Survey 1 July 4, 2026
The American Novel in 25 Books: Who Gets to Be Free?
Every book from this episode, with authors and years.
Watch on YouTube
The books
- The Power of Sympathy, William Hill Brown, 1789
- Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, 1851
- Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852
- Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, William Wells Brown, 1853
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884
- The Awakening, Kate Chopin, 1899
- The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt, 1901
- The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906
- The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939
- Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940
- The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
- Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin, 1953
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
- The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon, 1966
- The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976
- Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, 1977
- Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko, 1977
- The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros, 1984
- Underworld, Don DeLillo, 1997
- The Known World, Edward P. Jones, 2003
- The Sellout, Paul Beatty, 2015
- James, Percival Everett, 2024