25 American Classics Everyone Should Read At Least Once

by Business Insider
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25 books
Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of central collection development at the New York Public Library, helped us create a list of 25 American classics everyone should read.
From John Steinbeck's masterpiece to Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," these 25 titles are worth your time (listed here in alphabetical order).
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See the source list and commentary at www.businessinsider.com

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith, 1992

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain, 1994

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand, 2005

The Awakening

Kate Chopin, 2016

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, 1993

The Color Purple

Alice Walker, 2003

The Crucible

Arthur Miller, 1976

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury, 1968

The Fall of the House of Usher

And Other Tales
Edgar Allan Poe, 2006

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck, 2014

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton, 2012

How the Other Half Lives

A Jacob Riis Classic (Including Photography)
Jacob Riis, 2010

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou, 2010

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs, 2020

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison, 2001

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair, 2010

Leaves of Grass: 1856 Edition

Walt Whitman, 2013

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Stephen Crane, 2019

On the Road

Jack Kerouac, 2003

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James, 2015

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien, 2009

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston, 2006

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee, 2014

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, 2020

Walden

Henry David Thoreau, 1999