http://listverse.com/literature/10-books-that-changed-america/

There are books that are revered because of their effect on art, and there are books that are remarkable because they literally change the very society from which they came. Here is a list of ten books that radically changed or shaped American society. I’ve excluded all religious texts because those are just too obvious. So without further delay, here’s the list!

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This 1855 book of poetry ushered in the American equivalent of the Romantic Era of literature. Whitman’s brilliant work changed art, and changed what could be discussed in art with his bold and bawdy epic poem. This work was both subversive and celebratory, that opened the door for discussion of many issues, and also was the work that opened the beat movement that followed nearly a century later. [Read the full text online]

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Unfortunately, not every book has a good influence on society. This 1905 book made the KKK out to be heroes, and lead to a disgraceful anti-black film (the Birth of a Nation) that was quoted by then President Woodrow Wilson as being, “Sad because it’s true.” This was the racist answer to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and this book was a best seller that eventually led to support for the Jim Crow laws. Sad and sick, but influential all the same. [Read the full text online]

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This novel, which won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was a stunning and powerful novel. This fictional book was based on the real life plight of the poor Midwestern farmers who went into California looking for work, and ended up in slave conditions and tragedy. This book was extremely controversial, and hated in California, but invoked such an outrage that Congress actually passed legislation to help the migrants and their families. This never would have happened without this book, which remains a classic to this day.

Buy this book at Amazon

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The full title of this book is “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”. This autobiography of Frederick Douglass was printed in 1845 and really opened people’s eyes not only because of the intriguing title, but because Douglass’s exceptional prose, poetic fables, and great writing skill showed what a former slave could aspire to. With this beautiful writing, others realized that the point of view Douglass has was valid, and the fable referring to slavery was too hard to miss. [Read the full text online]

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This simple yet powerful book caught the attention of millions and was the cry against the loss of our environmental treasures that finally forced Congress to listen and spawned the modern environmental movement. This book caused DDT to be made illegal, and helped save the Bald Eagle, among hundreds and hundreds of other animals.

Buy this book at Amazon

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This novel by Richard Wright was incredible, and shocked the entire nation by making a seemingly vicious black man (and a murderer) a hero, or at least an anti-hero. Bigger Thomas was the epitome of an angry black man, pushed too far not only by a society that hated him because of the color of the skin, but by the self-loathing he felt as a result and by even the white Socialists who thought they understood, but did not. This violent and startling story brought to attention the savage inequalities and racism in America, and helped lay part of the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement.

Buy this book at Amazon

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This 1792 work was a passionate manifesto, and this work’s effect caused Wollstonecraft to be considered the mother of modern feminism. This was the first major literary assertion of women’s rights, and started the ball rolling on every major breakthrough to follow. [Read the full text online]

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Hot dog, anyone? This novel was meant to be about not only the meat packing plant, but also about the terrible conditions of poverty that immigrants and low wage workers dealt with in the cities. This novel shocked the nation, and the understanding that humans who fell in the vat simply ended up in hot dogs . . . well apparently that’s more important than poverty. Nonetheless, this caused several acts to be passed by congress in dealing with both employment laws and with meat packing and food and safety standards. Many of these laws are still in effect even today. [Read the full text online]

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This was almost number one, but even at 2, no one can argue that this was one of the most influential books in American history. Not only was this the first book to sell a million copies, and inflamed the issue of slavery to the point where there was no way to ignore it any longer. When author Harriet Beecher Stowe met President Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln was quoted as saying: “So you’re the little woman who started this great war.” Whether the quote is true or not, it shows the effect she had on society. [Read the full text online]

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It’s almost impossible to argue with this one at the top. The fiery yet intelligent public indictment of monarchy and demanding freedom may have been the single biggest fuse that lead to wide spread support of the Revolutionary War. Many historians think of Paine’s book as the ember that sparked the blaze. Over 100,000 copies were sold in the first few months, and before “Common Sense” became widely read, most colonists didn’t give a crap about breaking away from Great Britain, so the book that helped create America is the one that gets the number one spot. [Read the full text online]

