I sorted the list chronologically. Books by women are in green. Books by PoC authors are in red. Books by authors who are both are in purple. Children's books are noted with an *. Fiction books are in italics. Books by non-US authors are underlined.
POSSIBLE ERRORS: I tried to find the date of first publication for all the books (not serializations), not first US publication. (For "Lord of the Rings" I'm counting this as the UK pub date of the first book. Deal with it.) Some authors may have been miscoded re race/gender/nationality -- those are just typos. But if an author moved to the US at a young age, or indicated in an interview that they considered themselves American (Abraham Verghese, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edwidge Danticat) I counted them as American. Likewise, if an author grew up elsewhere but was a naturalized US citizen later (Raymond Chandler, Vladimir Nabokov) I counted them as American as well. I don't mean to be parochial, I was just curious about how international the list was.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (1861)
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865)*
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908)*
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926)
The House At Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne (1928)*
Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935)*
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen (1937)
The Stranger, Albert Camus (1942)
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)*
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl (1946)
Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown (1947)*
The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank (1947)
1984, George Orwell (1949)
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (1951)*
Charlotte's Web, E.B. White (1952)*
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler (1953)
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (1958)
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960)*
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster (1961)*
Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961)
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (1962)*
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1962)
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak (1963)*
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (1964)*
Dune, Frank Herbert (1965)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)
Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann (1966)
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1966)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle (1969)*
Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth (1969)
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret, Judy Blume (1970)*
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson (1972)
All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974)
Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein (1974)*
The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro (1974)
The Shining, Stephen King (1977)
The World According to Garp, John Irving (1978)
The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe (1979)
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie (1980)
Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich (1984)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks (1985)
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)
Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (1988)
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
The Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)*
Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat (1994)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel, Haruki Murakami (1994)
The Liars' Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr (1995)
The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman (1995)*
The Color of Water, James McBride (1995)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir, Frank McCourt (1996)
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared M. Diamond (1997)
Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling (1997)*
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket (1999)*
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris (1999)
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain (2000)
Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware (2000)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
Moneyball, Michael Lewis (2003)
The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson (2003)
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2004)
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan (2005)*
Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak (2005)
The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan (2006)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright (2006)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (2007)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney (2007)
A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah (2007)
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (2008)
Born To Run, Christopher McDougall (2009)
Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese (2009)
Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot (2010)
Daring Greatly, Brene Brown (2012)
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (2012)
The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (2012)*
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (2013)
descensus Averno facilis est