Sign in with Facebook
40 books
—
7 voters
American Classics Books
Showing 1-50 of 2,563
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 406 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.93 — 5,862,915 ratings — published 1925
To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)
by (shelved 380 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.26 — 6,827,483 ratings — published 1960
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 318 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.80 — 3,868,889 ratings — published 1951
Of Mice and Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 298 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,812,315 ratings — published 1937
The Grapes of Wrath (Hardcover)
by (shelved 234 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.03 — 989,016 ratings — published 1939
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck, #2)
by (shelved 222 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,333,934 ratings — published 1885
The Scarlet Letter (Paperback)
by (shelved 187 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.44 — 914,872 ratings — published 1850
East of Eden (Paperback)
by (shelved 184 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.44 — 630,055 ratings — published 1952
Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by (shelved 178 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.17 — 2,440,997 ratings — published 1868
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 165 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.81 — 1,301,359 ratings — published 1952
Fahrenheit 451 (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 155 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,805,831 ratings — published 1953
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Paperback)
by (shelved 142 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 1,013,293 ratings — published 1876
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Paperback)
by (shelved 134 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.56 — 613,173 ratings — published 1851
The Sun Also Rises (Paperback)
by (shelved 124 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.79 — 491,433 ratings — published 1926
Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)
by (shelved 121 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,475,715 ratings — published 1969
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback)
by (shelved 118 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.82 — 351,821 ratings — published 1929
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 110 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 446,233 ratings — published 1957
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 110 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.05 — 1,205,654 ratings — published 1963
Gone With the Wind (Paperback)
by (shelved 108 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.31 — 1,253,928 ratings — published 1936
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback)
by (shelved 103 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 316,775 ratings — published 1940
The Age of Innocence (Paperback)
by (shelved 103 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 194,632 ratings — published 1920
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
by (shelved 94 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 384,610 ratings — published 1937
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by (shelved 92 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 883,844 ratings — published 1961
The Crucible (Paperback)
by (shelved 91 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 461,758 ratings — published 1953
The Sound and the Fury (Paperback)
by (shelved 89 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.86 — 195,306 ratings — published 1929
The Color Purple (Paperback)
by (shelved 87 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.28 — 748,995 ratings — published 1982
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Hardcover)
by (shelved 86 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 777,456 ratings — published 1962
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Paperback)
by (shelved 84 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 242,049 ratings — published 1852
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Paperback)
by (shelved 82 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 509,666 ratings — published 1943
The Call of the Wild (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 78 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.91 — 469,920 ratings — published 1903
As I Lay Dying (Paperback)
by (shelved 77 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.72 — 186,109 ratings — published 1930
The House of Mirth (Paperback)
by (shelved 76 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 105,480 ratings — published 1905
In Cold Blood (Paperback)
by (shelved 73 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.09 — 724,894 ratings — published 1966
The Awakening (Paperback)
by (shelved 72 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.69 — 226,406 ratings — published 1899
Ethan Frome (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.46 — 137,221 ratings — published 1911
Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)
by (shelved 70 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 487,703 ratings — published 1987
Death of a Salesman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 64 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.59 — 257,786 ratings — published 1949
Walden or, Life in the Woods (Paperback)
by (shelved 64 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 203,582 ratings — published 1854
My Ántonia (Paperback)
by (shelved 63 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.84 — 147,076 ratings — published 1918
Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)
by (shelved 62 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.06 — 153,364 ratings — published 1943
Tender Is the Night (Paperback)
by (shelved 61 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 149,152 ratings — published 1934
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 59 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 250,823 ratings — published 1958
The Pearl (Paperback)
by (shelved 59 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.56 — 269,404 ratings — published 1947
The Red Badge of Courage (Paperback)
by (shelved 59 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.30 — 109,811 ratings — published 1894
Invisible Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 58 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 201,332 ratings — published 1952
A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
by (shelved 55 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 333,454 ratings — published 1947
The Bluest Eye (Paperback)
by (shelved 54 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.13 — 298,253 ratings — published 1970
The Yellow Wall-Paper (Paperback)
by (shelved 52 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.07 — 353,808 ratings — published 1892
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
by (shelved 51 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 578,322 ratings — published 1969
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 50 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 5,400,238 ratings — published 1949
“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
