 | Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.42 Emerson is the preeminent American thinker. He organized the virtues and vices of our people into essays and poetry like no other.
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 | A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn
Buy new: $12.89 / Used from: $9.00 The perfect antidote to high school history. The consolidated compendium of american history from the liberal point of view.
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 | Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
Buy used from: $4.49 America was born in dissent. It is perhaps the only contribution our country has made to the art of government and the seed, once planted, which condemns aristocracy and capitalism.
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 | The Enlightened Heart by Stephen Mitchell
Buy new: $10.07 / Used from: $1.10 The best poetry book I have ever found. Timeless works from all cultures, all ages. A splendid collection of love in words. Proof that nobody knows the truth but nobody can avoid it or stop celebrating it.
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 | Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Buy new: $5.95 / Used from: $0.01 The great work of Hesse - an introduction to the grand tale of eastern mysticism.
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 | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) by Robert M. Pirsig
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $5.14 Pirsig's masterpiece will blow their minds, if they are open to it. The romantic-classic dichotomy can be understood by musicians, poets, artists - the people who matter. The possibility that doing nothing can be everything - how un-American. A friendly introduction to the flip side of the philosophical coin.
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 | Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $5.61 Nobody should forget the horrors of the Greatest Generation, and how much war sucks. But they keep forgetting. Vonnegut is a misfit American writer who appeals to the geek with a heart.
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 | Hiroshima by John Hersey
Buy new: $7.50 / Used from: $0.01 There was no excuse for ever dropping a bomb like this on any people. Ever. The USA will be guilty forever of using the most horrific weapon devised on innocent people. Nobody should escape reading an account from the ground level. I don't think this is a timeless book, but it will do. I read it in 8th grade and it made a significant impression.
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 | Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Thrift Edition) by Walt Whitman
Buy new: $3.00 / Used from: $1.00 Great American poems for a person going out to make their way in the world. Whitman is a musician with language and a unique American voice. His work embodies that high spirit of curiosity and innocent glee that fuels the American intellect.
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