To Kill a Mockingbird

The most transformative American novel of the civil rights era, To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, just one year after Harper Lee published it — a near-instant recognition of enduring importance that outstrips the average recognition time for literary awards by two years. Set in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, during the 1930s Depression, it tells the story of lawyer Atticus Finch defending a Black man falsely accused of rape, filtered through the eyes of his young daughter Scout. Over 45 million copies have been sold worldwide, 20% more than the runner-up on this list, The Great Gatsby. It topped a 2018 survey of the 100 books that most changed readers' lives and holds a troubling parallel distinction: it is the most frequently challenged book in American school libraries, a measure of the power it still carries to disturb and transform.