Books That Belong in Every American Library
By D. J. McAdam
I’ve had this project – listing books that I feel should be found in every American library – in mind for some time. That such a list could be controversial does not bother me, so long as the list serves its purpose as a starting point for discussion on what constitutes essential American literature.
But here’s the part of the project I’ve struggled with: I actually hope that you, dear reader, will visit your local public library and determine whether or not these books can be found there. This isn’t to make things harder for librarians; to me, our librarians are under-appreciated heroes who deserve help and praise much more than any criticism. But what I think is that, if we agree that these books do actually belong in every American library, and we find public libraries lacking these texts, then we should take the next step and either donate the books ourselves or publicize the need so that someone, somewhere, can get the right books to the right places. I know that the readers of this website are an intelligent, resourceful, bunch, so my hope is that somehow together we’ll find a way to make this effort work successfully.
Herewith, the list, alphabetically by author’s surname:
The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Complete Works, by William Cullen Bryant
Tobacco Road, by Erskine Caldwell
My Antonia, by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Complete Poems, by Emily Dickinson
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Complete Works, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
Outcasts of Poker Flat, and Other Stories, by Bret Harte
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Sketch-Book, by Washington Irving
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
Washington Square, by Henry James
Daisy Miller, by Henry James
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
White Fang, by Jack London
Complete Works, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, by H. P. Lovecraft
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman
Complete Works, by Edgar Allan Poe
The Conquest of Mexico, by William H. Prescott
The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
One Lonely Night, by Mickey Spillane
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
Democracy in America, by Alexis de Toqueville
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
Complete Works, by John Greenleaf Whittier
The Virginian, by Owen Wister
Journal, by John Woolman
Native Son, by Richard Wright