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=132737
20 Books That Changed America
Magazine Honors Remarkable Literature
—

In honor of America's 227th birthday, we set out to find the twenty novels and nonfiction titles that have had the greatest impact on the history of the country: the ones that led to concrete, definable changes in the way Americans live their lives. We omitted a number of important volumes that existed before the country did; among their number are several seminal religious texts (the Bible, for instance). We also limited our list to books that were released more than twenty-five years ago. It just seems too early to assess the effect of recent efforts  Dinesh D'Souza's 1991 Illiberal Education, which helped codify the country's obsession with political correctness, for instance, or Andrew Weil's 1995 advisory paean to alternative medicine, Spontaneous Healing, or Eric Schlosser's 2001 McDonald's-bashing Fast Food Nation. Here, then, in chronological order, are the books that forever changed the nation.  Jerome Kramer

1. Common Sense Thomas Paine, 1776 Without Paine's indictment of hereditary monarchy, "there might not have been a U.S.A.," says Fast Food Nation's Eric Schlosser. Before it was published, "a lot of early Americans didn't give a damn about splitting with the Motherland," points out War Letters editor Andrew Carroll. "Paine's book was the ember that sparked the blaze." At least a hundred thousand copies were sold in the first few months after its publication-at a time when the country's opulation was roughly two and a half million.

2. A Vindication of the Rights of Women Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 With her passionate manifesto, the mother of modern feminism kicked off what would be a centuries-long struggle. The first major literary assertion of women's rights, Vindication paved the way for both 1848's Seneca Falls Convention (the gathering of suffragists organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony) and the 1920 passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote.

3. The Book of Mormon 1830 This collection of revelations, given to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni, launched the country's biggest homegrown religion. Today, Mormonism has eleven million followers around the world; in the United States alone, its adherents outnumber Episcopalians or Presbyterians. The book provides the theological underpinnings for one of the world's most vibrant religions.

4. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Frederick Douglass, 1845 Douglass' autobiography opened eyes not only because of the story its title promised, but also because of the very idea that a former slave could write so well. Others recognized that Douglass' point of view was the truly valid one: In a preface to the book, Wendell Phillips referred to a fable in which a lion complains that he would not be so misrepresented if the lions wrote history. "I am glad the time has come when the 'lions write history,'" Phillips wrote. "We have been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary evidence of the masters."

5. The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848 "Whether you hate him or not, you've gotta include him," says social historian Studs Terkel of Karl Marx. The Manifesto's effect on this country has been tremendous. The American Communist Party gained momentum in the 1930s, and that was just the beginning. The Cold War, McCarthyism, Vietnam, the peace movement-without Marx, none would have happened as they did.

6. Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852 Stowe's wildly popular melodrama, Schlosser says, is the "absolute paradigmatic example" of a book that changed the country. "Head and shoulders above the rest," concurs New Journalism dean and novelist Tom Wolfe. "It inflamed the issue of slavery all over the world. [President] Lincoln said there would have been no Civil War without it, and he was right."

7. Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman, 1855 A book that irrevocably changed art, Whitman's masterpiece was a bold, bawdy landmark. Subversive and celebratory, it was the work that opened the door for more disciples and imitators than any other-Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs are just a few of those whose work descended from Whitman's. As Ezra Pound wrote in his 1913 poem "A Pact": "It was you that broke the new wood, / Now is a time for carving." Literary and cultural artists have been whittling away ever since.

8. The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud, 1900 Without Freud's Dreams, we'd be bereft not only of our beloved psychoanalysts, but also Woody Allen. According to Michael Roth, the curator of a Library of Congress exhibit on Freud, the analyst introduced us to our inner space. "The frontier 'out there' was closing down," he says. "Freud pointed to a frontier within."

