America 250 Titles for Adults

Updated January 15, 2026
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1776
McCullough, David G.
Paper Book
America's beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation's birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war...
The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
The Bluest Eye,published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes...
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
Doumented account of the decimation of Native Americans in the last half of the 19th century, told from the Indian viewpoint.
The color purple : a novel
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Alice Walker's iconic modern classic, now in a beautiful 40th anniversary Penguin Vitae edition with a foreword by Kiese LaymonA Penguin Classic Hardcover A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The...
The crucible, a play in four acts
Miller, Arthur
Paper Book
"Earlier version copyright under title Those familiar spirits"-- T.p. verso.
The grapes of wrath
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
"Traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers."--Amazon.com.
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
One of the classics of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby is now available in a definitive, textually accurate edition. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition...
The heartbeat of Wounded Knee : native America from 1890 to the present
Treuer, David
Paper Book
Beginning with the tribes' devastating loss of land and the forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools, he shows how the period of greatest adversity also helped to incubate a unifying Native identity. He traces how conscription in the US military and the pull of urban...
An indigenous peoples' history of the United States
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
Ebook
New York Times Bestseller This American Book Award winning title about Native American struggle and resistance radically reframes more than 400 years of US history A New York Times Bestseller and the basis for the HBO docu-series Exterminate All the Brutes,...
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Ebook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New York...
Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
Introduction by Susan Cheever Commentary by G. K. Chesterton, Katherine Fullerton Gerould, and Madeleine B. Stern Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS'sThe Great American Read It is no surprise that Little Women, the...
March : a novel
Brooks, Geraldine.
Paper Book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and...
The nickel boys : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. * "One of the most gifted novelists in...
O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Ebook
Willa Cather's powerful story about a family of farmers--an instant American classic The first novel in Willa Cather's Prairie Trilogy tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of immigrants eking out a hardscrabble life as farmers in Nebraska at the turn of the nineteenth...
There there
Orange, Tommy
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. A contemporary classic, this...
This tender land : a novel
Krueger, William Kent
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "If you liked Where the Crawdads Sing, you'll love This Tender Land...This story is as big-hearted as they come." --Parade A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
Paper Book
Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize...

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