Saturday, May 16, 2009
List
The "100 most influential books ever written."
Any revisions you would propose?
18 Comments:
By 
John, at
Sat May 16, 01:22:00 AM:
By 
MainStreet, at
Sat May 16, 01:55:00 AM:
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat May 16, 02:32:00 AM:
If a one page document can be considered a "book", I can think of one that needed to be on the list...
...the Declaration of Independence
By , at
Sat May 16, 03:06:00 AM:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe he supposedly said "So you're the little lady who started this great big war." In my opinion "Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century.
By , at
Sat May 16, 06:02:00 AM:
No Art of War? No Mein Kampf? No NAVMC 2890, Small Wars Manual?
The Feminine Mystique?
Fail. Straight up failwagon.
By , at
Sat May 16, 08:11:00 AM:
No Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
No Audacity of something or another?
By , at
Sat May 16, 08:55:00 AM:
Mein Kampf. (If Marx and Mao are on it, Hitler should be too.)
The Federalist Papers (which led to the acceptance of the Constituiton.)
By , at
Sat May 16, 09:27:00 AM:
I think Skinner is mostly disredited these days, get that one off the list.
By , at
Sat May 16, 11:26:00 AM:
Can someone explain to me why Noam Chomsky's book would qualify for this list?
By , at
Sat May 16, 11:48:00 AM:
Props on "Uncle Tom's Cabin", written on the campus of Bowdoin College.
To pivot on the question, as Obama would say -- imagine a panel discussion with three of the 20th Century authors on the list talking about the conditions of the day -- Hayek from the right ... Orwell from the left ... Pareto doing color.
Hayek was the arch critic of collectivism, believing it inevitably led to tyranny -- not heightened democracy.
Orwell was the leftist who opened his eyes. 1984 of course has its remarkable critique of the abuse of language to political ends -- he'd have no end of fun with Obama's discourse and the journalists who cover it. Orwell actually said he agreed with Hayek that collectivism led to tyranny ... but Orwell was a harsh critic of the effects of free competition on the working class. Orwell didn't live to see the modern American "working class" and our surfeit of success, far removed from the harsh grinding poverty that angered him so in the 1930s. Today, Orwell would be a harsh critic of our collective fat asses.
Pareto -- father of microeconomics and the 80%/20% rule -- might have some interesting color commentary ... that political power is the new coin of the realm -- the dollar is so 20th century -- and that this power is being grabbed by various connected elites -- it'll be horded at the top and will never be evenly distributed. I can hear Orwell's rejoinder ... Animal Farm, exactly!
Link, over
By , at
Sat May 16, 11:55:00 AM:
Chairman Mao was highly read in China during the time he was alive.It might be said that during the time he was alive he had a near-monopoly on what was read in China. Sailing the sea depends on the helmsman, and all that.
During that time many outside China bought his works, but not as many actually read them. I bought, but didn't read very much.
I doubt that many people are reading the Chairman these days. A hundred years from now, he will be ignored except by a small group of scholars, scattered on the dustbin of history. By contrast, many people outside arcane academic disciplines are still reading the classic Chinese Greek,Indian and Hebrew texts, written thousands of years ago. While Mao's taking power was an undeniable accomplishment, his abysmal record once in power greatly reduces the value of his words. Perhaps he belonged on the list in 1970, but not today and even less so in a hundred years.
Gurdjieff doesn't belong on the list.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat May 16, 11:58:00 AM:
Why the hell is Candide on that list?
By , at
Sat May 16, 01:14:00 PM:
Sounds like we need a "Top 150" list... :-)
By , at
Sat May 16, 03:53:00 PM:
Atlas Shrugged- 2nd most influential in my life
By , at
Sat May 16, 11:25:00 PM:
I found that the book 'A Man Called Intrepid' flipped my understanding of much of recent (WWII) history.
By , at
Sun May 17, 10:39:00 AM:
By Marcellus, at
Mon May 18, 01:42:00 AM:
We'd have to read the list author's rationale for "influential" to understand his selections. But in looking over that list, I think he understood that in much the same way that I, as a historian, would: books that were either contemporaneously influential, or that continued to be read and debated and thus show an influence over time.
Thus Mao's writings; true, they may not be widely read now, but in their day they shaped the world's most populous country.
Uncle Tom's Cabin had an important impact in the U.S., but one can argue quite plausibly that it was not necessary to the abolition movement.
Influence can be positive or negative. I'll nominate one in the latter category: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has fueled anti-Semitism for over a hundred years and, if reports are reliable, remains openly on sale in Arabic nations.
By , at
Mon May 18, 11:27:00 AM:
Following Marcellus' comment regarding influence over time then "The Art of War" would easily make this list. To this day it remains required reading for the mlitary leadership of many nations.
