Greater Books

*Lubbock* *Baldwin* *Eliot* *Powys* *Durant* *Invitation* *Classics* *Hundred* *France* *Downs* *Rexroth* *Zulli* *Read* *List* *Ward* *Magill* *Oriental* *Adler* *Good* *Learning* *Bloom* *Fadiman* *Foundation* *Kanigel* *SeymourSmith* *Trinity* *Utne* *Campbell* *Norway* *Dirda* *Great* *Guardian* *O'Hear* *Zane* *GlobeMail* *Smart* *Taylor* *Telegraph* *Van Doren* *Harvard* *Reynolds* *World* *Deposit* *Newman* *Graphic* *Recommended* *Educated*

Andrew Taylor, Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History [2008]

86 entries: 83 monographical, 3 otherwise

Unranked—arranged chronologically

One of the simplest lists, except that one of these 50 is Shakespeare's First Folio.

  1. Homer

    2. Iliad
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  2. Herodotus

    3. Historiē>
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek

  3. Confucius (Kǒng Zǐ) (Kǒng Fūzǐ) (K'ung Fu-tzu)

    4. Analects>
    Lún Yǔ
    written and compiled by the author's pupils; ca. Fifth Century B C-Second Century—Chinese

  4. Plato

    5. Politeia>
    The Republic
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

    --
  5. The Bible

    6. —Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

  6. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

    7. Carmina
    Odes
    originally published in four volumes: first-third, 23 B C; fourth, 13 B C—Latin

  7. Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus)

    8. Geographike Hyphegesis>
    Geography
    Second Century—Greek

  8. Vatsayana

    9. Kama Sutra>
    ca. Fourth-Third centuries B C—Sanskrit

    --
  9. Quran

    10. Koran
    Seventh Century—Arabic

  10. Avicenna

    11. Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb>
    The Canon of Medicine
    1025—Arabic

  11. Geoffrey Chaucer

    12. Canterbury Tales
    1478—English

  12. Niccolò Machiavelli

    13. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian

  13. Gerardus Mercator

    14. Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura>
    Atlas, or, Cosmographic Meditations on the Creation of the World and the Form of Creation
    originally published in three volumes: 1585, 1589, and 1595—Latin

  14. Miguel de Cervantes
    El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
    Don Quixote
    originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615—Spanish

    William Shakespeare
    • Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies

    15. The First Folio
    1623; includes 36 of the author's plays—English

  15. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

    16. ca. 1590-94—English

  16. Romeo and Juliet

    17. ca. 1591-97—English

  17. The First Part of Henry VI

    18. ca. 1592—English

  18. The Second Part of Henry VI

    19. ca. 1592—English

  19. The Third Part of Henry VI

    20. ca. 1592—English

  20. The Taming of the Shrew

    21. ca. 1592-94—English

  21. Richard III

    22. ca. 1592-7—English

  22. Titus Andronicus

    23. 1594—English

  23. The Comedy of Errors

    24. 1594—English

  24. A Midsummer Night's Dream

    25. ca. 1595-1600—English

  25. The Merchant of Venice

    26. ca. 1596-98—English

  26. The Merry Wives of Windsor

    27. ca. 1597-1602—English

  27. The First Part of Henry IV

    28. 1597—English

  28. Richard II

    29. 1597—English

  29. Love's Labour Lost

    30. 1598—English

  30. King John

    31. ca. 1598—English

  31. Much Ado About Nothing

    32. ca. 1598-99—English

  32. Julius Caesar

    33. 1599—English

  33. Henry V

    34. 1599—English

  34. The Second Part of Henry IV

    35. 1600—English

  35. Twelfth Night; or, What You Will

    36. 1602—English

  36. Hamlet

    37. 1602—English

  37. Troilus and Cressida

    38. ca. 1602-09—English

  38. As You Like It

    39. 1603—English

  39. Measure for Measure

    40. 1604—English

  40. Othello

    41. ca. 1604—English

  41. Coriolanus

    42. written ca. 1605-08—English

  42. King Lear

    43. 1606—English

  43. All's Well That Ends Well

    44. ca. 1606-08—English

  44. Macbeth

    45. ca. 1607—English

  45. Timon of Athens

    46. written ca. 1607—English

  46. The Tempest

    47. 1611—English

  47. The Winter's Tale

    48. ca. 1611—English

  48. Henry VIII

    49. ca. 1613—English

  49. Antony and Cleopatra

    50. ca. 1606-08—English

  50. Cymbeline

    51. written ca. 1609—English

  51. William Harvey

    52. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus>
    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
    1628—Latin

