History of the US through (mostly) historical fiction

A mix of fiction and non-fiction. Any recommended additions/changes?

1. Pre-Columbian: People of the Lakes by Kathleen O'Neal Gear
2. 1500s: The Last Voyage of Columbus by Martin Dugard (nonfiction)
3. 1600s: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick (nonfiction)
4. 1700s: Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara
5. 1700s: Roots by Alex Haley
6. 1800s: Burr by Gore Vidal
7. 1800s: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
8. 1800s: Lincoln by Gore Vidal
9. 1800s: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
10. 1800s: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (nonfiction)
11. 1800s: Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
12. 1910s: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
13. 1920s: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
14. 1920s: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. 1930s: Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
16. 1930s: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
17. 1940s: Winds of War by Herman Wouk
18. 1950s: Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell
19. 1950s: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X (nonfiction)
20. 1950s: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
21. 1960s: A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo (nonfiction)
22. 1970s: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
23. 1980s: Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
24. 1990s: Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
25. 2000s: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Nice list!

1800s: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.

Why did you only start going by decades in the 1900s?! :)
Some of my recommendations are YA, but they're pretty fantastic YA books...

1660s: Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
1700s: The Ransom of Mercy Carter by Carolyn B. Cooney
1750s/60s: Evangeline by Ben Farmer (based on Longfellow's poem; not a fantastic book, but interesting in historical context)
18th century-ish: Copper Sun by Sharon Draper (set during slavery times, but when Florida was still controlled by Spain)
1850s-ish: Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson
1890s: Bright and Distant Shores by Dominic Smith
1900s: Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
1900s: Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
1910s: The Big Burn by Jeanette Ingold
1910s: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
1920s: Witness by Karen Hesse
1940s: Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse

"Why did you only start going by decades in the 1900s?!"
Because Burr, Little Big Man, and Bury My Heart each span several decades.

I've downloaded most of your recommendations, as well as Angle of Repose, and I'm about to start in on them. Thanks!

"Rise to Rebellion" is not a good recommendation in my opinion. Jeff Shara's narration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord is woefully inadequate. Read my review of the book for specifics.

Some books about Westward Expansion and life on the plains would fit in nicely. Perhaps My Antonia.

Re: comment 5. I'm not a huge fan of Rise to Rebellion myself (I think his father is a MUCH better writer) but I feel like a book on the Revolutionary War is absolutely necessary and I had trouble finding a substitute.

Maybe I'll look into Crossing the River!

While looking for your review, I saw that you are a retired 8th grade history teacher. When finished, I plan on using this list as a reading list for a high school American history class which proposes to teach history with the aid of historical fiction -- in conjunction with nonfiction history texts, of course. (Students won't have to read all the books listed, but will have to choose several from the list.)

Even though it's a young adult book, I had considered using My Brother Sam is Dead for my American Revolution book. I found Johnny Tremain rather slow. Burr is amazing but doesn't go into the Revolution enough.

For the American Revolution, some possibilities might be:

The Tory Widow by Christine Blevins though that focuses more on the 'home front' in New York and conflicting loyalties there. I think a sequel has just been released.

The Hornet's Nest by Jimmy Carter on the American Revolution as fought in the Deep South was an interesting novel, though I think Carter would have done better with a non-fiction work as his original characters were not terribly well-rounded.

Although you already have Roots, you might also consider The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson, an intelligent and complex YA novel set during the American Revolution and examining with a mixture of admiration and anger the ideals and the hypocrisy of the movement.

#7> I reread Johnny Tremain last year and found it excellent. To each his/her own, of course. Just my perspective.

I liked John Jakes Kent Family Chronicles which span the entire period.

"Johnny Tremain" is good for the pre-Lexington events in Boston. Esther Forbes, the author, wrote the biography "Paul Revere and the World He Lived In." Howard Fast's "April Morning" is a coming of age novel set in Lexington. Two excellent non-fiction books dealing with Lexington and Concord are "William Diamond's Drum" by Arthur Tourtellot and "Paul Revere's Ride" by David Fischer.

