100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

Remæus · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Remæus** on Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:43 pm

'100 Most Influential Books Ever Written' by Martin Seymour-Smith

1. The I Ching
2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
4. The Upanishads
5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu
6. The Avesta
7. Analects, Confucius
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
11. History, Herodotus
12. The Republic, Plato
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria
18. The New Testament
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
26. The Koran
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, NiccolÃ² Machiavelli
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, FranÃ§ois Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, RenÃ© Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
46. PensÃ©es, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, FranÃ§ois-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, SÃ¸ren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

Seymour-Smith, Martin. 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1998. Â© 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith

SinfulSoul · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **SinfulSoul** on Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:37 am

That is a truly impressive list of genius books, but the list lacks some of the newer books that shake our perspectives and break ground on how we thought books should be written. Here's two more books that I thought were incredible for reasons I am unable to describe in words right now. I'm still trying to figure out how to express why it is that I like these books.

1. A Hacker's Manifesto by McKenzie Wark
2. The Game by Neil Strauss

And of course, there's always Dragonlance... I mean, how do you deny Dragonlance? I know I know, it's not exactly earth shattering on a real life level like a lot of these other books, but it sure as hell rocked my imagination.

Gabriel Faile · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Gabriel Faile** on Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:42 pm

I agree with the Hackers Manifesto and I also think that Beowulf should have been included, considering it is what I believe to be the beginning of the fantasy genre.

-is so glad he included The Elements-

SWAT-Calibur · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **SWAT-Calibur** on Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:25 pm

I would have to say the book Under God, by Toby Mac a very infleuntial book.

Circ · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Circ** on Mon May 21, 2007 12:24 pm

"The Social Contract," Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Zee All Knowing Peacock · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Zee All Knowing Peacock** on Mon May 21, 2007 7:36 pm

I feel stupid, I haven't read a single book posted anywhere in this whole entire topic... I vote A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, if we're talking about groundbreaking in the way I looked at Fantasy. It's definitely been the most altering perspective on the genre that I've read so far. If you haven't read them I urge you to go and do just that now.

Kreadus · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Kreadus** on Sun Jun 03, 2007 9:15 am

I love this thread ^_^

Though, I think the list should have been indicated as 'In No Particular Order'. I've been debating the order of said works with a few friends for a while now. Book-tribalism! ahhhhh!

Eymber · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Eymber** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:42 am

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

quidhala · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **quidhala** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:46 am

Hello my friends! You can find many of the greatest books you never read for free at http://www.gutenberg.org.
Many more texts are stored there in easy to read and even audio formats. Original language and translations are available for some texts. This is done as a public service to the world, so if you use the site, please try to donate.

It never ceases to amaze me how shortchanged many of us were by the american public education system. Raise yourself out of the depths of ignorance by your own boot straps. I know I won't. (too much work)

Cheers,

quidhala

Eymber · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Eymber** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:27 am

-=Awe=-
Oh wow, quidhala. That is an amazing website! Thank you so much for letting us know about it! Wow...

I mean... Wow.

-=She stares in awe at the new library that she has just acquired. She begins to tear up, a smile forming on her face.=-

I... I love reading...

-=A single tear rolls down her right cheek as she continues to gaze starry-eyed at the website=-

Thank you, quidhala....

Thank you.

aglaecwif · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **aglaecwif** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:26 pm

You can find a million lists of influential books--it are fun to check of the ones you’ve read (not as many checks as I might have hoped) and plan future reading by the list…

But I always think whatever book influences you is the best… one of my favorite books is actually The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Maybe I am childish or overly sentimental, but I think there are important lessons for everybody in there… some of them much more profound than what it looks like if a boa constrictor eats your elephant…

I highly recommend that you read the book if you have not done so. And remember to always play nice and take care of the sheep in your life!

aeleon · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **aeleon** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:30 pm

TO Gabriel:
I think Gilgamesh and stories like it were before Beowulf and I think were the beginning of the fantasy genre, unless the Odyssey outdoes us all on the timeline. I can't remember off the top of my head.

TO General Audience:

Dailylit.com also has a lot of texts typed up in little emailable portions, so every day you can have a chunk of any book emailed to you. I'm working through part one of the Divine comedy as we speak, and I reread over half of Notes from the Underground using this. :]

Village Alchemist · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Village Alchemist** on Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:07 pm

~~Where's the Qur'an?~~

Nevermind, it was spelled differently than I expected.

@ Aelon: Gilgamesh predates Homer by centuries. However, there were probably "fantasy epics" written before that which just haven't been found.

Beardy San · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Beardy San** on Tue Nov 27, 2007 5:19 pm

Dune by Frank Herbert

also The Game by neil strauss that was mentioned previously is awesome

Village Alchemist · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Village Alchemist** on Tue Nov 27, 2007 10:27 pm

Beardy San wrote:Dune by Frank Herbert

also The Game by neil strauss that was mentioned previously is awesome

This list is about influencial books, not awsome ones. Not familiar with The Game, but I don't see how Dune has changed the world much. Changed the fantasy genre, yes, but that's a small thing.

sketchy · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **sketchy** on Wed Dec 05, 2007 11:45 am

wow,... you must have been REEEAAAAALLLLYYY bored to make that list. but yeah, i agree with most of them. but what about Canterbury Tales? it was the first book written in English.

Village Alchemist · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Village Alchemist** on Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:10 pm

sketchy wrote:wow,... you must have been REEEAAAAALLLLYYY bored to make that list. but yeah, i agree with most of them. but what about Canterbury Tales? it was the first book written in English.

I highly doubt it. Maybe the first popular one.

sketchy · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **sketchy** on Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:15 pm

sorry, misread the facts, the article said one of the first not "the first" my bad. it was written 14th century

Smokescreen · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Smokescreen** on Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:26 am

#69, On War was such a influential book where cavalry formations were later adopted to modern armor techniques. I would also put in there The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.

Clyodna · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Clyodna** on Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:59 am

Wow, my little bookshaped heart is jumping with joy in the knowledge that I have at least heard of most of these books even if I haven't read all of them yet ( Though there are some that I doubt I will ever pick up ). Also since the list was published almost ten years ago I'm not very surprised that some books that I know to be very influential now are not in there. It's a very good list all the same.

As for project Gutenberg it has long been one of my favourite sites. It's like a internet antiquarian

Didn't know about the other one though, thanks for the info. And also you would be surprised how many good books you can find on the internet for free. Like the latest winner of the Nebula awards for novels. Hihihi. I don't know if "Neuromancer" should be on the list or not. It was and still is pretty influential but... I don't know.

100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

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