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100 most influential books of all time
1998 | Martin Semoyr Smith

Posted on 07/27/2004 12:17:17 PM PDT by Borges

The I Ching. c. 1500 B.C.. The Old Testament. c. 1500 B.C.. Homer The Iliad. The Odyssey. 9th century B.C.. The Upanishads. c. 700-400 B.CE. Lao-Tzu The Way and Its Power. 3rd century B.C.. The Avesta. c. 500 B.C.. Confucius Analects. c. 5th-4th century B.C.. Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. 5th century B.CE. Hippocrates Works. c. 400 B.C.. Aristotle Works. 4th century B.C. Herodotus History. 4th century B.C.. Plato The Republic. c. 380 B.C.. Euclid Elements. c. 280 B.C.. The Dhammapada. c. 252 B.C.. Virgil The Aeneid. 70-19 B.C.. Lucretius On the Nature of Reality. c. 55 B.C.. Philo of Alexandria Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws. 1st century The New Testament. c. 64-110 . Plutarch Lives. c. 50-120 . Cornelius Tacitus Annals, From the Death of the Divine Augustus. c.120 The Gospel of Truth (The Valentinian Speculation). c.1st century Marcus Aurelius Meditations. 167 C.E. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism. c. 150-210 Plotinus Enneads. 3d century Augustine of Hippo Confessions. c. 400. The Koran. 7th century . Moses Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed. 1190 The Kabbalah (Quabala). 12th century . Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae. 1266-1273 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy. 1321 Desiderius Erasmus In Praise of Folly. 1509 Niccolo Machiavelli he Prince. 1532 Martin Luther On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. 1520 Francois Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel. 1534, 1532. John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1536 Nicolaus Copernicus On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs. 1543 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne Essays. 1580 Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote. Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615 Johannes Kepler The Harmony of the World. 1619 Francis Bacon Novum Organum. 1620 William Shakespeare The First Folio. 1623 Galileo Galilei Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems. 1632 Rene Desartes Discourse on Method. 1637 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan. 1651 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Works. 1663-1716 Blaise Pascal Pensees. 1670 Baruch de Spinoza. Ethics. 1677 John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress. 1678-1684 Isaac Newton Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. 1687 John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1689 George Berkeley The Principles of Human Knowledge. 1740, rev 1734 Giambattista Vico The New Science. 1725, rev 1730, 1744 David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739-1740 Denis Diderot, ed. The Encyclopedia. 1751-1772 Samuel Johnson A Dictionary of the English Language. 1755 Francois-Marie de Voltaire Candide. 1759 Thomas Paine Common Sense. 1776 Adam Smith An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776 Edward Gibbon The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-87 Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason. 1781 rev 1787 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Confessions. 1781 Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790 Mary Wollstonecraft Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792 William Godwin An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. 1793 Thomas Robert Malthus An Essay on the Principle of Population. 1798 rev 1803 George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit. 1807 Arnold Schopenhauer The World as Will and Idea. 1819 Auguste Comte Course in the Positivist Philosophy. 1830-1842 Carl Marie von Clausewitz On War. 1832 Soren Kierkegaard Either/Or. 1843 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848 Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience. 1849 Charles Darwin The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 1859 John Stuart Mill On Liberty. 1859 Herbert Spencer First Principles. 1862 Gregor Mendel "Experiments With Plant Hybrids." 1866 Leo Tolstoy War and Peace. 1868-1869 James Clerk Maxwell Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. 1873 Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra. 1883-1885 Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900 William James Pragmatism. 1908 Albert Einstein Relativity. 1916 Vilfredo Pareto The Mind and Society. 1916 Carl Gustav Jung Psychological Types. 1921 Martin Buber I and Thou. 1923 Franz Kafka The Trial. 1925 Karl Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1934 John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. 1936 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness. 1943 Friedrich von Hayek The Road to Serfdom. 1944 Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex. 1948 Norbert Wiener Cybernetics. 1948, rev 1961 George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1949 George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. 1950 Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations. 1953 Noam Chomsky Syntactic Structures. 1957 Thomas Samuel Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962 rev 1970 Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique. 1963 Mao Zedong Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. 1966 B. F. Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity. 1971


TOPICS: Philosophy
KEYWORDS: readinglist; topten
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To: Borges

The only entry that surprised me was Gurdjieff - a fascinating figure.


21 posted on 07/27/2004 12:35:24 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: BufordP
"Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique. 1963"

I TRIED reading that book in 1977......YECH!!!

22 posted on 07/27/2004 12:35:24 PM PDT by goodnesswins (Tonight, I think I convinced a 19 year old woman to vote REPUBLICAN...YIPPEE. 7/26/04)
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To: Borges
Thank you for the post.

