Brooklyn Public Library's 250 for 250 List

In honor of our country's 250th Anniversary, the Brooklyn Public Library is celebrating the best way they know how, with a thoughtful, surprising, irresistible booklist. Organized by genre and category of interest, this all-ages list is a deep dive on the stories, voices and moments that shaped America. Selected by their expert librarians—with help from a few notable New Yorkers!—they have presented their list of the 250 most influential books in United States history.

To create this list, a committee of nearly two dozen librarians performed what Chief Librarian Edwin Maxwell calls "collective alchemy." They whittled down over 600 contenders to find the titles that truly define the American experiment—vibrant, sometimes messy, groundbreaking. This is a curated list of books, published between 1776 and 2025, that reflect the spectrum of American thought, argument, imagination and contradiction.

And because everything is better with a little star power, BPL enlisted a few notable NYC bookworms to pen short essays on their favorites. Ethan Hawke discusses The Outsiders, Constance Wu muses on Gilead and "Recess Therapy" host Julian Shapiro-Barnum weighs in on the graphic novel American Born Chinese.

From the Time Out New York article about the list itself:

The list kicks off with the fiery rhetoric of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and takes readers all the way to the present, weaving through centuries of stories that reflect who Americans have been, who they are and who they’re still arguing about becoming. It captures the full range of American experiences, especially voices that haven’t always been front and center.

"Books remain one of our most powerful tools for defending democracy. They help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Together, the books on this list tell a story of our nation, our commitment to the ideals of freedom and justice for all, and that ongoing search for common ground,” said Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO, Brooklyn Public Library. “From Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, we learn the dreams of our founding fathers. In Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, we feel the joys and hardships of growing up in our beloved borough at the turn of the century. Poet Mary Oliver’s Devotions reminds us to remember what it means to be alive and that our most important responsibility is to care for one another. As we continue to pursue a perfect union, this extraordinary list considers the full range of the American—and human—experience.”

Now from our perspective, library workers from across the country trying to help readers, a list of 250 books from across the breadth of America's existence, including titles for all ages of readers, fiction and nonfiction, all genres, is helpful on its own, even if a little daunting. 

But BPL has added sortable, clickable tags for appeal and topic/genre as well, so readers can create their own mini-list within the list. Try it for yourself, here.

At your library you can offer your readers online access so they can peruse the list on their won or use it to make your own displays and lists as well.

As we creep closer to July 4th, the 250th birthday of America is going to become more and more popular. Now is a great time to use the BPL list as a spring board to creating your own conversation starter to display moment. 

Use my post about how to use a conversation starter questions to poll staff and patrons and create a local crowd sourced display. In this case, your community question is "To celebrate the 250th Birthday of Our Country We Want to Know Your Favorite Books Written By Americans." Make sure to encourage any books-- fiction, nonfiction,. graphic novels, kids to adult. Anything. Add a QR code to the BPL list to make sure people think broadly.

You can ask this question in your online spaces by linking to the BPL list as well. Offer it up as the example you are trying to replicate but for YOUR community. 

Speaking of your community, I really love how out of the 250, they have 8 that are endorsed by "Notable New Yorkers," and that category has a tag where you can click to pull them all up at once.

While you are asking everyone to share their books for our 250th Birthday, identify a few local people, mayor, business owners, anyone notable and influential in your community and ask them to pick a book that you will highlight. It is a great way to do some targeted outreach to important members of your community and allow them a chance to connect with the community in a new way.

Thanks to BPL for putting out this list so the rest of us can use it as a springboard board to our own bookish celebrations.