For a reader who would like to sample a range of US historical periods and issues without having to read a whole novel devoted to each, the 11 chapters in The Way Our people Lived by William E. Woodward (1874 - 1950) offer a pleasant introduction.

Woodward's book gives us glimpses of:
Boston in 1652
a Puritan village in 1680
a Virginian planter's day in 1713
New York City in 1750
Philadelphia in 1776
a Georgian town in 1807
a mother's journey from New York City to visit her married daughter in Cincinnati in 1836
the trip of four young '49ers out to the California goldfields in 1849
Chicago at the time of the great fire of 1871
life in the author's hometown, the South Carolinan mill village of Graniteville, in the 1880s
New York City in 1908.

Okay I'm not an American, I'm a Canadian. I wanted to get that out of the way early. I'm going to suggest a book that's probably hard to find now-a-days . It's by an American, Kenneth Roberts, and it's a well written book, and it does bring in a point of view about the American War of Independence, that is often ignored when Americans discuss that period. The book is called "Oliver Wiswell", and brings up the fact that the War of Independence was a Civil War in the Thirteen Colonies, and there is some virtue, and vice on both sides. He was well researched, and the book deserves a reprint. I also enjoyed "Johnny Tremaine".

Any Kenneth Roberts is good. I haven't read Oliver Wiswell yet, but Arundel would be good for the 1770s. I'd suggest adding James Alexander Thom's Follow the river to pick up the French and Indian War.

Another book, similar in some ways to Johnny Tremain, about the Revolutionary War is April Morning by Howard Fast. I really enjoyed it, although I understand school kids that have to read it for class are not big fans!

I second the suggestion of Arundel by Kenneth Roberts.

"Oliver Wiswell" is an excellent portrayal of the Loyalist point of view and experience. It also reveals well the incompetence of certain British generals and the obstinacy of George III. I've written a review.

Historical fiction is a broad category with a loose definition. I'm not going to go through every time period, but here some authors of historical fic I have enjoyed:

Jeff Shaara, Michael Shaara, Steven Pressfield, A. B. Guthrie, Jr, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Penn Warren, Willa Cather, Mark Helprin, William Styron, Hemingway.

Obviously the person who poses the question retains the right to set-up the ground rules, but like several contributors to this thread, I find the division by decade unproductive and arbitrary. I leave it to others to put them in the proper time-context, still I cannot help but put in a good word for The Shadow in the glass by August Derleth, Across five Aprils by Irene Hunt, the Studs Lonigan trilogy by James T. Farrell, and I married a Communist by Philip Roth.

Willa Cather.

Conrad Richter--The Trees The Fields The Town --covers the westering movement through PA and into the midwest. Very good.

And if you're looking for a REALLY good non-fiction on preColumbian America, try 1491 by Charles C. Mann.

In re #21, Amen for Conrad Richter, but let's not forget The Light in the forest.

Thank you, >1 mcenroeucsb: for starting this thread. This is really great. I'm making a list of all the suggestions everyone has made.

Excellent thread, thanks everyone!

Diana Gabaldon-second half of Outlander series deals with the American Revolution.

1940's Eyes of the Emperor is a great WWII novel of things happening right here at home--the experiments that young Japanese citizens were forced to undergo with training dogs (they were the bait). It's a true story, but written as a YA novel so it is not boring.

Elswyth Thane wrote a set of books commonly referred to as the Williamsburg series. Starting with Dawn's Early Light, they follow several generations and multiple branches of an extended family through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and the first part of World War II before the Americans officially became involved but when there were plenty of American citizens already in the action one way or the other. Mostly mid-to-upperclass white society but very well researched as far as war details and social attitudes and political events leading up to each war. I would love to see someone write a counterpoint from the people who worked for them, sort of like Upstairs, Downstairs.

From a totally different angle, N. Scott Momaday wrote a novel called House Made of Dawn that brought more attention to Native American literature.