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American Classics Books
Showing 1-50 of 2,661
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 416 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.93 — 6,149,551 ratings — published 1925
To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)
by (shelved 389 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.26 — 7,130,261 ratings — published 1960
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 324 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.80 — 4,016,460 ratings — published 1951
Of Mice and Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 311 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,955,705 ratings — published 1937
The Grapes of Wrath (Hardcover)
by (shelved 242 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.04 — 1,029,141 ratings — published 1939
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck, #2)
by (shelved 229 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,354,577 ratings — published 1885
East of Eden (Paperback)
by (shelved 197 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.46 — 730,668 ratings — published 1952
The Scarlet Letter (Paperback)
by (shelved 193 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.44 — 942,769 ratings — published 1850
Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by (shelved 185 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.18 — 2,545,076 ratings — published 1868
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 171 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.82 — 1,378,348 ratings — published 1952
Fahrenheit 451 (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 158 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,996,006 ratings — published 1963
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Paperback)
by (shelved 146 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 1,046,570 ratings — published 1876
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Paperback)
by (shelved 137 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.57 — 635,976 ratings — published 1851
Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)
by (shelved 127 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,529,440 ratings — published 1969
The Sun Also Rises (Paperback)
by (shelved 125 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.78 — 511,925 ratings — published 1926
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback)
by (shelved 119 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.82 — 367,656 ratings — published 1929
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 118 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.04 — 1,318,399 ratings — published 1963
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 116 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 460,686 ratings — published 1957
Gone With the Wind (Paperback)
by (shelved 109 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.32 — 1,272,233 ratings — published 1936
The Age of Innocence (Paperback)
by (shelved 108 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 204,539 ratings — published 1920
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback)
by (shelved 106 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 327,914 ratings — published 1940
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by (shelved 98 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 905,402 ratings — published 1961
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
by (shelved 96 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.00 — 401,058 ratings — published 1937
The Sound and the Fury (Paperback)
by (shelved 93 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.86 — 201,893 ratings — published 1929
The Crucible (Paperback)
by (shelved 91 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 477,159 ratings — published 1953
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Paperback)
by (shelved 90 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.31 — 534,208 ratings — published 1943
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Hardcover)
by (shelved 90 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 796,447 ratings — published 1962
The Color Purple (Paperback)
by (shelved 88 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.28 — 773,827 ratings — published 1982
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Paperback)
by (shelved 87 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 247,313 ratings — published 1852
The Call of the Wild (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 82 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 487,955 ratings — published 1903
The House of Mirth (Paperback)
by (shelved 81 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 109,426 ratings — published 1905
As I Lay Dying (Paperback)
by (shelved 78 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.72 — 194,723 ratings — published 1930
Beloved (Paperback)
by (shelved 76 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 515,300 ratings — published 1987
Ethan Frome (Paperback)
by (shelved 74 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.47 — 142,294 ratings — published 1911
The Awakening (Paperback)
by (shelved 73 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.69 — 233,917 ratings — published 1899
In Cold Blood (Paperback)
by (shelved 72 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.09 — 756,836 ratings — published 1966
Walden or, Life in the Woods (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 208,733 ratings — published 1854
The Pearl (Paperback)
by (shelved 66 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.59 — 291,758 ratings — published 1947
Death of a Salesman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 66 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.60 — 267,065 ratings — published 1949
Tender Is the Night (Paperback)
by (shelved 65 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.76 — 154,237 ratings — published 1934
Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)
by (shelved 65 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.06 — 162,225 ratings — published 1943
My Ántonia (Paperback)
by (shelved 64 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 152,446 ratings — published 1918
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 63 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 257,394 ratings — published 1958
The Red Badge of Courage (Paperback)
by (shelved 60 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.30 — 112,025 ratings — published 1894
The Bluest Eye (Paperback)
by (shelved 57 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.14 — 324,750 ratings — published 1970
Invisible Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 57 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.93 — 206,981 ratings — published 1952
A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
by (shelved 57 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 341,827 ratings — published 1947
Lolita (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 53 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.87 — 980,050 ratings — published 1955
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
by (shelved 52 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 598,826 ratings — published 1969
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 51 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.21 — 5,773,919 ratings — published 1949
“I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound." - Carol Kennicott”
―
―
“We like to think of the old-fashioned American classics as children's books. Just childishness, on our part.
The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has blabbed about children's stories.
Why?—Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.”
― Studies in Classic American Literature
The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has blabbed about children's stories.
Why?—Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.”
― Studies in Classic American Literature