1. Pilot major : Amerigo Vespuci's 'The four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci (1505-1506)
2. The first American : Captain John Smith's 'The generall historie of Virginia' (1624)
3. The puritan mind rampant : Michael Wigglesworth's 'The day of doom' (1662)
4. God's spokesman : Cotton Mather's 'Magnalia Christi Americana' (1702)
5. Virginia gentleman : William Byrd's 'Histories of the dividing line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina' (1728)
6. Electrical genius : Benjamin Franklin's 'Experiments and observations on electricity' (1751)
7. Land of promise : Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's 'Letters from an American farmer' (1782)
8. Father of the American language : Noah Webster's 'American spelling book' (1783)
9. American myth maker : Mason Locke Weems's 'The life of Washington the great' (1800)
10. Seaman's bible : Nathaniel Bowditch's 'The new American practical navigator' (1802)
11. Frontier romanticist : James Fenimore Cooper's 'Leatherstocking tales' (1823-1841)
12. King of ornithological painters : John James Audobon's 'The birds of America' (1827-1838)
13. First great American botanist : Asa Gray's 'Manual of the botany of the northern United States' (1836)
14. Voice from the forecastle : Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s 'Two years before the mast' (1840)
15. Historian of the American Indian : Francis Parkman's 'The Oregon trail' (1849)
16. Saga of the white whale : Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' (1851)
17. Escape from materialism : Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' (1854)
18. Paths of the sea : Matthew Fontaine Maury's 'The physical geography of the sea' (1855)
19. Poet of democracy : Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of grass' (1855)
20. Pluck and luck : Horatio Alger Jr.'s 'Ragged Dick' (1868)
21. Mental healer : Mary Baker Eddy's 'Science and health' (1875)
22. The great dissenter : Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s 'The common law' (1881)
23. American epic : Mark Twain's 'The adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (1884)
24. Mother's darling : Frances Hodgson Burnett's 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' (1886)
25. British view of American democracy : James Bryce's 'The American commonwealth' (1888)
26. Founder of American psychology : William James's 'The principles of psychology' (1890)
27. Mother of level measurements : Fannie Farmer's 'The Boston Cooking-School cook book' (1896)
28. Predatory man : Thorstein Veblen's 'The theory of the leisure class' (1899)
29. Black messiah : Booker T. Washington's 'Up from slavery: an autobiography' (1901)
30. Birth of the Western : Owen Wister's 'The Virginian : a horseman of the plains' (1902)
31. Black man in a white man's world : W.E. Burghardt DuBois's 'The souls of black folk' (1903)
32. Birth of an octopus : Ida M. Tarbell's 'The history of the Standard Oil Company' (1904)
33. Explaining the universe : Henry Adams's 'The education of Henry Adams' (1906)
34. Science of society : William Graham Sumner's 'Folkways' (1907)
35. Dutch boy makes good : Edward Bok's 'The Americanization of Edward Bok' (1920)
36. Revolt from the village : Sinclair Lewis's 'Main Street' (1920)
37. Social arbiter : Emily Post's 'Etiquette: the blue book of social usage' (1922)
38. Labor leader : Samuel Gomper's 'Seventy years of life and labor' (1925)
39. Master builder : Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Autobiography' (1932)
40. Society versus the individual : Ruth Benedict's 'Patterns of culture' (1934)
41. Liberty versus security : Walter Lippmann's 'An inquiry into the principles of the good society' (1937)
42. Medieval village to modern megalopolis : Lewis Mumford's 'The culture of cities' (1938)
43. Okies and Arkies : John Steinbeck's 'The grapes of wrath' (1939)
44. Nations united : Wendell Willkie's 'One world' (1943)
45. Mother's constant companion : Benjamin Spock's 'The common sense book of baby and child care' (1946)
46. The proper study of man : Alfred C. Kinsey's 'Sexual behavior in the human male' (1948)
47. Studies in integrity : John F. Kennedy's 'Profiles in courage' (1956)
48. The dismal trade : Jessica Mitford's 'The American way of death' (1963)
49. Consumers' crusader : Ralph Nader's 'Unsafe at any speed' (1965)
50. Too many people : Paul R. Erlich's 'The population bomb' (1968).
