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Modern Library’s 100 Best 20th Century Non-Fiction

"The Board's List", Modern Library (July 20, 1998).

Since the “100 Best” story first broke in The New York Times on Monday, July 20, 1998, all kinds of opinions about the list — and theories about the Modern Library’s purpose in concocting such a contest of sorts — emerged. The goal of the “100 Best” project was to get people talking about great books. We succeeded beyond our wildest imaginings… On July 21, 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century’s top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board. ~ Modern Library

  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