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The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written From the book by Martin Seymour-Smith, who points out that the books were not chosen for their literary value, nor for the perceived importance of their ideas, but for their influence over time. They are listed in chronological order. |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. |
The I Ching The Old Testament The Iliad and The Odyssey The Upanishads The Way and the Power The Avesta Analects Confucius History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides Works Hippocrates Works Aristotle |
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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. |
History Herodotus The Republic Plato Elements Euclid The Dhammapada The Aeneid Virgil On the Nature of Reality Lucretius Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws Philo of Alexandra The New Testament Lives Plutarch Annals from the Death of the Divine Augustus Cornelius Tacitus |
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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. |
The Gospel of Truth Meditations Marcus Aurelius Outlines of Pyrrhonism Sextus Empiricus Enneads Plotinus Confessions Augustine of Hippo The Koran Guide for the Perplexed Moses Maimonides The Kabbalah Summna Theologiae Thomas Aquinas The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri |
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31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. |
In Praise of Folly Desiderius Erasmus The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church Martin Luther Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rdabelais Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs Nicolaus Copernicus Essays Michel Eyquem de Montaigne Don Quixote Migues de Cervantes The Harmony of the World Johannes Kepler Novum Organum Francis Bacon |
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41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. |
The First Folio William Shakespeare Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems Galileo Galilie Discourse on Method Rene Descartes Leviathan Thomas Hobbes Works Gottfried Wilheim Leibnitz Pensees Blaise Pascal Ethics Baruch de Spinoza Pilgrims Progress John Bunyan Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Isaac Newton Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke |
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51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. |
Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley The New Science Giambattista Vico A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume The Encyclopedia Denis Diderot, ed. A Dictionary of the English Language Samuel Johnson Candide Francois-Marie de Voltaire Common Sense Thomas Paine The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant |
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61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. |
Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reflections on the Revolutions in France Edmund Burke Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice William Godwin An Essay on the Principle of Population Thomas Robert Malthus Phenomenology of Spirit George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The World as Will and Idea Arthur Schopenhauer Course in Positivist Philosophy Auguste Comte On War Carl Mari von Clausewitz Either/Or Soren Kierkegaard |
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71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. |
The Manifest of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection Charles Darwin On Liberty John Stuart Mill First Principles Herbert Spencer Experiments With Plant Hybreds Gregor Mendel War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism James Clerk Maxwell Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzshe The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud |
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81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. |
Pragmatism William James Relativity Albert Einstein The Mind and Society Vilfredo Pareto Psychological Types Carl Gustav Jung I and Thou Martin Buber The Trial Franz Kafka The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes Being and Nothingness John-Paul Sartre The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek |
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91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. |
The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir Cybernetics Norbert Weiner Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson Geordge Ivanovitch Gurdjieff Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein Syntactic Structures Noam Chomsky The Structure of Scientific Revolutions T. S. Kuhn The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung Mao Zedong Beyond Freedom and Dignity B. F. Skinner |
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