9. The Clansman Thomas Dixon Jr., 1905 This book, says Wesleyan University professor Sean McCann, was a "radical racist's turn-of-the-century rejoinder to Uncle Tom's Cabin." A bestseller that became hugely in.uential in fostering the ideology of Jim Crow, it was used by D.W. Grif.th as the basis for his in.ammatory racist classic, 1915's The Birth of a Nation.

10. The Jungle Upton Sinclair, 1906 Hot dog, anyone? The muckraking novel-set in the grim shadows of Chicago's meatpacking industry-was supposed to awaken its readers to the awful environment in which the nation's poor toiled. But as Terkel points out, the book had a slightly different effect: "What got [its readers] going was, ironically, not the fact that Sinclair described the horrendous working conditions, but that some of these guys fell into the vats. So what got the people horrified is [the thought that], 'I might be eating some of that stuff!'" Both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed within six months of the novel's publication.

11. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes, 1936 So crucial were the theories of this British economist that the thirty years of Western prosperity from 1945 to 1975 have been called the Age of Keynes. Here, he laid out the economic principles that drove Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal; the economist believed that stimulus from governmental regulation or through investment was good for the economy. The book, McCann says, like Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's similarly important A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, "acted directly and indirectly to fundamentally transform the economic and political landscape of the U.S." Of both titles McCann says: "Their importance can't be overstated."

12. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck, 1939 The Pulitzer Prize winner about the migration of poor southwestern farmers-the Okies-who were pouring into California "took the country by storm," says author and Middlebury professor Jay Parini. This, in turn, provoked Congress to pass legislation to aid the migrants whose plight Steinbeck had dramatized.

13. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison, 1952 Ellison's masterpiece captured the condition of disenfranchised African Americans so powerfully that the rest of the country was forced to pay attention. "It is one of the best American novels, maybe the best, and is often the only black-authored book most non-blacks will ever read because it's required reading at every dang university in the country," says author Sherman Alexie.

14. Howl Allen Ginsberg, 1956 A year before Jack Kerouac published On the Road, Ginsberg hit the counterculture pavement with this poem that author and editor James Atlas describes as "a total revelation, a hypnotic chant that prefigured the '60s." Atlas says he was "stunned by the heat and excitement it generated. Freedom, craziness, drugs, sex-it was a prophetic book and great poetry, the long lines unfurling with Whitmanian grandeur. Howl brought news from a sensibility that was about to dominate the consciousness of the next generation."

15. Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand, 1957 The book, with the rest of objectivist philosopher Rand's oeuvre, has exerted a powerful influence over its legion of devotees. In 1991, a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club rated Rand's novel the "second most influential book for Americans" after the Bible. "The effects that Rand has had on everything from politics to pop culture is actually remarkable," observes the founding co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Chris Matthew Sciabarra. "And when you start to trace her effects on rock bands like Rush or comics illustrators like Steve Ditko, or Alan Greenspan, who runs the Federal Reserve, there's no doubt that her influence is very broad and very deep."

16. Silent Spring Rachel Carson, 1962Although her book stood on the shoulders of giants-she drew on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Wallace Stegner and others-Carson's is the one that launched modern environmentalism. For seventeen years Carson worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where she learned about the abuse of pesticides, including DDT. The book that came out of her education there essentially gave birth to the green movement in this country.

17. The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan, 1963 "We can no longer ignore the voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home,'" wrote Friedan in her bestselling exploration of the malaise of American women. Not only did the book sell in the millions, it also kicked off the second wave of feminism  challenging the country's views on gender roles and family structure. Subsequent books covered similar ground, and may have been even more popular: Erica Jong's 1973 Fear of Flying, for instance, was a book that, in the opinion of novelist Sandra Cisneros, changed more women than "the major books by feminist writers. It was pop lit, but it was what the readers of Cosmo and Vogue were reading." Take away Friedan, though, and Jong's raunchy novel could never have taken flight.