This might help with the HTML

23 posted on 07/27/2004 12:37:03 PM PDT by timpad (Peace without victory is procrastination)
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To: Borges

It's interesting that for a discussion on the 100 most influential books of all time he felt he needed to address Ayn Rand at all. Assuming he thinks she was not influential.


24 posted on 07/27/2004 12:37:52 PM PDT by BufordP (FLASH! Bush rumored to drop Cheney from ticket. Log Cabin Republicans respond: "WE WANT DICK!")
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To: BufordP

I'm guessing he felt that Spencer and Hayek say what Rand said and have cast a wider influence.


25 posted on 07/27/2004 12:39:57 PM PDT by Borges
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To: Borges

It's such a shame the Clintoon's, Kerry's, and Clarke's isn't listed.


26 posted on 07/27/2004 12:40:33 PM PDT by mtbopfuyn
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To: headsonpikes
The only entry that surprised me was Gurdjieff - a fascinating figure.

Yes - but I'd have gone with Ouspensky's book instead.

27 posted on 07/27/2004 12:41:58 PM PDT by per loin (This tagline has not been censored!)
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To: Borges

"Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care"

Well, its a piece of trash, but it certainly has been influential. Mad magazine wrote a poen about it:

Spock, Spock, the baby Doc
Leads a peace march 'round the block
Everywhere that you will look
Are kids screwed up by his book


28 posted on 07/27/2004 12:42:06 PM PDT by kidd
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To: Borges

I would add The Federalist Papers, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Joyce's Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.


29 posted on 07/27/2004 12:42:28 PM PDT by wideawake (God bless our brave soldiers and their Commander in Chief)
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To: Borges

Dear and Glorious Physician- Taylor Caldwell, 1959


30 posted on 07/27/2004 12:42:49 PM PDT by NativeSon
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To: Borges
In the introduction to the book he calls Ayn Rand's work 'tawdry and third rate'.

Like Lao-Tzu for all he knew, but my expectation is that he couldn't have maintained an intellectual debate with her for more than 3 minutes. Besides, he didn't bother to evaluated the content of any of the works on his list(else wise he might have eliminated Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Chomsky and Skinner. The qualifier here seems to be the word, "Influential."

So, Mr. Seymour seems to have negated his own credibility and that of his list via his selective 'objectivity.'

31 posted on 07/27/2004 12:44:17 PM PDT by Mr.Atos
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To: wtc911
Where was the Baltimore Cathechism?

Good one.

The New Catechism might be a good addition too.

32 posted on 07/27/2004 12:44:19 PM PDT by wideawake (God bless our brave soldiers and their Commander in Chief)
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To: mtbopfuyn

What about Peyton Place?


33 posted on 07/27/2004 12:44:48 PM PDT by hankbrown
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To: Borges

What makes a book "third rate" as opposed to "second rate"?


34 posted on 07/27/2004 12:45:17 PM PDT by muleskinner
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To: mtbopfuyn

Hey, where's "It Takes A Village"?????..... </scarcasm>


35 posted on 07/27/2004 12:46:45 PM PDT by Libertarian444
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To: Mr.Atos

The criteria was merely influence and nothing more. He made the point that it's not a list of literary masterworks (or else Dickens and Goethe would be there)nor is it a list of the best known books of all time (or else 'Gone with the Wind' would be there) nor is it a list of the books he would ahve wanted to have influenced people (or else Winesburg,Ohio and the work of Lewis Carroll...)


36 posted on 07/27/2004 12:47:11 PM PDT by Borges
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To: Borges

Wonder why Mein Kampf isn't on this list? Seems to me to be very influential in the sense that the ideas behind it led directly to WWII.


37 posted on 07/27/2004 12:48:35 PM PDT by Califelephant (You can't be both pro-business and pro-trial lawyers.)
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To: hankbrown

Unfortunate, but true... As significant and influential as a sledgehammer to a china cabinet.


38 posted on 07/27/2004 12:48:41 PM PDT by Mr.Atos
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To: Borges
What did B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity ever influence?

Unless you want to blame him for "The Manchurian Candidate" and 10 billion lab rats running their mazes in futility.

So9

39 posted on 07/27/2004 12:48:51 PM PDT by Servant of the 9 (Screwing the Inscrutable or is it Scruting the Inscrewable?)
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To: Borges
"Influential" doesn't necessarily mean "good." Cybernetics was seminal but a slog, and anyone other than a philosophy major who can get through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had the tip of BtD's hat - I've tried.

Moreover, one has to wonder what it is that's being influenced. The Joy Of Sex was something of a watershed in popular culture and a wild best-seller as well, but intellectual it was not. Mein Kampf was certainly influential. So was Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa - the preceding two despite a certain shortage of factual underpinning.

Once again, the list ignored one of the most influential books of my life, but then Naughty Nurses In Bondage never did get any credit as the think-piece it is...

40 posted on 07/27/2004 12:49:00 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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