theLeftAhead Literary Canon

Fiction

[In Reverse Chronological Order]:

Charles Yu - Interior Chinatown

Madeline Miller - Circe

Andrew Sean Greer - Less

Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad

Harper Lee - Go Set a Watchman

Viet Thanh Nguyen - The Sympathizer

Phil Klay - Redeployment

Jason Mott - The Returned

Salman Rushdie - Joseph Anton: A Memoir

Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl

Stephen King - 11/22/63

Jess Walter - The Financial Lives of the Poets

John Updike - Terrorist

Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Jen Banbury - Like a Hole in the Head

Norman Mailer - The Gospel According to the Son

Ethan Hawke - The Hottest State

Mona Simpson - A Regular Guy

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

John Updike - Rabbit at Rest

Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

Toni Morrison - Beloved

Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero

John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich

Norman Mailer - The Executioner's Song

Stephen King - The Shining

John Updike - Rabbit Redux

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five

Norman Mailer - An American Dream

Jack Kerouac - Big Sur

Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle

John Updike - Rabbit, Run

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Jack Kerouac - On the Road

James Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain

J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls

James Joyce - Finnegans Wake

John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

J. R. R. Tolkien - The Hobbit

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

James Joyce - Ulysses

James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles

Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress

Non-Fiction

[In Reverse Chronological Order]:

Barack Obama - A Promised Land

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio - The Undocumented Americans

Edward Snowden - Permanent Record

Michelle Obama - Becoming

Bob Woodward - Fear: Trump in the White House

Ta-Nehisi Coates - We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

Bernie Sanders - Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Michael Eric Dyson - Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White People

Bernie Sanders - Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

Alice Y. Walker - Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, & the Foundations of a Movement

Gloria Steinem - My Life on the Road

Bernie Sanders- Outsider in the White House

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me

David McCullough - The Wright Brothers

David Axelrod - Believer: My Forty Years in Politics

Bryan Stevenson - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Suki Kim - Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Hillary Clinton - Hard Choices: A Memoir

Elizabeth Warren - A Fighting Chance

Michael Lewis - Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Doris Kearns Goodwin - The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism

Malala Yousafzai - I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

Malcolm Gladwell - David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Reza Aslan - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Ray Kurzweil - How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Nate Silver - The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't

Rachel Maddow - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Jon Ronson - The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Bill Clinton - Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy

Walter Issacson - Steve Jobs

Philip Dray - There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America

Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Bill Simmons - The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy

Edward M. Kennedy - True Compass: A Memoir

Fareed Zakaria - The Post-American World

Thomas L. Friedman - Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America

David Plouffe - The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory

Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success

Scott McClellan - What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception

Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Barack Obama - The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Doris Kearns Goodwin - Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Marcus J. Borg - The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith

Hillary Clinton - Living History

John Feinstein - The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever

John Wooden - They Call Me Coach

Alan Dershowitz - Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000

William Shaw - Westside: Young Men and Hip Hop in L.A.

Jennifer Harbury - Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Joyce Johnson - Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

Eduardo Galleano - Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Saul D. Alinsky - Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals

Abbie Hoffman - Steal This Book

Alex Haley & Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Why We Can't Wait

Frederick Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Thomas Jefferson - Notes on the State of Virginia

Poetry

[In Reverse Chronological Order]:

Kevin Coval - A People's History of Chicago

Tyehimba Jess - Olio

Tony Hoagland - Application for Release from the Dream

Amy Gerstler - Scattered at Sea

Peter Balakian - Ozone Journal

James Franco - Directing Herbert White: Poems

Rae Armantrout - Money Shot

Charles Bukowski - The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems

Saul Williams - Said the Shotgun to the Head

Frank Marshall Davis - Black Moods: Collected Poems

Tupac Shakur - The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Donald Hall - Without: Poems

Maya Angelou - And Still I Rise

Jack Kerouac - Heaven and Other Poems

Seamus Heaney - North

Shel Silverstein - Where the Sidewalk Ends

Maya Angelou - Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie

Gary Snyder - The Back Country

Sylvia Plath - The Colossus and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems

T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets

Fernando Pessoa - Poesia Inglesa (1)

Ezra Pound - Personae

Alfred Tennyson - Idylls of the King

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven

George Gordon Byron - Don Juan

William Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience

Phillis Wheatley - Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

John Milton - Paradise Lost

William Shakespeare - Shakespeare's Sonnets

Homer - The Odyssey

Homer - The Iliad