8 BOOKS EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ
Neil deGrasse Tyson had his eight essential reads for everyone. Now the Attic answers back with eight essential American reads. Not the eight, nor the eight most representative, just eight books every American should read, in no particular order.
NOTE: Eight books can’t possibly suffice, so feel free to add your own suggestions below.
1. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (1939) — Still the great American road epic, as powerful, hopeful, and moving as when Steinbeck wrote it, pretty much as it was happening.
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1885) Hemingway said it best. “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twin called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ It’s the best book we’ve had.” And if you haven’t read it since school, you haven’t really read it. Re-read.
I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell” — and tore it up.
3. The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois (1903) — You can’t understand the black American experience without starting here.
One feels his two-ness — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
4. When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins (2010) — The New York Times’ columnist’s compelling history of the women’s movement from the hidebound 1950s on through the 60s, the backlash, and further waves of feminism.
‘Feminist’ simply means someone who supports equal rights and opportunities for women. But there have been very few periods in American history when it didn’t wind up being linked to images of cranky man-haters in unfashionable footwear.
5. The American Reader: Words that Moved a Nation, edited by Diane Ravitch — Carefully selected speeches, poems, and passages from the Mayflower Compact to Alice Walker and Harvey Milk.
6. These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore (2019) — You have to read one full history and this is the most complete, most fair, most modern. This will be on the test — of democracy.
The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden. It can’t be shirked. You carry it everywhere. There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.
7. Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, edited by Ilan Stavans (2014) — The best overview of the immigrant experience in America, 100+ essays, poems, letters, passages.
8. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, by Robert Hughes, (1997) — The noted art critic loved American art and here he interweaves its stories with the times that influenced the makers.
The visual culture of America, oscillating between dependence and invention, tells a part of the American story. . .