America 250 Titles for Adults

Updated January 15, 2026
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
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...
Being Heumann : an unrepentant memoir of a disability rights activist
Heumann, Judith E.
Paper Book
Soon to be an Apple feature movie directed by CODA's Sian Heder and starring BAFTA-nominated actress Ruth Madeley as Judy Heumann "This important book will help ensure that every person gets a chance to live up to their full potential and will always have a place at the...
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
Doumented account of the decimation of Native Americans in the last half of the 19th century, told from the Indian viewpoint.
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
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Winner of the Pulitzer Prize * Winner of the National Book Award   Published to unprecedented acclaim,The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in...
The crucible : a play in four acts
Miller, Arthur
Paper Book
A haunting examination of groupthink and mass hysteria in a rural community A Penguin Classic   "I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an...
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 Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck Recipient of the American Book Award The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples ...
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
Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition,with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co. Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters...
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
The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal)--the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who...
O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women
Moore, Kate (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerA LibraryReads Next PickAn Indie Next PickWritten with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" element of radium in early 20th-century American factories. Their courage and tenacity led to...
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
A sweeping historical novel of the American West from the little-seen perspective of those who helped to build it, Straw Dogs of the Universe traces the story of one Chinese father and his young daughter, desperate to find him against all odds. After her village is devastated by famine, 10-year-old...
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...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.