BS: Greatest American Books

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,Janet
Date: 08 Jul 10 - 12:22 AM

Re: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: someone indicated it should not be in this list because she is Canadian. I'd like to remind people that Canadians are Americans as are Mexicans and people from Central and South American countries. This thread is titled Greatest American Books, not Greatest Books by Authors from the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Janie
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 11:56 PM

Whoohoo! 100 quite by accident with that last post.

Not great literature, but one of the greatest series of American books in my experience, is the Peterson Field Guide series.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Janie
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 11:55 PM

A Species of Eternity, by Joseph Kastner is a series of biographical sketches of the early white naturalists who explored the continent, collecting and identifying so much of the flora and fauna of the new world, bringing it into history. Several of them died violent deaths in the process, and the stories of their explorations is also a history of the encroachment of Europeans into the continent and into the native cultures that were already here.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,Riginslinger
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 11:18 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sometimes_a_Great_Notion_(novel)

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 10:41 PM

I would inject anything by Barbara Kingsolver, who deserves a Pulitzer.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: kendall
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 08:12 PM

I don't know if it's an American book or not, but Manila Galleon is a great story. It's about how the British robbed Spanish treasure ships in the Pacific. Written by F. Van Wyke Mason.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Janie
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 08:09 PM

The journals of Lewis and Clark.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 07:56 PM

Ship of Fools Catherine Ann Porter

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 07:39 PM

Huckleberry Finn
Life on the Mississippi
Roughing It
Killer Angels
Catch-22
A World Lit Only By Fire
Goodbye Darkness
Cien Años de Soledad

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Janie
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 07:35 PM

Anyone listening to the assorted NPR pieces re: To Kill A Mockingbird that have been running all week?


I don't think I saw mention of The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 07:16 PM

An American Tragedy
Sister Carrie

A Confederacy of Dunces   !!!!! Although this may not fit the OP's description of stature.    But an absolutely wonderful novel!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 01:31 PM

Wake of the Red Witch J.London
Something of Value Leon Uris

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 01:29 PM

I have acquired a paperback copy of Human Natures by Paul Ehrlich (known 40 years ago for "Population Bomb)...and I have been browsing thru it, trying to decide if I'm up to reading it cover to cover.

As far as I am concerned, this is as good an explanation of evolution as one can get....along with insight as to how the 'sciences' of biology, chemistry & anthropology help explain just what makes us human, and the resultant problems of being such a unique species of animal.

Yes...Ehrlich still suggests that we are in serious danger from our "nature" and the resultant population increases, but you CAN read this simply to clarify the processes which brought us here.

This book was published in 2000, and obviously there have been many new discoveries in Anthropology and such in 10 years, but with this book as basis, it is reasonably easy to integrate new data with the general principles outlined.

No one who reads this with an open mind can seriously contest the major findings in evolution and the implications of the analysis.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 07 Jul 10 - 12:01 PM

So Jack, any updates on your reading from this list?

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: DougR
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 10:42 PM

McGrath: Are you evern not "pissed off" at the USA?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 10:10 PM

JAmes Dickey is the Poet Laureate of Georgia but he wrote an excellent character study novel. Sadly it is better known in movie form and then for only one horrific scene and one musical scene.

If you wnat a good read with a great character study, forget the movie, open up your mind and read "Deliverance." Oddly enough there is also something in it that was inflential in marrying Karen. The main character describes meeting his wife and that he saw some tiny spark deep within her, A tiny flame but the one he had unknowingly been looking for......and when he found it, he married it.

Exactly.

Good book. His other novel is a POS.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 08:24 PM

Black Beauty and The Borrowers?

Why not include such equally "American" books as War and Peace and Don Quixote?
.............

Lake Wobegon Days (etc) is what I tend to read anytime I feel tempted to feel pissed off at the USA, and need to get things back in proportion.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Art Thieme
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 08:02 PM

The Wisdom of Insecurity

by Allan Watts

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Wesley S
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 06:43 PM

Reading Spaws post I'm reminded that when I was single and went out with a woman for the first time I always hoped that I could steal some time in her apartment to check out what books she had on her shelf. I always figured it told a lot more about her than she would reveal in conversation.

And if there were no books at all? Forget it! That was a deal breaker.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 06:11 PM

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight - Thomm Hartmann

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: DougR
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 04:59 PM

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, William F. Buckley
Courage and Consequence, Karl Rove
Liberty and Tyranny, Mark R. Levin
Courting Disaster, Marc A. Thiessen

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 04:20 PM

Sometimes A Great Notion        Ken Kesey

All The King's Men                by Robert Penn Warren

The River Why                        David James Duncan (just learned it's coming out as a movie this year)

Cold Sassy Tree                       Olive Ann Burns

Leaves of Grass                        Walt Whitman

The Sea Wolf                        Jack London

Innocents Abroad                Mark Twain

Complete Short Stories                Mark Twain

and two famous American books to denigrate: "Scarlet Letter" was to me tedious and turgid; "Moby Dick" though wonderful of setting and intriguing as plot, was a disappointment in pace and language to read. one of the very few books I've not finished.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 03:38 PM

"You Can Lead a Politician to Water but You Can't Make Him Think"

Kinky Freidman... (written after his run for the governor of Texas)
the 1st independent candidate to get on the ballot since San Houston..

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 08:09 PM

I wasn't around when this thread got started the other day and by the time I read it, most of my favorites had already been listed. But this thread did inspire me to do something that I had meant to do for a long time.

The first evening that Karen and I met we talked some about books. When it came to a favorite book and movie we enthusiastically agreed and spent some time discussing it. For those of you who don't know, by the end of that first evening I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to marry her if she'd have me. On our next date I asked and she accepted. She is the greatest thing that ever happened in my life and though I didn't know it then, I was marrying my best friend.

So this thread inspired me to go to Abe's Books and find exactly the right presentation/gift grade copy I could afford........and she received it today. We both hugged and cried a bit. Funny how something as pedestrian as a book can also become that special.

Harper Lee may have had only one book in her but To Kill A Mockingbird is the work of a hundred thousand lifetimes. It may be American but I cannot believe that any book surpasses it in truth and poetic beauty. It is a marvelous, soul rending, work of the true writer's art that takes you in from the first words with descriptions that bring all your senses to work in the imagination. I have never encountered better IMNSHO.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Gern
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 07:42 PM

Twain has aptly summarized Fenimore Cooper for all the world to laugh at. I'll will be happy to object to Ayn Rand's titles mentioned earlier in this thread. Regardless of your take on her philosophy/politics, her fiction is transparent propaganda with comic book characters. For America's greatest book, I might suggest Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. But Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Sound And The Fury are also outstanding.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Amos
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 11:32 AM

I'd vote for Billy Budd, and Moby Dick, and Scarlet Letter, and Little Women. James Fenimore Cooper strikes me as a terrible pastiche of misrepresentations.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: mkebenn
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 10:46 AM

