The Library of Congress has a list called: Books That Shaped America.

Considering how eclectic my tastes are, I found myself unsurprised at how few of these I’ve read or attempted to read. (22/88 or 25%)

x Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – 1884
Alcoholics Anonymous – anonymous – 1939
American Cookery – Amelia Simmons – 1796
The American Woman’s Home – Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe – 1869
And the Band Played On – Randy Shilts – 1987
x Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand – 1957
\ The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X and Alex Haley – 1965
Beloved – Toni Morrison – 1987
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown – 1970
The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903
x The Cat in the Hat – Dr. Seuss – 1957
x Catch-22 – Joseph Heller – 1961
x The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger – 1951
x Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White – 1952
Common Sense – Thomas Paine – 1776
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care – Benjamin Spock – 1946
Cosmos – Carl Sagan – 1980
A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible – anonymous – 1788
\ The Double Helix – James D. Watson – 1968
The Education of Henry Adams – Henry Adams – 1907
Experiments and Observations on Electricity – Benjamin Franklin – 1751
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury – 1953
Family Limitation – Margaret Sanger – 1914
The Federalist – anonymous – 1787
The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan – 1963
x The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin – 1963
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway – 1940
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell – 1936
x Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown – 1947
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language – Noah Webster – 1783
\ The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – 1939
x The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – 1925
Harriet, the Moses of Her People – Sarah H. Bradford – 1901
The History of Standard Oil – Ida Tarbell – 1904
History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark – Meriwether Lewis – 1814
How the Other Half Lives – Jacob Riis – 1890
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie – 1936
Howl – Allen Ginsberg – 1956
The Iceman Cometh – Eugene O’Neill – 1946
Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures – Federal Writers’ Project – 1937
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote – 1966
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison – 1952
x Joy of Cooking – Irma Rombauer – 1931
\ The Jungle – Upton Sinclair – 1906
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman – 1855
x The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Washington Irving – 1820
x Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy – Louisa May Alcott – 1868
Mark, the Match Boy – Horatio Alger Jr. – 1869
McGuffey’s Newly Revised Eclectic Primer – William Holmes McGuffey – 1836
Moby-Dick; or The Whale – Herman Melville – 1851
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass – 1845
\ Native Son – Richard Wright – 1940
New England Primer – anonymous – 1803
New Hampshire – Robert Frost – 1923
On the Road – Jack Kerouac – 1957
\ Our Bodies, Ourselves – Boston Women’s Health Book Collective – 1971
Our Town: A Play – Thornton Wilder – 1938
Peter Parley’s Universal History – Samuel Goodrich – 1837
Poems – Emily Dickinson – 1890
Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth – Benjamin Franklin – 1758
Pragmatism – William James – 1907
The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. – Benjamin Franklin – 1793
The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane – 1895
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett – 1929
Riders of the Purple Sage – Zane Grey – 1912
\ The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne – 1850
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male – Alfred C. Kinsey – 1948
Silent Spring – Rachel Carson – 1962
x The Snowy Day – Ezra Jack Keats – 1962
The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois – 1903
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner – 1929
Spring and All – William Carlos Williams – 1923
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert E. Heinlein – 1961
A Street in Bronzeville – Gwendolyn Brooks – 1945
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams – 1947
A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America – Christopher Colles – 1789
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs – 1914
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston – 1937
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – 1960
A Treasury of American Folklore – Benjamin A. Botkin – 1944
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith – 1943
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe – 1852
Unsafe at Any Speed – Ralph Nader – 1965
Walden; or Life in the Woods – Henry David Thoreau – 1854
The Weary Blues – Langston Hughes – 1925
x Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak – 1963
x The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum – 1900
The Words of Cesar Chavez – Cesar Chavez – 2002

x = read
\ = read excerpts or attempted to read