America 250 Titles for Adults

Updated January 15, 2026
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Johnson County Public Library Johnson County Public Library
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America 250 Titles for Adults

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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...
All that she carried : the journey of Ashley's sack, a black family keepsake
Miles, Tiya
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a "deeply layered and insightful" (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out...
The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME * From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner--a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. * With a new introduction by Jacqueline...
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
The landmark, bestselling account of the crimes against American Indians during the 19th century, now on its 50th Anniversary. First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction...
The children's blizzard
Laskin, David
Paper Book
"David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand."  -- Erik...
Cold mountain
Frazier, Charles
Paper Book
Cold Mountain is an extraordinary novel about a soldier's perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War. At once a magnificent love story and a harrowing account of one man's long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a stunning new talent in American literature.<...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino. Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, The Color Purple writes a message of healing,...
The crucible : a play in four acts
Miller, Arthur
Paper Book
"Earlier version copyright under title Those familiar spirits"-- T.p. verso.
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America
Larson, Erik.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century Two...
A fever in the heartland : the Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them
Egan, Timothy
Paper Book
The Roaring Twenties - the Jazz Age - has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in...
The four winds
Hannah, Kristin
Paper Book
"The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the...
The grapes of wrath
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
The 75th anniversary hardcover edition of Steinbeck's crowning literary achievement First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads,...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book...
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
Paper Book
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,...
The Joy Luck Club
Tan, Amy
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Amy Tan's modern classic that examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters "For me, [The Joy Luck Club] was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish...
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Paper Book
#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...
The Lincoln highway
Towles, Amor
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Readers' Choice Best Book of the Century, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR,...
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
Brooks, Geraldine.
Paper Book
From Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, and has added adult resonance to portray the moral complexity of war and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism.
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...
The pioneers : the heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west
McCullough, David G.
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times BestsellerAs part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana,...
O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
A place called Yellowstone : the epic history of the world's first national park
Wilson, Randall K.
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE BARBARA AND DAVID ZALAZNICK BOOK PRIZE Finalist for the High Plains International Book Award INSIDE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK- Discover the epic history of the first US national park in this historical adventure for fans of American history, the Wild West, and the...
The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women
Moore, Kate (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller! "The glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still." --NPR Books  Discover the gripping and inspiring true story of The Radium Girls, a groundbreaking work by acclaimed author Kate Moore....
The rush : America's fevered quest for fortune, 1848-1853
Dolnick, Edward
Paper Book
A riveting portrait of the Gold Rush, by the award-winning author of Down the Great Unknown and The Forger's Spell. In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper...
Stamped from the beginning : a graphic history of racist ideas in America
Gill, Joel Christian
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life--from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist. NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD
The story of my life
Keller, Helen
Paper Book
The story of Helen Keller, the young girl who triumphed over deafness and blindness, has been indelibly marked into our cultural consciousness. That triumph, shared with her teacher Anne Sullivan, has been further popularized by the play and movie The Miracle Worker. Yet the astonishing original...
Straw dogs of the universe : a novel
Ye, Chun
Paper Book
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence A harrowing and redemptive immigrant story for readers of Pachinko A Chinese railroad worker and his young daughter-sold into servitude-in 19th century California search for family, fulfillment, and belonging...
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...
These is my words : the diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : Arizona territories : a novel
Turner, Nancy E.
Paper Book
"Belongs on your must-read list. This novel is a gem." --Omaha World-Herald Nancy E. Turner's unforgettable These Is My Words melds the sweeping adventures and dramatic landscapes of Lonesome Dove with the heartfelt emotional saga of Oldest Living Confederate...
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
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made...
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