I've been watching seminars at OneDayU recently.
With the pandemic, I've missed going to library talks, museum lectures, and author events at bookstores.
The five books that Rutgers Professor Louis Masur selected were:
1. Common Sense by Tom Paine (1776)
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beacher Stowe (1852)
3. How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (1890)
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1938)
Do you want to take a guess at the fifth one?
It was published in 1963.
5. Letter From a Birmingham Jail
I think The Feminine Mystique was unrightfully overlooked of course but a list is a personal thing.
I would have to say "The Girls of Slender Means" By Muriel Spark
ReplyDeleteThe Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
ReplyDeleteBut I'm probably wrong...
For me it's "Clifford the Big Red Dog"
ReplyDeleteI want to say To Kill a Mockingbird, but that wasn't 1963.
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ReplyDeleteHave to agree with nightsmusic on The Feminine Mystique.
Make Way for Duckings!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think it's Where the Wild Things Are. Such a departure from children's literature that came before.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say “The Snowy Day” but it’s a year early.
ReplyDeleteI'm going with "Where the Wild Things Are."
ReplyDeleteThe Feminine Mystique.
ReplyDelete"The Wretched of the Earth" is my first thought. Though first published in 1961, the English publication was in 1963. If that doesn't count. I go with "Where the Wild Things Are."
ReplyDeleteYeah, Clifford was my history-changer, too. (Mister Furkles, *fist bump!*)
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling it's not the one on the list, though...
The Feminine Mystique is the front-runner...but I'll offer one other possibility: Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. It's very short, but was published in book form, and fits with the focus on racial and economic justice in the list.
ReplyDeleteI'd go for Silent Spring, but that was 1962.
ReplyDeleteNever Cry Wolf, by Farley Mowat
ReplyDelete1963 was a good year, we also got THE BELL JAR and THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD.
I'm going to jump on the Where the Wild Things Are wagon. Yay, children's lit! Madeline L'Engle had a book out that year too...but it wasnt' A Wrinkle in Time.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the list should be, American books that changed history. Haven't heard of any of the suggestions except for the kids books - love Clifford, Where the Wild Things Are not so much (not many books I don't like but this one I've never liked ever since I first had it read to me by my 2nd grade teacher).
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go with an Aussie book, Storm Boy by Colin Thiele.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking The Catcher in the rye... nope 1951.
It's gotta be The Banality of Evil, doesn't it? By Hannah Arendt.
ReplyDeleteOoooh KMK--that's a great suggestion!
ReplyDeleteConsidering that this is a list of books that changed the USA, not a list of books that changed the world, I'd go for Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail"
ReplyDeleteBut I don't live in the USA, and while those books are interesting, the one that changed the nature of British thought was EP Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class."
Spike Milligan's "Puckoon" was pretty good.
David Ogilvie's "Confessions of an Advertising Man" also had a profound effect on what we saw, how we saw it, and even what our streets looked like.
Hop on Pop is my vote :)
ReplyDeleteHop on Po changed my world. It was the first book I could read.
ReplyDeleteI also would have picked Where the Wild Things Are.
ReplyDeleteBut based solely on the fact that *you* are the one drawing it to our attention (and also the fact that the person who made this list is a man, and probably a stuffy old white man at that), and knowing you had a client you greatly admired who died not that long ago and who was also an ad man, I'm guessing it was Confessions of An Advertising Man.
We really need to get more non-stuffy old non-white women into college professorships, if it was. Because this list is something.
My guess is "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin for its impact on the civil rights movement and American letters to this day. Baldwin also had an astute understanding of history, so I'd like to think an historian would choose him. One of my favorite Baldwin quotes is, "American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it."
ReplyDeleteBut I'd also be wiling to wager my seventh-favorite Tupperware lid on "The Feminine Mystique."
I thought "Catcher In The Rye" as well, but, too early.
ReplyDeleteEGADDS WHAT'S THE ANSWER ????
ReplyDeletePlease let it be V. by Thomas Pynchon. One of my favorites!
ReplyDeleteI wanted it to be On the Road by Kerouac, but it's too early. Most likely Friedan then.
ReplyDeleteI'd think The Bible should be on the list
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