Existing comment:
America Reads
Introduction:
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.
Acknowledged classics such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Richard Wright's Native Son, made the list, as did lesser known works like Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Indisputable fiction masterpieces such as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Toni Morrison's Beloved were intermingled with important nonfiction works, such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
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. |