Locator: 46731BOOKS.
Note: from 1924-1976, all of the authors listed are white. A handful of Black writers appear from 1977-2000, starting with Ntozake Shange's "for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf," before the list broadly diversifies in the 21st century.
When one reads that, one wonders if the music industry was the "saving grace" for our children and grandchildren, something school boards could not ban. It possibly started with the music in the mid- to late-1960s.
Wiki.
Top 100.
Goodreads, top 100, 20th century, readers vote.
I graduated from high school in 1969.
It's a sad commentary on my WHS English courses, looking back, looking at the books from the 1920s through the 1960s that I did not read.
It's also a sad commentary which books are currently being removed from high school libraries in Texas and Florida.
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER 100
The 100 books:
- 1924 The Cross Word Puzzle Book by F. Gregory Hartswick, Prosper Buranelli, and Margaret
Petherbridge (Simon & Schuster)
-
1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)
-
1926 The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant (Simon & Schuster)
-
1929 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner)
-
1936 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Scribner)
-
1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (Simon & Schuster)
-
1938 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Scribner)
-
1939 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (Pocket Books)
-
1940 How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (Simon & Schuster)
-
1946 The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock (Pocket Books)
-
1947 Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, illustrated by Wesley Dennis
(Aladdin/Rand McNally)
-
1947 Stone Soup by Marcia Brown (Scribner)
-
1948 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (Scribner)
-
1955 Eloise by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight (Simon & Schuster)
-
1960 The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis (Simon & Schuster)
-
1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (Simon & Schuster)
-
1961 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (Simon & Schuster)
-
1965 Science and Human Behavior by B.F. Skinner (Free Press)
-
1966 Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan (Simon & Schuster)
-
1967 The Chosen by Chaim Potok (Simon & Schuster)
-
1967 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster)
-
1967 From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (Atheneum)
-
1969 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig (Windmill Books)
-
1970 Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume (Macmillan/Bradbury Press)
-
1970 Time and Again by Jack Finney (Simon & Schuster)
-
1973 The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (Margaret K. McElderry Books)
-
1973 The Denial of Death by Ernest Beck (Scribner/Free Press)
- 1974 On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (Scribner)
- 1974 All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster)
-
1975 Looking for Mister Goodbar by Judith Rossner (Simon & Schuster)
-
1975 Strega Nona by Tomie De Paola (Prentice-Hall)
-
1975 Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster)
-
1977 for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake
Shange (Macmillan)
-
1977 The Women’s Room by Marilyn French (Summit Books)
-
1977 Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Douglas Kent
Hall (Simon & Schuster)
-
1978 The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck (Simon & Schuster)
-
1982 The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton (Boynton Bookworks)
-
1982 Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally (Simon & Schuster)
-
1983 Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins (Simon & Schuster)
-
1985 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)
-
1986 Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (Macmillan/Bradbury Press)
-
1987 The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (Simon & Schuster)
-
1987 The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (Simon & Schuster)
-
1987 Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher (Simon & Schuster)
-
1988 Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster)
-
1989 Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr., and John Archambault, illustrated by
Lois Ehlert (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
-
1989 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (Simon & Schuster)
1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (Atheneum)
-
1991 Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins (Summit)
-
1991 Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Atheneum)
-
1992 Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster)
-
1992 Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton (Simon & Schuster)
-
1992 The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama (Free Press)
-
1992 She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb (Pocket Books)
-
1992 Truman by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)
-
1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Scribner)
-
1994 Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (Simon & Schuster)
-
1994 No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster)
-
1996 Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (Scribner)
-
1996 It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster)
-
1997 Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker
(Scribner)
-
1997 Term Limits by Vince Flynn (Pocket Books)
-
1997 Underworld by Don DeLillo (Scribner)
- 1999 The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah (Pocket Books)
-
2000 Olivia by Ian Falconer (Atheneum)
-
2000 On Writing by Stephen King (Scribner)
-
2001 Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter (Simon & Schuster)
-
2001 An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster)
-
2001 The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon (Scribner)
-
2002 The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (Atheneum)
-
2003 Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire (Free Press)
-
2004 Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)
-
2004 He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (Simon Spotlight
Entertainment)
-
2005 And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry
Cole (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
-
2005 The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)
-
2006 Pelé: The Autobiography by Pelé (Simon & Schuster UK)
-
2006 The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Atria)
-
2007 City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (Margaret K. McElderry Books)
-
2009 Dork Diaries by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin)
-
2009 The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (Simon & Schuster Books for Young
Readers)
-
2010 The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
-
2010 Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper (Atheneum)
-
2011 Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)
-
2012 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
-
2013 Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (Touchstone)
-
2014 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
-
2014 A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (Atria)
-
2016 It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (Atria)
-
2016 Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (Simon & Schuster)
-
2016 The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (Gallery / Scout Press)
-
2017 Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum / Caitlyn Dlouhy Books)
-
2017 Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (Scribner UK)
-
2017 i by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
-
2018 Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Simon & Schuster)
-
2018 The Library Book by Susan Orlean (Simon & Schuster)
-
2019 From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle (Simon & Schuster Canada)
-
2019 Tell Me Why by Archie Roach (Simon & Schuster Australia)
-
2019 Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Avid Reader Press)
-
2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster)
-
2023 How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (37 Ink)
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The Gulf
For high school seniors planning to major in marine biology in college.
