Thomas C. Foster - Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America

You can argue with the 25 books that this critic chose, but you can't argue with his wit and presentation.  This is fun reading!

The sun never sets on Hemingway.  The author makes the most out of his simple words in The Sun Also Rises just as Hemingway makes the most out of a sparse story.  At the same time, the author perhaps stretches things when he says there would have been no Raymond Carver with his famous minimalist prose.  How do we know there would have been no Carver without Hemingway?

I have read so many things about the symbols in The Great Gatsby I don't know what to say.  My hunch is that your guess is as good as mine on the green light and the ashes.

The author makes some sense of Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, but I doubt I will ever attempt it.

I'm glad I read Moby Dick  in college.  I could never go thru it again.  Let the whiteness of the whale and what the whale symbolizes rest.

I'm glad this Yankee included To Kill a Mockingbird.  Perhaps there's hope for some Yankees.

This is a fun book.