Random House Modern Library’s Top 100 Nonfiction Books
in 1998, the Modern Library released its list of the best 100 novels of the 20th Century amid much controversy over both what they put in and what they left out.
They’re back – with the Top 100 Nonfiction books of the 20th Century. So go ahead and argue what should have been left out and what deserved to be included.
1. Education of Henry Adams – Henry Adams, Edmund Morris
2. Varities of Religious Experiences – William James
3. Up from Slavery – Booker T. Washington
4. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
5. Silent Spring – Rachael Carson, Ellen Burstyn, Rachel L. Carson
6. Selected Essays – T. S. Eliot
7. The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA – James D. Watson
8. Speak, Memory : An Autobiography Revisited (Everyman’s Library (Cloth), 188) – Vladimir Nabokov
9. American Language, Supplement One – H. L. Mencken
10. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Great Minds Series) – John Keynes
11. The Lives of a Cell : Notes of a Biology Watcher – Lewis Thomas
12. The Frontier in American History – Frederick Jackson Turner
13. Black Boy : (American Hunger) (Perennial Classics) – Richard Wright
14. Aspects of the Novel – Edward Morgan Forster
15. The Civil War : A Narrative : Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, Red River to Appomattox (3 Vol. Set) – Shelby Foote
16. The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman
17. The Proper Study of Mankind : An Anthology of Essays – Henry Hardy(Editor), et al
18. The Nature and Destiny of Man : A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature (2 Vol Set)(Library of Theological Ethics) – Reinhold Niebuhr, Robin W. Lovin (Introduction)
19. Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin
20. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
21. Elements of Style – William Strunk, E. B. White
22. An American Dilemma : The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Black and African-American Studies) – Gunnar Myrdal, Bok Sissela (Introduction)
23. Principia Mathematica to 56 (Cambridge Mathematical Library) [ABRIDGED] – Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead
24. Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould
25. The Mirror and the Lamp : Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. – Meyer Howard. Abrams
26. Pluto’s Republic : Incorporating the Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intutition – Peter Medawar
27. The Ants – Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson
28. A Theory of Justice. – John Rawls
29. Art and Illusion : A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation – Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Ernest H. Gombrich
30. Making of the English Working Class – Edward P. Thompson
31. The Souls of Black Folk – W. E. B. Dubois, et al
32. Principia Ethica (Great Books in Philosophy) – G. E. Moore
33. Philosophy and Civilization. – John Dewey
34. On Growth and Form – D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
35. Ideas and Opinions – Albert Einstein
36. The Age of Jackson – Arthur Meier Schlesinger
37. The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Richard Rhodes
38. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon : A Journey Through Yugoslavia (Twentieth-Century Classics) – Rebecca West
39. Autobiographies (Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol 3) – William H. O’Donnell(Editor), et al
40. Science and Civilization in China : Chemistry and Chemical Technology : Part 6 : Military Technology, Missiles and Sieges (Vol 5) – Joseph Needham, et al
41. Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography – Robert Graves
42. Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell
43. Autobiography of Mark Twain – Charles Neider(Editor)
44. Children of Crisis – Robert Coles
46. The Affluent Society – John Kenneth Galbraith
47. Present at the Creation : My Years in the State Department – Dean Acheson
48. The Great Bridge : The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge – David G. McCullough
49. Patriotic Gore : Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War – Edmund Wilson
50. Samuel Johnson – Walter Jackson Bate
51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X, Alex Haley
52. The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe
53. Eminent Victorians – Lytton Strachey
54. Working : People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do – Studs Terkel
55. Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness – William Styron
56. The Liberal Imagination : Essays on Literature and Society – Lionel Trilling
57. Second World War – Winston Churchill, John Keegan (Illustrator)
58. Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass (Vintage International) – Isak Dinesen
59. Jefferson, the Virginian (Jefferson and His Time, Vol 1) – Dumas Malone
60. In the American Grain – William Carlos Williams, H. Gregory (Designer)
61. Cadillac Desert : The American West and Its Disappearing Water – Mark Reisner, Marc Reisner
62. The House of Morgan : An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance – Ron Chernow
63. Sweet Science – A.J. Liebling
64. The Open Society and Its Enemies : The Spell of Plato – Karl Raimund Popper
65. Art of Memory – Frances A. Yates
66. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism – R. H. Tawney
67. A Preface to Morals – Walter Lippmann
68. The Gate of Heavenly Peace : The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980 – Jonathan D. Spence
69. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas S. Kuhn
70. The Strange Career of Jim Crow – Comer Vann Woodward
71. The Rise of the West : A History of the Human Community With a Retrospective Essay – William H. McNeill
72. The Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
73. James Joyce – Richard Ellmann
74. Florence Nightingale : 1820-1910 – Cecil Woodham-Smith
75. Great War and Modern Memory – Paul Fussell
76. The City in History – Lewis Mumford
77. Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era – James M. McPherson
78. Why We Can’t Wait – Martin Luther, Jr. King
79. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
80. Studies in Iconology Humanistic Themes in the Art – Erwin Panofsky
81. The Face of Battle – John Keegan
82. The Strange Death of Liberal England – George Dangerfield, Peter Stansky
83. Vermeer – Lawrence Gowing, et al
84. A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam – Neil Sheehan
85. West With the Night – Beryl Markham
86. This Boy’s Life : A Memoir – Tobias Wolff
87. A Mathematician’s Apology – G. H. Hardy
88. Six Easy Pieces : Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Helix Book.) – Richard P. Feynman, Paul Davies, Robert B. Leighton
89. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Perennial Classics) – Annie Dillard
90. Golden Bough – James George Frazer
91. Shadow and Act – Ralph Waldo Ellison
92. The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the Fall of New York – Robert A. Caro
93. American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It – Richard Hofstadter
94. Contours of American History – William Appleman Williams
95. The Promise of American Life – Herbert Croly
96. In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences – Truman Capote
97. The Journalist and the Murderer – Janet Malcolm
98. The Taming of Chance – Tim Hacking, Ian Hacking
99. Operating Instructions : A Journal of My Son’s First Year – Anne Lamott