The Hungry Mind Review's 100 Best 20th Century Books

  1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918)
  2. James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)
  3. Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina (1992)
  4. Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me Ultima (1972)
  5. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
  6. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)
  7. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
  8. James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
  9. James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction (1985)
  10. Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (1998)
  11. Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)
  12. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (1948)
  13. William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)
  14. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)
  15. Raymond Carver, Cathedral (1983)
  16. Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913)
  17. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
  18. John Cheever, Collected Stories (1978)
  19. Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street (1984)
  20. Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
  21. Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
  22. Vine Deloria Jr.. Custer Died for Your Sins (1983)
  23. John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (1930)
  24. Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (1925)
  25. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
  26. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
  27. Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine (1984)
  28. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1926)
  29. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
  30. William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (1940)
  31. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
  32. M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating (1954)
  33. Francisco Goldman, The Ordinary Seaman (1997)
  34. Alex Haley, Roots (1976)
  35. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
  36. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
  37. Ernest Hemingway, The Short Stories (1938)
  38. Michael Herr, Dispatches (1984)
  39. Chester Himes, My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography (1976)
  40. Linda Hogan, Mean Spirit (1990)
  41. bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982)
  42. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
  43. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)
  44. LeRoi Jones (Amira Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963)
  45. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
  46. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
  47. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John (1983)
  48. Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior (1976)
  49. Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird (1976)
  50. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  51. Li-Young Lee, The Winged Seed (1995)
  52. Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)
  53. Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (1994)
  54. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
  55. Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948)
  56. Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel (1958)
  57. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
  58. Rollo May, Love and Will (1969)
  59. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
  60. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
  61. N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968)
  62. Wright Morris, Field of Vision (1956)
  63. Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)
  64. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
  65. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
  66. Toni Morrison, Jazz (1992)
  67. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1958)
  68. John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (1932)
  69. Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955)
  70. Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael (1947)
  71. Tillie Olson, Tell Me a Riddle (1961)
  72. Jon Okada, No-No Boy (1977)
  73. Grace Paley, Collected Stories (1994)
  74. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (1961)
  75. Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1930)
  76. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
  77. Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)
  78. Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
  79. J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  80. May Sarton, At Seventy (1984)
  81. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
  82. Isaac B. Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1982)
  83. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
  84. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1937)
  85. William Styron, Sophie's Choice (1979)
  86. James Thurber, A Thurber Carnival (1945)
  87. Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)
  88. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth (1962)
  89. John Updike, Rabbit, Run (1960)
  90. Gore Vidal, The United States: Essays (1952-1992)
  91. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
  92. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
  93. Robert Penn Warren , All the Kings Men (1946)
  94. Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1939)
  95. John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (1990)
  96. William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1925)
  97. Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (1940)
  98. Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again (1941)
  99. Richard Wright, Native Son (1940)
  100. Wakako Yamauchi, Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994)

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