Library of Congress Picks 88 Unobjectionable Books that "Shaped America"

Tim Cavanaugh | 7.1.2012 11:41 PM

The Library of Congress, established by President John Adams, has announced its list of "88 Books that Shaped America," determining that two-thirds of America's cultural history took place in only the last 112 years.

That at least is the evidence from the publication dates, just 27 of which are from before the twentieth century. Only 20 predate the Civil War. Suck on that, Francis Hopkinson, Susanna Rowson and Charles Brockden Brown! Phyllis Wheatley, you did your people great honor, but you just didn't shape America.

All those people were big sellers. Hopkinson signed the Declaration of Independence. But even once-popular writers who are still known didn't make the list. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gets shunned. (You know, he's only the guy who came up with "I shot an arrow in the air" and "Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere" and "By the shores of Gitche Gumee…" It's not like he wrote anything hummable.) James Fennimore Cooper is nowhere to be found. Ralph Waldo Emerson doesn't show up. Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.

These lists are more or less designed to rub you the wrong way, so I have two big beefs. One is the lack of early literature noted above. The other is the hesitant approach to popular literature — by which I mean popular-in-its-day literature like Maria Susanna Cummins' The Lamplighter — which teach you more about the people and manners of ye olde tymes than do canonical works.

There are some interesting choices. Uncle Sam's bibliophiles held their noses and included Atlas Shrugged, though I think the idea that Ayn Rand's novel shaped America falls under the "if only" rubric. Peter Parley's Universal History sounds like one for the night table.

There's a pronounced split between "shaping" and literary value. I can grok (cf. Number 73) including Unsafe at Any Speed if you're talking about influence on American law and culture, but Ralph Nader doesn't exactly set the bookstore on fire with his prose stylings. And Moby Dick seems like a reasonable choice for literary attainment, but how can it have shaped America when it was barely read for almost a half-century after its debut?

If we are talking about shaping America, where's Leon Uris' Exodus, which ignited popular support for Israel while spending years on the bestseller list? Or if we're talking about reflecting America, I'd like to see some mortal favorites like Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything or Jerome Weidman's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, interesting, revelatory books that have sunk into obscurity but could use the help of a big institution to alert readers to their existence.

It's not like there's a shortage of evangelists. The Library of Congress has a brief video in which officials talk about Important Books, but the real eye-opener is how many high-level employees the national library has. Next time you're wondering why we have no choice but to raise the debt ceiling, keep in mind that we're employing a Librarian of Congress; an associate Librarian, Library Services; a Law Librarian of Congress; a National Ambassador, Young Peoples Literature; a Project Manager, National Books Festival; a Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division; a Reference Librarian; and a Teacher-In-Residence. And the Poet Laureate hasn't even weighed in yet.

Anyway, here's the full list:

Experiments and Observations on Electricity Benjamin Franklin 1751
Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth Benjamin Franklin 1758
Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language Noah Webster 1783
The Federalist anonymous 1787
A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible anonymous 1788
A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America Christopher Colles 1789
The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. Benjamin Franklin 1793
American Cookery Amelia Simmons 1796
New England Primer anonymous 1803
History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark Meriwether Lewis 1814
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving 1820
McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer William Holmes McGuffey 1836
Peter Parley's Universal History Samuel Goodrich 1837
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass 1845
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850
Moby-Dick; or The Whale Herman Melville 1851
Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852
Walden; or Life in the Woods Henry David Thoreau 1854
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855
Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy Louisa May Alcott 1868
The American Woman's Home Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe 1869
Mark, the Match Boy Horatio Alger Jr. 1869
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884
How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis 1890
Poems Emily Dickinson 1890
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900
Harriet, the Moses of Her People Sarah H. Bradford 1901
The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903
The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois 1903
The History of Standard Oil Ida Tarbell 1904
The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906
The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907
Pragmatism William James 1907
Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Grey 1912
Family Limitation Margaret Sanger 1914
Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1914
New Hampshire Robert Frost 1923
Spring and All William Carlos Williams 1923
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925
The Weary Blues Langston Hughes 1925
Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 1929
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929
Joy of Cooking Irma Rombauer 1931
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936
How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936
Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures Federal Writers' Project 1937
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937
Our Town: A Play Thornton Wilder 1938
Alcoholics Anonymous anonymous 1939
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939
For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940
Native Son Richard Wright 1940
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943
A Treasury of American Folklore Benjamin A. Botkin 1944
A Street in Bronzeville Gwendolyn Brooks 1945
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946
The Iceman Cometh Eugene O'Neill 1946
Goodnight Moon Margaret Wise Brown 1947
A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams 1947
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Alfred C. Kinsey 1948
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger 1951
Charlotte's Web E.B. White 1952
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953
Howl Allen Ginsberg 1956
Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957
The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss 1957
On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960
Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961
Stranger in a Strange Land Robert E. Heinlein 1961
Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962
The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats 1962
The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963
The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963
Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak 1963
The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X and Alex Haley 1965
Unsafe at Any Speed Ralph Nader 1965
In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966
The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Brown 1970
Our Bodies, Ourselves Boston Women's Health Book Collective 1971
Cosmos Carl Sagan 1980
And the Band Played On Randy Shilts 1987
Beloved Toni Morrison 1987
The Words of Cesar Chavez Cesar Chavez 2002

At least the Brady Bunch and makers of understated arthouse films still give Longfellow his due: