theLeftAhead Literary Canon
Fiction
(In Reverse Chronological Order):
Jane Anne Phillips - Night Watch (2023)
Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)
Charles Yu - Interior Chinatown (2020)
Madeline Miller - Circe (2018)
Andrew Sean Greer - Less (2017)
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad (2016)
Harper Lee - Go Set a Watchman (2015)
Viet Thanh Nguyen - The Sympathizer (2015)
Phil Klay - Redeployment (2014)
Salman Rushdie - Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012)
Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl (2012)
Stephen King - 11/22/63 (2011)
Jason Mott - The Returned (2011)
Jess Walter - The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009)
John Updike - Terrorist (2006)
Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004)
Jen Banbury - Like a Hole in the Head (1998)
Norman Mailer - The Gospel According to the Son (1997)
Ethan Hawke - The Hottest State (1996)
Mona Simpson - A Regular Guy (1996)
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest (1996)
John Updike - Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses (1988)
Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987)
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero (1985)
John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich (1981)
Norman Mailer - The Executioner's Song (1979)
Stephen King - The Shining (1977)
John Updike - Rabbit Redux (1971)
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Norman Mailer - An American Dream (1965)
Jack Kerouac - Big Sur (1962)
Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle (1962)
John Updike - Rabbit, Run (1960)
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Jack Kerouac - On the Road (1957)
James Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
James Joyce - Finnegans Wake (1939)
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
J. R. R. Tolkien - The Hobbit (1937)
Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse (1927)
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises (1926)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1925)
James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow (1915)
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim (1900)
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace (1869)
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women (1868)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment (1866)
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations (1861)
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
Non-Fiction
(In Reverse Chronological Order):
William J. Barber II & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy (2024)
Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
Matthew Perry - Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir (2022)
Tim Street & Dave Lane - The Brentford Revolution: The Bees’ Rise From the Basement to the Premier League (2022)
Joe Burns - Class Struggle Unionism (2022)
Barack Obama - A Promised Land (2020)
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio - The Undocumented Americans (2020)
Edward Snowden - Permanent Record (2019)
Michelle Obama - Becoming (2018)
Bob Woodward - Fear: Trump in the White House (2018)
Ta-Nehisi Coates - We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (2017)
Bernie Sanders - Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution (2017)
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017)
Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017)
Michael Eric Dyson - Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White People (2017)
Bernie Sanders - Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (2016)
Alice Y. Walker - Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, & the Foundations of a Movement (2015)
Gloria Steinem - My Life on the Road (2015)
Bernie Sanders- Outsider in the White House (2015)
Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me (2015)
David McCullough - The Wright Brothers (2015)
Bryan Stevenson - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)
Suki Kim - Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite (2014)
Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)
Hillary Clinton - Hard Choices: A Memoir (2014)
Elizabeth Warren - A Fighting Chance (2014)
Michael Lewis - Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014)
Doris Kearns Goodwin - The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013)
Malala Yousafzai - I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013)
Malcolm Gladwell - David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013)
Reza Aslan - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013)
Ray Kurzweil - How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (2012)
Nate Silver - The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't (2012)
Rachel Maddow - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012)
Jon Ronson - The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011)
Walter Issacson - Steve Jobs (2011)
Philip Dray - There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America (2010)
Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010)
Bill Simmons - The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy (2009)
Edward M. Kennedy - True Compass: A Memoir (2009)
Fareed Zakaria - The Post-American World (2008)
Thomas L. Friedman - Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America (2008)
David Plouffe - The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory (2009)
Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success (2008)
Scott McClellan - What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (2008)
Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
Barack Obama - The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006)
Doris Kearns Goodwin - Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005)
Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005)
Marcus J. Borg - The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (2003)
Hillary Clinton - Living History (2003)
John Feinstein - The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever (2002)
Robin D. G. Kelley - Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002)
Alan Dershowitz - Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (2001)
William Shaw - Westside: Young Men and Hip Hop in L.A. (2000)
Jennifer Harbury - Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras (1993)
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965)
Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)
Joyce Johnson - Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir (1983)
Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States (1980)
John Wooden - They Call Me Coach (1972)
Eduardo Galleano - Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971)
Saul D. Alinsky - Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Abbie Hoffman - Steal This Book (1971)
Alex Haley & Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Why We Can't Wait (1964)
Henry Kraus - The Many and the Few: A Chronicle of the Dynamic Auto Workers (1947)
Frederick Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
Thomas Jefferson - Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
Poetry
(In Reverse Chronological Order):
Anne Carson - Wrong Norma (2024)
Gregory Pardlo - Spectral Evidence: Poems (2024)
Kevin Coval - A People's History of Chicago (2017)
Tyehimba Jess - Olio (2016)
Tony Hoagland - Application for Release from the Dream (2015)
Amy Gerstler - Scattered at Sea (2015)
Peter Balakian - Ozone Journal (2015)
James Franco - Directing Herbert White: Poems (2014)
Rae Armantrout - Money Shot (2011)
Charles Bukowski - The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems (2007)
Saul Williams - Said the Shotgun to the Head (2003)
Frank Marshall Davis - Black Moods: Collected Poems (2002)
Tupac Shakur - The Rose that Grew from Concrete (1999)
Donald Hall - Without: Poems (1998)
Maya Angelou - And Still I Rise (1978)
Jack Kerouac - Heaven and Other Poems (1977)
Seamus Heaney - North (1975)
Shel Silverstein - Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974)
Maya Angelou - Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971)
Gary Snyder - The Back Country (1967)
Sylvia Plath - The Colossus and Other Poems (1960)
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems (1956)
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets (1941)
Fernando Pessoa - Poesia Inglesa (1) (1921)
Ezra Pound - Personae (1909)
Alfred Tennyson - Idylls of the King (1859)
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855)
Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven (1845)
George Gordon Byron - Don Juan (1819)
William Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794)
Phillis Wheatley - Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)
John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)
William Shakespeare - Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609)
Homer - The Odyssey (1488)
Homer - The Iliad (550)