King's post-apocalyptic epic, first published in 1978 and restored to its full 1,150-page length in the 1990 "Complete and Uncut" edition. A weaponized superflu wipes out 99% of humanity, and the survivors sort themselves between the saintly Mother Abagail in Boulder and the demonic Randall Flagg in Las Vegas. It is King's most ambitious attempt at the Great American Novel, a Tolkienesque good-versus-evil structure poured into the mold of a Western and a plague narrative. Widely ranked by readers and critics as his masterpiece, it cemented horror's claim to the kind of sprawling moral seriousness usually reserved for literary fiction.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.