My friends and I were musing after a few Guiness this past St. Patrick’s Day and this subject came up. Which American books had a profound effect on American culture? (We do not count the Bible as it is not an “American” book) we came up with a couple:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe
Brought the horror of slavery to a wide audience.
The Influence on Sea Power in Naval History A. T. Mahan
Helped the United States think in terms of global awareness.
The Jungle Upton Sinclair
Led to many changes in the public’s conception of product integrity and food safety.
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care Dr. Benjamin Spock
Seems to be acknowledged as a major influence on how children were raised in the 1960’s.
I wonder if fictional books really change culture or merely reflect the unrest and wish for change prevalent in the culture at that time, like all good contemporary fiction should.
But that’s another debate.
The Feminine Mystique – Gloria Steinem, IIRC. Shaped modern (post-1960s) feminism.
On the Road – Jack Kerouac. Influenced the Beat culture, which gave birth to the Hippies and, via Postmodernism and Punk, killed Modernism.
Common Sense – Thomas Paine. Brought Revolutionary tensions to a head by giving Patriots a common rallying cry. Probably the single most important mass-published work of the whole era, Declarations and Constitutions excepted.
The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith. This Englishman laid the groundwork for America’s economic ideal, with individuals, not communes or kings, placed supreme in the economic and social order.
Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler. Hitler → Nazism → WWII → Destruction of Europe, USSR, Japan, China, etc. → Marshall Plan → US Western dominance → US Global dominance. Also, Nazi destruction at the death camps made it all the harder to ignore the racism back home. The latter half of the 20th, post-WWII, was very, very good to America overall, even factoring in Asian Debacles and Civil Strife. I think WWII did more to shape the modern US, from race relations to WMD policy, than any other event since the Revolution itself.
Will this latest ‘conflict’ produce a contemporary peer?
I’ll second ‘Common Sense’ and add Paine’s other oft’ overlooked work ‘Age of Reason’. A good book to read when GWB or anyone else claims marching orders from god.
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, 1963.
Mitford basically catalogued all the ways the funeral industry at the time played upon the grief of surviving relatives to sell expensive funeral services. Maybe it didn’t change the whole of American society, but it surely changed the funeral business.
All the President’s Men deserves mention, even though its key facts had already been published.
I would also mention Ida Tarbell’s muckraking articles on Standard Oil, except I don’t believe thiose were ever published in book form.
I thought of another: An Overland Journey by Horace Greeley, 1860. This book (and Greeley’s personal advocacy, of which the book was the main public expression) was one of the key pieces of publicity in favor of a transcontinental railroad in the United States. The railroad in turn greatly facilitated the country’s westward expansion. Funding for that railroad was pushed by several Congressman who were either personal friends of Greeley’s or had read his book.
I’d have some doubts about that funeral book, Lizard. When my father-in-law died the mortuary sure put the full court press on for the $25 Grand treatment. Bastards.
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Helped define for the world what the hell was happening over here.
Might I mention John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a candidate for honorable mention?
This was IMHO the defining book of the Great Depression.
The Joad family’s odyssey of despair and futility from Oklahoma to California vividly depicts the horrors of the Great Depression. It is a study into the very nature of equality and justice in America.
I also wholeheartedly agree with two previous suggestions: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason.
I concur with Gorrillicus’s suggestion that GWB read the The Age of Reason “…since he gets his marching orders from God…” Although getting that Philistine to read a substantive book, I fear would be an exercise in futility since he probably has not done so since his college days…if then.
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, which defined (if not created) the image of the teenager. Before the 50’s, one was a child and then promptly turned to an adult. The teen years of existential angst was first voiced by Holden Caulfield.
And the teen/youth culture of the 50’s, spawning in the US, has had a tremendous impact on large parts of the world.
Oop - I seem to be only popping in for a pedantic nitpick, as titles I’d hve mentioned have alredy been posted. Plus, I am not really in a position to talk of American culture.
“Adam Smith, the political economist and philosopher who became famous for his influential book The Wealth of Nations was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland.”
With one book, Mark Twain gave literature a new voice, and redefined what literature can be. HUCK FINN decided once and for all that it’s okay for characters in books–even GREAT books–to speak the way that people do in real life.
Compare Twain’s work with that of any classic American author who came before (Hawthorne, Melville, Cooper, etc.), and you’ll see what I mean.