For all others who spend their summers and winters on Florida beaches or in Cancun.
**************************
Goodreads Top 100 -- 20th Century
Goodreads
- 1
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
- 2
1984
by George Orwell
- 3
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
by J.K. Rowling
- 4
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 5
Animal Farm
by George Orwell
- 6
The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)
by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 7
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- 8
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
- 9
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
- 10
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
by C.S. Lewis
- 11
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
- 12
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
- 13
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
- 14
Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
- 15
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
- 16
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
by J.K. Rowling
- 7
The Giver (The Giver, #1)
by Lois Lowry (Goodreads Author)
- 18
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
- 19
Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
- 20
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
- 21
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
- 22
The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
by Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)
- 23 The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 24
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
- 25
The Stranger
by Albert Camus
- 26
Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
- 27
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5)
by Douglas Adams
- 28
Charlotte’s Web
by E.B. White
- 29
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
by J.K. Rowling
- 30
The Chronicles of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia, #1-7) )
by C.S. Lewis
- 31
A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)
by Madeleine L'Engle
- 32
The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
- 33
Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1)
by Orson Scott Card
- 34
The Giving Tree
by Shel Silverstein
- 35
The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)
by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 36
The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)
by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 37
Night (The Night Trilogy, #1)
by Elie Wiesel
- 38
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
- 39
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
- 40
Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)
by Richard Adams
- 41
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho (Goodreads Author)
- 42
Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)
by L.M. Montgomery
- 43
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
- 44
Green Eggs and Ham
by Dr. Seuss
- 45
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
- 46
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
- 47
The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
- 48
The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
- 49
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
- 50
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- 51
Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
- 52
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
- 53
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- 54
The Stand
by Stephen King (Goodreads Author)
- 55
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
- 57
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving (Goodreads Author)
58
Dune (Dune, #1)
by Frank Herbert
- 59
Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak
- 60
The Lorax
by Dr. Seuss
- 61
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1)
by Roald Dahl
- 62
The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
by Ken Follett (Goodreads Author)
- 63
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
- 64
The Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton (Goodreads Author)
- 65
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
by Douglas Adams
- 66
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
- 67
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
- 68
Ulysses
by James Joyce
- 69
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
- 70
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
- 71
The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)
by Pearl S. Buck
- 72
A Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole
- 73
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)
by Frank McCourt
74
The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan (Goodreads Author)
- 75
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
- 76
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand
- 77
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
- 78
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
- 79
The World According to Garp
by John Irving (Goodreads Author)
- 80
Little House on the Prairie (Little House, #3)
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- 81
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
- 82
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
- 83
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
- 84
Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes
- 85
Where the Red Fern Grows
by Wilson Rawls
- 86
Mere Christianity
by C.S. Lewis
- 87
Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
- 88
Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)
by Larry McMurtry
- 89
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
by George R.R. Martin
- 90
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
- 91
The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant (Goodreads Author)
- 92
Sophie’s Choice
by William Styron
- 93
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
- 94
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
- 95
Franny and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger
- 96
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
- 97
Blindness
by José Saramago
- 98
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
- 99
And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie
- 100
Winnie-the-Pooh
by A.A. Milne