Moby Dick..Sinsull 3/17

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 10:15 AM

Interesting that the "classic" C19 American novelists ~~~

{Fenimore Cooper? Hawthorne? Alcott? Melville? [has anyone mentioned Deerslayer,Mohicans; Scarlet Letter; Little Women; Moby Dick, Billy Budd?]}

~~~ do not appear to be figuring greatly on this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 10:02 AM

I usually will finish a once-started book, but when I began reading Bonfire of the Vanities I got to about page 15 to 20 or so, and decided I intensely disliked the lead character, and figured I had better things to read, better ways to spend my time than to read that book.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 04:32 AM

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest   Ken Kesey

Most of John Steinbeck's books

Catch 22

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 10:57 PM

In recent history, "A Man in Full" is another really great accomplishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: SINSULL
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 09:34 PM

Bonfire of the Vanities is a treasure - the Lemon Tarts and X-Rays, the scene with the packing peanuts,characters all too close to real life New Yorkers - a brilliant satire.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 09:21 PM

Fans of "Look Homeward Angel" might enjoy Wolfe's original version, before Perkins started chopping things out of it. It was published not long ago under the original title, "O Lost."

Speaking of Thomas Wolfe reminds me of one the greatest satires of recent American life, "Bonfire of the Vanities," by the unrelated *Tom* Wolfe.

The movie version, by the way, was godawful. Read the book.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Art Thieme
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 08:50 PM

Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: ichMael
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 08:21 PM

Thomas Wolfe's novels. Look Homeward Angel, You Can't go Home Again, Of Time and the River, and so on. Faulkner called Wolfe the greatest American writer.

Maxwell Perkins was his editor. Perkins was also Hemingway's editor. And F. Scott Fitgerald's.

Perkins--The Great Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Look Homeward Angel.......

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 11:34 AM

A Confederacy of Dunces

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 11:30 AM

In addition to "All the King's Men" several of Robert Penn Warren's books are real American masterpieces: Night Riders, and The Cave, come t mind. They capture the life of the early 20th century South brilliantly and with depth.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Riginslinger
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 07:33 AM

Sometimes a Great Notion--the best American novel--and I'm sticking to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 07:19 AM

Anything by Jack Vance - a master of fantasy - the fantasist's fantasist!

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 01:10 AM

Indeed Dreiser ~~ Sister Carrie as well as the incomparable An American Tragedy

Asimov in sf {I, Robot series as well as Foundation books} ~~ also, in sf, Philip K Dick, Robert Heinlein, Fredric Brown...

Nobody seems to have mentioned Henry James ~~ surely Washington Square, Portrait Of A Lady, The Ambassadors, The Aspern papers, The Spoils Of Poynton, The Wings Of The Dove...

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: GUEST,Fred Bailey
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 11:09 PM

"The Day on Fire" by James Ramsey Ullman -- a fictionalized bio of Rimbaud

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 04:56 PM

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston.

They Tell Me of a Home by Daniel Black.

Incredible page-turners! Two of the most intense and important (to me) books I have read in recent years.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 04:55 PM

A few more:

Native Son

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Black Like Me

The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Red Badge of Courage (kind of on the fence about this one)

Poems of Robert Frost

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 04:16 PM

Mark Twain's books. I loved "Letters to the Earth". Twain equals or excels Faulkner in my opinion.

I am a fan of Asimov "The Foundation series".

Carl Sagan as an author, a voice of reason.

I love the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Theodore Dreiser has to be up there on the list. "An American Tragedy"

Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle"

Sinclair Lewis "Babbit", "Elmer Gantry", "Arrowsmith"

Gore Vidal, another American voice of reason.

"The Souls of Black Folk", by W. E. B. DuBois.

"People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (controversial) by Dee Brown

Walt Whitman's poetry. "Leaves of Grass"

Jack London as a novelist for "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang".

How about Ernest Thompson Seaton and Pearl Buck?

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 01:19 PM

"Huckleberry Finn", for sure. It's a masterpiece. So too "Tom Sawyer".   Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". The series of "private eye" adventures written by Raymond Chandler about the fictional private eye, Philip Marlowe. A number of Louis L'Amour's best adventure stories such as, for one, "Jubal Sackett".

By the way, Mark Twain's greatest book, in his OWN opinion, and in mine also is:

"Joan of Arc"

(Though it is not a book that in any way relates to Americana, it is a great book written by a great American author, and it's a shame that it's not better known, as I suspect it would be had it been written about an American life, instead of the life of a French peasant girl and a saint from the 1400s. In Mark Twain's day, France was still gratefully remembered by Americans as the courageous ally which had assisted the American revolutionaries in attaining independence from the British Empire. Americans' view of France then was radically different from the common view of France now. The French were seen then as a heroic nation both militarily and in terms of their political and social ideals.)

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: mkebenn
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 05:49 AM

All the King's Men

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 02:11 PM

Yeah,Huckleberry Finn might be the very best American book. It would certainly be one of the best few.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 11:38 AM

Huckleberry Finn is probably still the funniest - and ultimately most moving - novel I have ever read.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:09 AM

"Sometimes a Great Notion"

Best novel ever written by an American: my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Greatest American Books
From: Stu
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 04:45 AM

Thanks very much to everyone for the suggestions - plenty to be going on with here!