18. The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley, 1965The book Alex Haley co-wrote, says cultural critic bell hooks, gave "permission to black people and other groups of people to be angry about racism." Appearing as the civil rights movement was reaching fever pitch, it offered an alternative to Martin Luther King Jr.'s approach to repairing the major social crisis of twentieth-century America.

19. On Death and Dying Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969 Whether they know it or not, Americans today deal with the phenomenon of death using the language and philosophy delineated by Kübler-Ross as the stages of dying: denial and isolation; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance. Her book had a profound effect on how Americans view the one thing besides taxes they all have in common. "It took illness and death out of the closet and helped spark the hospice movement," says author and former psychotherapist Christine Dinsmore.

20. All the President's Men Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 1974 For better or for worse, Woodward and Bernstein's fearless Watergate investigations inspired an entire generation of dragon-slaying journalists. Much great work has been the result; so has the rise of the kind of "gotcha" journalism that so frequently threatens to overtake the field.

http://www.listsofbests.com/list/5867?print=true

Books That Changed The World (Easton Press）

"These are the books that set the world on a different course, for better or for worse. They encompass the classics of philosophy, politics, sociology, science, and religion. These books brought about reforms and revolutions; toppled governments; started wars. They changed people’s hearts and minds; altered people’s lives. Even today, these books continue to stir passions and cause controversy.

This collection includes 47 titles as chosen by the Editorial Advisory Board of the Easton Press."

1. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
2. The Meaning of Relativity, Fifth Edition: Including the Relativistic Theory of the Non-Symmetric Field (Princeton Science Library) by Albert Einstein
3. The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton
4. The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin
5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus
6. Common Sense by Thomas Paine
7. The State And Revolution by V. I. Lenin
8. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
9. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
10. The Social Contract and The Discourses (Everyman's Library) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
11. Two Treatises Of Government by John Locke
12. Magna Carta: Second Edition by J.C. Holt
13. Das Kapital, Gateway Edition by Karl Marx
14. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
15. The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor
16. The Koran (Penguin Classics) by Anonymous
17. Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly (Signet Classics (Paperback)) by Harriet Beecher Stowe
18. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
19. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (Modern Library Classics) by Mary Wollstonecraft
20. The Interpretation Of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
21. The Journal of Christopher Columbus (during His First Voyage, 1492-93) and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real by Christopher Columbus
22. The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian by Marco Polo
23. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
24. Discourse on Method and Related Writings (Penguin Classics) by Rene Descartes
25. An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) by Thomas Malthus
26. The Theory Of The Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
27. The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics) by Anonymous
28. Utopia (Penguin Classics) by Thomas More
29. Tao Te Ching, 25th-Anniversary Edition by Lao Tsu
30. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas: God and the Order of Creation (Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas) by Aquinas, Saint Thomas
31. Psychology of the Unconscious (Dover Value Editions) by C. G. Jung
32. The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl
33. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses by Martin Luther
34. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Great Minds Series) by John Maynard Keynes
35. Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha) by Mohandas K. Gandhi
36. Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung by Mao Tse-Tung
37. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself by Frederick Douglass
38. The Republic (Penguin Classics) by Plato
39. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
40. The Torah
41. The New Testament
42. The Federalist Papers (Penguin Classics) by Alexander Hamilton
43. Euclid's Elements by Euclid
44. The Art of War: The oldest military treatise in the world (Miniature book) by Sun-Tzu
45. Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
46. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
47. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Walking by David Thoreau

已单开一线：　http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1229837526

(已单开一线）
咖啡客推荐书目除了在阿珊收在2008读书目录里，还有这些分散在许多帖子里的，慢慢收在这里：
http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1229838013

很好的专题，我现在经常在书店里不知道该买啥书看，尤其英文的。

题材广泛一点，如果按专业来划分，每个专业推荐个十大就更好了，例如经济学的、人类学的......

