• The Modern Library’s 100 Most Influential Non- Fiction Books of the 20th Century

     

    1. THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams
     
    2. THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James
     
    3. UP FROM SLAVERY by Booker T. Washington
     
    4. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf
     
    5. SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson
     
    6. SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot
     
    7. THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson
     
    8. SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov
     
    9. THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by H. L. Mencken
     
    10. THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes
     
    11. THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas
     
    12. THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Frederick Jackson Turner
     
    13. BLACK BOY by Richard Wright
     
    14. ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL by E. M. Forster
     
    15. THE CIVIL WAR by Shelby Foote
     
    16. THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara Tuchman
     
    17. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Isaiah Berlin
     
    18. THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr
     
    19. NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin
     
    20. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein
     
    21. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by William Strunk and E. B. White
     
    22. AN AMERICAN DILEMMA by Gunnar Myrdal
     
    23. PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
     
    24. THE MISMEASURE OF MAN by Stephen Jay Gould
     
    25. THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP by Meyer Howard Abrams
     
    26. THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE by Peter B. Medawar
     
    27. THE ANTS by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson
     
    28. A THEORY OF JUSTICE by John Rawls
     
    29. ART AND ILLUSION by Ernest H. Gombrich
     
    30. THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by E. P. Thompson
     
    31. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W.E.B. Du Bois
     
    32. PRINCIPIA ETHICA by G. E. Moore
     
    33. PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION by John Dewey
     
    34. ON GROWTH AND FORM by D'Arcy Thompson
     
    35. IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein
     
    36. THE AGE OF JACKSON, Arthur Schlesinger by Jr.
     
    37. THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes
     
    38. BLACK LAMB and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
     
    39. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by W. B. Yeats
     
    40. SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA by Joseph Needham
     
    41. GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves
     
    42. HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell
     
    43. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain
     
    44. CHILDREN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles
     
    45. A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee
     
    46. THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY by John Kenneth Galbraith
     
    47. PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson
     
    48. THE GREAT BRIDGE by David McCullough
     
    49. PATRIOTIC GORE by Edmund Wilson
     
    50. SAMUEL JOHNSON by Walter Jackson Bate
     
    51. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
     
    52. THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe
     
    53. EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey
     
    54. WORKING by Studs Terkel
     
    55. DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron
     
    56. THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION by Lionel Trilling
     
    57. THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston Churchill
     
    58. OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen
     
    59. JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME by Dumas Malone
     
    60. IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN by William Carlos Williams
     
    61. CADILLAC DESERT by Marc Reisner
     
    62. THE HOUSE OF MORGAN by Ron Chernow
     
    63. THE SWEET SCIENCE by A. J. Liebling
     
    64. THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES by Karl Popper
     
    65. THE ART OF MEMORY by Frances A. Yates
     
    66. RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM by R. H. Tawney
     
    67. A PREFACE TO MORALS by Walter Lippmann
     
    68. THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE by Jonathan D. Spence
     
    69. THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas S. Kuhn
     
    70. THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW by C. Vann Woodward
     
    71. THE RISE OF THE WEST by William H. McNeill
     
    72. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels
     
    73. JAMES JOYCE by Richard Ellmann
     
    74. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE by Cecil Woodham-Smith
     
    75. THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY by Paul Fussell
     
    76. THE CITY IN HISTORY by Lewis Mumford
     
    77. BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson
     
    78. WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King by Jr.
     
    79. THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris
     
    80. STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY by Erwin Panofsky
     
    81. THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan
     
    82. THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND by George Dangerfield
     
    83. VERMEER by Lawrence Gowing
     
    84. A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan
     
    85. WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham
    86. THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff
     
    87. A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY by G. H. Hardy
     
    88. SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman
     
    89. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard
     
    90. THE GOLDEN BOUGH by James George Frazer
     
    91. SHADOW AND ACT by Ralph Ellison
     
    92. THE POWER BROKER by Robert A. Caro
     
    93. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION by Richard Hofstadter
     
    94. THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY by William Appleman Williams
     
    95. THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE by Herbert Croly
     
    96. IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
     
    97. THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm
     
    98. THE TAMING OF CHANCE by Ian Hacking
     
    99. OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS by Anne Lamott
     
    100. MELBOURNE by Lord David Cecil
     
Last Modified on September 26, 2016