Books 090105

The Modern Library’s List of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century


Selected by the Modern Library’s board of authors, historians, critics, and “a scientist”.

[Which have you read? Add your own choices to the list, and explain why you consider them among the best.]

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THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James
UP FROM SLAVERY by Booker T. Washington
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf
SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson
SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot
THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson
SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov
THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by H. L. Mencken
THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes
THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas
THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Frederick Jackson Turner
BLACK BOY by Richard Wright
ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL by E. M. Forster
THE CIVIL WAR by Shelby Foote
THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara Tuchman
THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Isaiah Berlin
THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr
NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein
THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by William Strunk and E. B. White
AN AMERICAN DILEMMA by Gunnar Myrdal
PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
THE MISMEASURE OF MAN by Stephen Jay Gould
THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP by Meyer Howard Abrams
THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE by Peter B. Medawar
THE ANTS by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson
A THEORY OF JUSTICE by John Rawls
ART AND ILLUSION by Ernest H. Gombrich
THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by E. P. Thompson
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W.E.B. Du Bois
PRINCIPIA ETHICA by G. E. Moore
PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION by John Dewey
ON GROWTH AND FORM by D'Arcy Thompson
IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein
THE AGE OF JACKSON, Arthur Schlesinger by Jr.
THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes
BLACK LAMB and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by W. B. Yeats
SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA by Joseph Needham
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves
HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain
CHILDREN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles
A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee
THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY by John Kenneth Galbraith
PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson
THE GREAT BRIDGE by David McCullough
PATRIOTIC GORE by Edmund Wilson
SAMUEL JOHNSON by Walter Jackson Bate
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe
EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey
WORKING by Studs Terkel
DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION by Lionel Trilling
THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston Churchill
OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen
JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME by Dumas Malone
IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN by William Carlos Williams
CADILLAC DESERT by Marc Reisner
THE HOUSE OF MORGAN by Ron Chernow
THE SWEET SCIENCE by A. J. Liebling
THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES by Karl Popper
THE ART OF MEMORY by Frances A. Yates
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM by R. H. Tawney
A PREFACE TO MORALS by Walter Lippmann
THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE by Jonathan D. Spence
THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas S. Kuhn
THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW by C. Vann Woodward
THE RISE OF THE WEST by William H. McNeill
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels
JAMES JOYCE by Richard Ellmann
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE by Cecil Woodham-Smith
THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY by Paul Fussell
THE CITY IN HISTORY by Lewis Mumford
BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King by Jr.
THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris
STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY by Erwin Panofsky
THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan
THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND by George Dangerfield
VERMEER by Lawrence Gowing
A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan
WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham
THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff
A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY by G. H. Hardy
SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard
THE GOLDEN BOUGH by James George Frazer
SHADOW AND ACT by Ralph Ellison
THE POWER BROKER by Robert A. Caro
THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION by Richard Hofstadter
THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY by William Appleman Williams
THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE by Herbert Croly
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm
THE TAMING OF CHANCE by Ian Hacking
OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS by Anne Lamott
MELBOURNE by Lord David Cecil