rzp
謝謝，書單匯總，能不能放在主頁一個link，找起來方便。也便於更新添加。

小曼的分题材很好，另外也可按咖啡豆豆分成“maya corner“ 或“What uncle touche is reading" 等等。

很多人也會對發現一本好書的過程感興趣。馬mm的“讀書碎片“ 也可自成一分枝，加上link。

要不要在咖啡書單的每個書後加上amazon的這本書的direct link？ 這樣能否替mayacafe添點口糧．或點心的。

I am thinking of the same thing, a link. Thank you, rzp, that's a lot work to put it together.

xiaoman, caoye, Spring, thanks for your comments.

caoye, regarding to the amazon link, r u talking abou kick back from amazon? how does it work?

rzp, thanks for your work!

yeh, I am talking about kick back,? It is just a thought. but I am not sure how it would work? Can we contact amazon? if book orders come from our web site? would them give cafe some dough?

Personally I order most of books from amazon.if everyone order few hundred bucks of books annually, especially holiday seasons, it can add up to tens thoundands right?

in addition to parenting books, I also would like to add book list for children especially teens: we can call it "what your children are reading".

Now, I got more idea, I always hear from Laofang, maya, They need to get rid of some of their books, Can we donate all the books we don't need in our possesion to some Chinese high schools libraries that really need English books. I knew a person who is having a foundation just for that purpose.

So, we could do somethings for young kids who is hungry for good books.

主頁一個link是指什么？

暂时先不想分成很多帖子。如果单子不在这条线，会在单名处加上链接。每个书单的帖子里会有出处的链接。

Sounds like a great idea, it is costy though. Getting books are the easiest part.
Do you have more information on the foundation?

和cafe lite 並列的。不要分成很多帖子，都放在一大項下如"maya writing" , "cafe lite" then "books we like"

I have exchange emails with Cathy who is the founder and director of foundation. I am sure there are more similar charities out there we can check out.
http://www.appletreelibrary.org/index_new.html

this is a program change, and it requires the blesssing by the owner, and the "board", as well as the availability of programming resource

but what you are asking is an always-on-top (置顶) feature for the thread, it is not available again in this forum and the only thing that is closed to it is “顶”manually.

I quickly went through the site, it seems that at this stage, they only want new children books.

Rzp
I have email Cathy, She reply to me:
"yes, we do accept used (but in good condition) books for teens. However, Chinese high school kids have trouble reading long chapter books in English, even the ones in Shanghai. When we buy books to donate, we mostly buy titles up to 8th grade reading level and only a few copies each.
If you have books to donate, I will be happy to take them."

I thought high school kids should be in adult reading level, however, I did not take into account of most of kids in china may not able to read English in that level.

Those ideas just came to me this morning when I read your "book thread", only suggestions, up to Maya or board members to 定奪。

这条线可以作为书单的总目录。每次有书单，都放个连接在这里。
我想象去年那样，开一个2009年的读书计划贴，到时把 link 加入这条线。
今天中午没时间。大家有好书推荐，请稍微等一等。我晚上来。

修改了一下总目录，阿珊200８年的读书计划单独列开了。

添加：　阿珊2009年的咖啡读书会

多谢，看来我可以根据这个找书了。我也贡献一点点,推荐Douglas Hofstadter(GEB的作者）的书，不好说哪一本，我觉得无论哪本拿来看看都会有益。我个人比较感兴趣他对语言的探讨。

最近有同学送给我这样的话，是布鲁姆的西方正典中的，我竟然没注意到：

"莎士比亚、荷马或但丁，乔叟或拉伯雷
　　阅读他们作品的真正作用是增进内在的自我成长。
　　深入研读经典不会使人变好或变坏，
　　也不会使公民变得更有用或更有害。
　　西方正典的全部意义在于善用自己的孤独，
　　这一孤独的最终形式是使一个人和自己的死亡相遇。"

怎麼沒人上少年书单？