What was most popular book the year you were born?
These are the books that were shaping the world when you were born. Check your birth year to see what people were reading, and click on each book for a summary of the story on Amazon! This is a list of bestselling novels in the United States, as determined by Publishers Weekly. The list features the most popular novels of each year from 1930 through 2016.
1930: Cimarron by Edna Ferber
1931: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1932: The Fountain by Charles Morgan
1933: Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen
1934: As the Earth Turns by Gladys Hasty Carroll
1935: Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas
1936: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1937: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
1938: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1940: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
1941: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
1942: The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel
1943: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
1944: Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith
1945: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor
1946: The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier
1947: The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney
1948: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
1949: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
1950: The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson
1951: From Here to Eternity by James Jones
1952: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1953: The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
1954: Not as a Stranger by Morton Thompson
1955: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson
1956: Eloise by Kay Thompson
1957: Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
1958: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
1959: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
1960: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1961: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
1962: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
1963: The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
1964: You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
1965: Herzog by Saul Bellow
1966: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
1967: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
1968: Couples by John Updike
1969: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
1970: Love Story by Erich Segal
1971: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
1972: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
1973: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
1974: Jaws by Peter Benchley
1975: Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
1976: Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
1977: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
1978: Fools Die by Mario Puzo
1979: Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
1980: The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
1981: Cujo by Stephen King
1982: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial by William Kotzwinkle
1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1984: The Sicilian by Mario Puzo
1985: Secrets by Danielle Steel
1986: The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
1987: Patriot Games by Tom Clancy
1988: The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
1989: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1991: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
1992: Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
1993: The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
1994: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
1995: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
1996: The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
1997: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
1998: Paradise by Toni Morrison
1999: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
2000: The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks
2001: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2002: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2003: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
2004: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
2005: The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
2006: Marley & Me by John Grogan
2007: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
2008: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
2009: My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
2010: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
2011: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2012: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
2013: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
2014: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
2015: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
2016: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
This list was compiled through publicly available data and Publishers Weekly.
Cover Image: Stiller Beobachter (CC BY-SA 2.0)