  52. Galileo

    53. Dialogo Sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo>
    Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
    1632—Italian

  53. Isaac Newton

    54. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica>
    The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
    1687; revised 1713 and 1726—Latin

  54. Samuel Johnson

    55. A Dictionary of the English Language>
    1755—English

  55. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    56. Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers>
    The Sorrows of Young Werther
    1774; revised 1787—German

  56. Adam Smith

    57. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
    1776; revised through third edition, 1784—English

  57. Thomas Paine
    Common Sense; Addresed to the Inhabitants of America
    1776—English

    • William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    58. Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems>
    1798; expanded 1800 and 1802—English

  58. Jane Austen

    59. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  59. Charles Dickens

    60. A Christmas Carol
    1843—English

  60. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

    61. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
    The Communist Manifesto
    1848—German

  61. Herman Melville

    62. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  62. Harriet Beecher Stowe

    63. Uncle Tom's Cabin
    1852—English

  63. Gustave Flaubert

    64. Madame Bovary
    originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  64. Charles Darwin

    65. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life>
    1859—English

  65. John Stuart Mill

    66. On Liberty>
    1859—English

  66. Leo Tolstoy
    Voyna i Mir"
    War and Peace
    originally entitled 1805, published in part, 1865 and 1867; retitled and published in its entirety, 1869—Russian

    • The New Haven District Telephone Company

    67. The Telephone Directory
    1878—English

    --
  67. Kitab alf Laylah Wa-Laylah

    68. The Thousand and One Nights; The Arabian Nights
    Ninth-Fifteenth centuries; Taylor specifies Richard Burton's version—Arabic

  68. Arthur Conan Doyle

    69. A Study in Scarlet>
    originally published 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual—English

  69. Sigmund Freud

    70. Die Traumdeutung>
    The Interpretation of Dreams
    1899—German

    --
  70. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

    71. published in part serially 1903 in Znamya; in its entirety, 1905, as part of Sergei Nilus's Velikoe v" Malom" i Antihrist" (The Great Within the Miniscule and Antichrist)—Russian

  71. Wilfred Owen

    72. Poems>
    1920; four poems previously published; 'Memoir' by Edmund Blunden added for 1931 edition; revised 1933; retitled The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, 1963, with a new introduction and notes by C Day Lewis plus four drafts of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and an unfinished poem, 'Wild With All Regrets'—English

  72. Albert Einstein

    73. Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Gemeinverständlich>
    Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition
    1917; revised through fourteenth edition, 1922—German

  73. James Joyce

    74. Ulysses>
    published in part serially Mar. 1918-Dec. 1920 in the Little Review; in its entirety, 1922—English

  74. D H Lawrence

    75. Lady Chatterley's Lover
    abridged version, 1928; complete work, 1960—English

  75. John Maynard Keynes

    76. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money>
    1936—English

  76. Primo Levi

    77. Se Questo è un Uomo
    Survival in Auschwitz
    1947—Italian

  77. George Orwell

    78. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    1949—English

  78. Simone de Beauvoir

    79. Le Deuxième Sexe>
    The Second Sex
    published in part serially in Les Temps Modernes; in its entirety in two volumes, 1949—French

  79. J D Salinger

    80. Catcher in the Rye
    1951—English

  80. Chinua Achebe

    81. Things Fall Apart
    1958—English

  81. Rachel Carson

    82. Silent Spring
    originally published Jun. 1962 in the New Yorker—English

  82. Máo Zédōng

    83. Máo Zhuxí Yulù
    Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung
    1966—Chinese

  83. J K Rowling

    84. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
    1997—English