Can you think of twelve American Books That Changed the World in the same sense in which Bragg’s British list did?
How about Twelve Novels That Changed the World?
I wrote this post last June: 10 Most Helpful Fiction Books of the Last Century. “[T]hese are not the BEST books of the last two centuries, although most of them are very well-written, and they’re not the most influential books, but only those fiction books that have had the most influence for GOOD.”
I think my ten would be candidates for Twelve Works of Fiction That Changed the World.
It would be easy to name twelve titles by Shakespeare and be correct. However, I think the spirit of your question is a little different, and so, off the top of my head, I offer the following: 1984, Germinal, Ulysses, Dracula, Uncle Tom, The Satanic Verses, Don Quixote, Madame Bovary, A Christmas Carol, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, The Trial.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for sure.