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24 books
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1 voter
American Classics Books
Showing 1-50 of 2,598
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 405 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.93 — 5,981,941 ratings — published 1925
To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)
by (shelved 383 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.26 — 6,954,235 ratings — published 1960
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 318 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.80 — 3,926,256 ratings — published 1951
Of Mice and Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 301 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,868,227 ratings — published 1937
The Grapes of Wrath (Hardcover)
by (shelved 235 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,003,065 ratings — published 1939
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck, #2)
by (shelved 223 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,342,969 ratings — published 1885
East of Eden (Paperback)
by (shelved 189 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.44 — 655,785 ratings — published 1952
The Scarlet Letter (Paperback)
by (shelved 186 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.44 — 926,421 ratings — published 1850
Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by (shelved 177 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.17 — 2,485,613 ratings — published 1868
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 165 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.81 — 1,329,784 ratings — published 1952
Fahrenheit 451 (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 154 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,881,151 ratings — published 1953
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Paperback)
by (shelved 144 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 1,026,669 ratings — published 1876
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Paperback)
by (shelved 133 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.57 — 620,940 ratings — published 1851
The Sun Also Rises (Paperback)
by (shelved 122 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.79 — 498,663 ratings — published 1926
Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)
by (shelved 121 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,495,357 ratings — published 1969
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback)
by (shelved 116 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.82 — 357,192 ratings — published 1929
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 112 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.05 — 1,247,875 ratings — published 1963
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 110 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 451,681 ratings — published 1957
Gone With the Wind (Paperback)
by (shelved 109 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.31 — 1,261,111 ratings — published 1936
The Age of Innocence (Paperback)
by (shelved 105 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 198,292 ratings — published 1920
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback)
by (shelved 104 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 320,859 ratings — published 1940
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by (shelved 94 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 891,753 ratings — published 1961
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
by (shelved 93 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 391,008 ratings — published 1937
The Crucible (Paperback)
by (shelved 91 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 468,070 ratings — published 1953
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Hardcover)
by (shelved 89 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 784,745 ratings — published 1962
The Sound and the Fury (Paperback)
by (shelved 89 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.86 — 197,519 ratings — published 1929
The Color Purple (Paperback)
by (shelved 87 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.28 — 758,663 ratings — published 1982
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Paperback)
by (shelved 86 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 244,026 ratings — published 1852
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Paperback)
by (shelved 84 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 517,924 ratings — published 1943
The Call of the Wild (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 80 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 477,283 ratings — published 1903
The House of Mirth (Paperback)
by (shelved 77 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 106,805 ratings — published 1905
As I Lay Dying (Paperback)
by (shelved 74 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.72 — 188,952 ratings — published 1930
In Cold Blood (Paperback)
by (shelved 72 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.09 — 737,279 ratings — published 1966
The Awakening (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.69 — 229,309 ratings — published 1899
Beloved (Paperback)
by (shelved 70 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 496,940 ratings — published 1987
Ethan Frome (Paperback)
by (shelved 70 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.46 — 139,428 ratings — published 1911
Walden or, Life in the Woods (Paperback)
by (shelved 66 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 205,475 ratings — published 1854
Death of a Salesman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 65 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.59 — 261,233 ratings — published 1949
Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)
by (shelved 63 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.06 — 156,409 ratings — published 1943
The Pearl (Paperback)
by (shelved 62 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.57 — 276,384 ratings — published 1947
My Ántonia (Paperback)
by (shelved 62 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 148,821 ratings — published 1918
Tender Is the Night (Paperback)
by (shelved 61 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 150,770 ratings — published 1934
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 60 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 253,166 ratings — published 1958
The Red Badge of Courage (Paperback)
by (shelved 59 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.30 — 110,637 ratings — published 1894
Invisible Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 56 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 203,480 ratings — published 1952
A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
by (shelved 55 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 336,705 ratings — published 1947
The Bluest Eye (Paperback)
by (shelved 53 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.13 — 307,190 ratings — published 1970
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 51 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 5,551,530 ratings — published 1948
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
by (shelved 50 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 586,582 ratings — published 1969
The Yellow Wall-Paper (Paperback)
by (shelved 50 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.07 — 367,304 ratings — published 1892
“Victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists. If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of creating greater prosperity for all peoples.”
― War Is a Racket
― War Is a Racket
“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
