Jay Parini, whose biography of Robert Frost won him the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, has compiled a by-no-means-definitive list of influential books in his newly published Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America.
Thought not all necessarily “great” books these are books that have had lasting effects on American culture, and Parini’s accompanying essays explain how and why they count.

Writes Elizabeth Taylor of the Chicago tribune: “In the popular parlance, they might be called game-changers.”

Among the most influential titles are The Federalist Papers, written under a pseudonym by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and john Jay; Walden by Henry David Thoreau; Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

For the complete list, CLICK HERE.

To read LA Times review, CLICK HERE.