A review by stevenk
Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America: How White Whales, Green Lights, and Restless Spirits Forged Our National Identity by Thomas C. Foster

3.0

A discussion of 25 books that have shaped the American mythology. Not the top 25, not the only 25, just 25 that the author felt were worthy along with his reasons why. The author picked:

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Walden by Henry David Thoreau; Moby-Dick by Herman Melville; Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman; Little Women by Louisa May Alcott; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; A Boys Will and North of Boston by Robert Frost; My Antonia by Willa Cather; The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald; The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes; The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett; The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston; Go Down Moses by William Faulkner; The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow; On The Road by Jack Kerouac; The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich,

and even named 15 alternatives. The author's discussion of the writing of these books, the authors, the plots and their impact on the American mythology are interesting, informative, and even fun (although if you haven't read these books his discussion will reveal their plots) look at 25 significant American works.