JPG: Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) "All this happened, more or less" is the first sentence of Kurt Vonnegut's most influential novel, as told through the eyes of the unreliable narrator who relates the story of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II soldier who refuses to fight. In the novel, the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, Germany, is treated satirically and with antiwar sentiment. Vonnegut, who was in Dresden during the actual destruction, was captured and held in a meat locker below a slaughterhouse. Following the bombing, he was ordered to bury and incinerate the bodies of the fallen. More than twenty years later, Vonnegut penned Slaughterhouse-Five, written in the disjointed style of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder: "It is so short and jumbled and jangled," he writes, "because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." The novel was published during the Vietnam War.
74. LOCAR_160817_421.JPG: Judy Blume, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret (1970) Judy Blume wrote one of the most important pre-teen novels in 1970 with Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Margaret, who herself has no religious affiliation, is the child of a Christian mother and a Jewish father. She searches for religion in the book while at the same time facing typical adolescent growing pains, such as how to deal with boys, the changes in her body, and the general awkwardness that comes with transitioning into adulthood. In Margaret, young girls finally had a book with a character who faced the same things they were experiencing. The book was so successful that Blume went on to write a similar book, from a boy's perspective, Then Again, Maybe I Won't.
75. LOCAR_160817_441.JPG: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) A haze of drugs permeates Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing, which very loosely recounts trips that Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta embarked on while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. Thompson was to write captions for a photo essay on a motorcycle and dune buggy race near Las Vegas. The piece turned into something much more, and Sports Illustrated refused to publish it. Rolling Stone picked it up in 1971. The novel freely mixes fact and fiction, in a style referred to as "gonzo journalism." The book met with mixed reviews, but it has become recognized as a classic, albeit a very nontraditional one. Thompson himself called it "a failed experiment," which was based on William Faulkner's idea that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism."
76. LOCAR_160817_446.JPG: Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (1957) Theodor Seuss Geisel was removed as editor of a campus humor magazine while a student at Dartmouth College after too much reveling with fellow students. In spite of this prohibition-era setback to his writing career, he continued to contribute to the magazine pseudonymously, signing his work "Seuss." This is the first known use of his pseudonym, which became famous in children's literature when it evolved into "Dr. Seuss." His introduction to animation and illustration came during World War II, when he worked on military training films and developed a character named Private Snafu. The Cat in the Hat is considered the defining book of his career. More than 200 million Dr. Seuss books have been sold around the world.
77. LOCAR_160817_454.JPG: Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957) The defining novel of the 1950s "Beat Generation" (which Kerouac named), On the Road is a semiautobiographical tale of a bohemian cross-country adventure, narrated by the character Sol Paradise. Kerouac's odyssey has influenced artists such as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Hunter S. Thompson and films such as Easy Rider. On the Road has achieved a mythic status in part because it portrays the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people take off to see the world.
80. LOCAR_160817_469.JPG: John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces immediately brings to mind another picaresque masterpiece, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Confederacy was published posthumously eleven years after Toole's suicide. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. The book may never have been published if not for the persistence of Toole's mother and the novelist Walker Percy. Set in Toole's native New Orleans, the novel is populated with eccentric, colorful French Quarter characters such as the protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, whom Percy called a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." The novel takes its title from a Jonathan Swift proverb: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
81. LOCAR_160817_474.JPG: Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980) The premise of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States can be seen in much of the current political discourse. It claims that those at the very top of the economic ladder exploit the majority of the population for their own gain. Zinn sought to tell an alternative version of history, one that focused on ordinary individuals rather than well-known figures. The book has been praised for its novel approach as much as it has been criticized. Historians have accused Zinn of ignoring important historical events when they do not suit his thesis. Nonetheless, the book has infiltrated popular culture as few histories have -- musician Bruce Springsteen said his dark and spare 1982 Nebraska album was influenced by Zinn's book.
82. LOCAR_160817_484.JPG: Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (1980) Husband-and-wife economists Milton and Rose Friedman wrote Free to Choose (which was also a ten-part series on PBS) as an alternative to John Kenneth Galbraith's book The Age of Uncertainty (also a television series), which promoted interventionist government economic policies. Like the earlier Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose praises the virtues of a free market and argues that so-called cradle-to-grave policies are inferior to those that are market driven. The television series outlined both successful and failed economic stories to demonstrate, in the Friedman's view, how capitalism ultimately leads to long-term prosperity.
83. LOCAR_160817_490.JPG: Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982) The stark depictions of sexism and racism in The Color Purple have won it many fans, but its frank discussions of those themes, coupled with its violent scenes, have made it a controversial and often challenged novel by censors and parents' groups alike. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Alice Walker's book, told through a series of letters and documents, was adapted into a hit movie directed by Steven Spielberg, as well as a Broadway play. Strong relationships among women and the power of those relationships are at the novel's heart. Many said the book perpetuated racial stereotypes, but just as many people praised Walker's prose for its feminist themes.
85. LOCAR_160817_501.JPG: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985) This Pulitzer Prize-winning Western started out as a screenplay by Larry McMurtry. The film, which was to star John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, was never made, and the author decided to turn the screenplay into a novel, which became part of a trilogy. Lonesome Dove, then became a much-loved, critically acclaimed television miniseries that won seven Emmys. Four more miniseries followed, as well as two additional television series. The story is a fictionalized account of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana led by Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving in the 1870s and the travails of Goodnight while returning Loving's body to Texas for burial after his death.
86. LOCAR_160817_506.JPG: Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (1990) Tim O'Brien was already an established writer when he penned The Things They Carried. He had won the National Book Award in 1979 for Going After Cacciato, and subsequent works such as The Nuclear Age were met with much acclaim. The Things They Carried, classified as fiction, recalls many of the incidents O' Brien witnessed as a soldier in the Vietnam War. In his novel, he names the protagonist after himself and believes the best way to convey the horrific effect of war is to blend elements of fiction and nonfiction. O'Brien uses the words "things" soldiers "carry" as more of an emotional than physical metaphor. The author has been called one of the finest writers ever to focus on the Vietnam War.
87. LOCAR_160817_512.JPG: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973) With more than 400 characters and numerous plot lines, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow has been cited by many critics as one of the greatest postmodern novels in the American canon. This National Book Award winner is set mostly in Europe after World War II. Fact and fiction are intermingled as Pynchon weaves his tangled tale that focuses on the Germans' V-2 rocket and the mystery surrounding its development. In reality, the V-2 was responsible for the most deadly single-rocket attack during the entire war, killing 567 people in a Belgian movie house. Pynchon's style has influenced many other writers, such as David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and T. C. Boyle. Admirers of Gravity's Rainbow may well be outnumbered by its critics, some of whom go so far as to call it "unreadable."
88. LOCAR_160817_520.JPG: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All The President's Men (1974) The story of the Watergate break-in and how it became the biggest American political scandal in modern-day history unfolds in All The President's Men. Washington Post cub reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were savvy enough to recognize that there was much more to the story than a simple break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex. All the President's Men is a case study in investigative journalism and the power of the "fourth estate" -- the press -- to bring justice to bear on even the most powerful person in the world. Today, any word appended with "gate" denotes some sort of scandal.
89. LOCAR_160817_526.JPG: Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) Few works have captured the national zeitgeist quite like Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a first-person account of the author's motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California. According to the Daily Beast, "It is a nostalgic, old-fashioned novel that nevertheless reflects the malaise of its era and prefigures our own technophiliac age." This work puts forth Pirsig's theory of the "Metaphysics of Quality," a hybrid philosophy in which quality cannot be defined because it exists only in the present, based on one's individual experience. Pirsig wrote the book, which takes place over seventeen days, during a four-year period while he held a job as a writer of computer manuals.
90. LOCAR_160817_534.JPG: Alex Haley, Roots (1976) The influence of Alex Haley's Roots is vast. From the millions of amateur genealogists it inspired, to the production of television shows such as Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s "Finding Your Roots," to the interest it generated in African American history, the book continues to make an impact forty years after its initial publication. The story of Kunta Kinte, captured in the Gambia and sold into slavery in the United States, was adapted into an equally popular television series (1977), seen by a then record-breaking 100 million viewers. The book spent twenty-two weeks at the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list. However, many controversies surrounded Roots. Author Harold Courtlander successfully brought a suit of plagiarism against Haley for copying numerous passages from his novel The African, and historians have found many errors in the family history that Haley presents as factual.
91. LOCAR_160817_543.JPG: Stephen King, The Stand (1978) Stephen King's epic, post-apocalyptic horror-science fiction novel has influenced countless writers. After a lethal virus, "Captain Trips," is accidentally released from a U.S. Army base, more than ninety-nine percent of the world's population is decimated. The survivors, who have immunity to the virus split into two camps. One group follows a woman who receives visions from God and sets up a democratic society in Boulder, Colorado, and the other follows a so-called "Dark Man" who establishes a tyrannical society in Las Vegas, Nevada. The groups prepare to take a stand against each other for good or evil. The Stand was a 1994 television miniseries, and there have been several attempts to turn the novel into a feature-length film.