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This list of 100 nonfiction books was drawn up by the editorial board of Modern Library. Where possible, book titles have been linked to either the original New York Times review or a later article about the book.



The Modern Library edition of 'The Education of Henry Adams.'

2. "THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE," William James.*

3. "UP FROM SLAVERY," Booker T. Washington*

4. "A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN," Virginia Woolf

5. "SILENT SPRING," Rachel Carson

6. "SELECTED ESSAYS," 1917-1932, T. S. Eliot

7. "THE DOUBLE HELIX," James D. Watson

8. "SPEAK, MEMORY," Vladimir Nabokov

9. "THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE," H. L. Mencken

10. "THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY," John Maynard Keynes

11. "THE LIVES OF A CELL," Lewis Thomas

12. "THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY," Frederick Jackson Turner

13. "BLACK BOY," Richard Wright

14. "ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL," E. M. Forster

15. "THE CIVIL WAR," Shelby Foote*

16. "THE GUNS OF AUGUST," Barbara W. Tuchman

17. "THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND," Isaiah Berlin

18. "THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN," Reinhold Niebuhr

19. "NOTES OF A NATIVE SON," James Baldwin

20. "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS," Gertrude Stein*

21. "THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE," William Strunk and E. B. White

22. "AN AMERICAN DILEMMA," Gunnar Myrdal

23. "PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA," Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell

24. "THE MISMEASURE OF MAN," Stephen Jay Gould

25. "THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP," Meyer Howard Abrams

26. "THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE," Peter B. Medawar

27. "THE ANTS," Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson

28. "A THEORY OF JUSTICE," John Rawls

29. "ART AND ILLUSION," Ernest H. Gombrich

30. "THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS," E. P. Thompson

31. "THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK," W. E. B. Du Bois*

32. "PRINCIPIA ETHICA," G. E. Moore

33. "PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION," John Dewey

34. "ON GROWTH AND FORM," D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson*

35. "IDEAS AND OPINIONS," Albert Einstein*

36. "THE AGE OF JACKSON," Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

37. "THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB," Richard Rhodes

38. "BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON," Rebecca West

39. "AUTOBIOGRAPHIES," W. B. Yeats

40. "SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA," Joseph Needham

41. "GOODBYE TO ALL THAT," Robert Graves

42. "HOMAGE TO CATALONIA," George Orwell

43. "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN," Mark Twain

44. "CHILDREN OF CRISIS," Robert Coles

45. "A STUDY OF HISTORY," Arnold J. Toynbee

46. "THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY," John Kenneth Galbraith

47. "PRESENT AT THE CREATION," Dean Acheson

48. "THE GREAT BRIDGE," David McCullough

49. "PATRIOTIC GORE," Edmund Wilson

50. "SAMUEL JOHNSON," Walter Jackson Bate

51. "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X," Alex Haley and Malcolm X

52. "THE RIGHT STUFF," Tom Wolfe

53. "EMINENT VICTORIANS," Lytton Strachey*

54. "WORKING," Studs Terkel

55. "DARKNESS VISIBLE," William Styron

56. "THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION," Lionel Trilling

57. "THE SECOND WORLD WAR," Winston Churchill

58. "OUT OF AFRICA," Isak Dinesen*

59. "JEFFERSON AND HIS TIMES," Dumas Malone

60. "IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN," William Carlos Williams

61. "CADILLAC DESERT," Marc Reisner

62. "THE HOUSE OF MORGAN," Ron Chernow

63. "THE SWEET SCIENCE," A. J. Liebling

64. "THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES," Karl Popper

65. "THE ART OF MEMORY," Frances A. Yates

66. "RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM," R. H. Tawney

67. "A PREFACE TO MORALS," Walter Lippmann

68. "THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE," Jonathan D. Spence

69. "THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS," Thomas S. Kuhn

70. "THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW," C. Vann Woodward

71. "THE RISE OF THE WEST," William H. McNeill

72. "THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS," Elaine Pagels

73. "JAMES JOYCE," Richard Ellmann

74. "FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE," Cecil Woodham-Smith

75. "THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY," Paul Fussell

76. "THE CITY IN HISTORY," Lewis Mumford

77. "BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM," James M. McPherson

78. "WHY WE CAN'T WAIT," Martin Luther King Jr.

79. "THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT," Edmund Morris

80. "STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY," Erwin Panofsky

81. "THE FACE OF BATTLE," John Keegan

82. "THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND," George Dangerfield

83. "VERMEER," Lawrence Gowing

84. "A BRIGHT SHINING LIE," Neil Sheehan

85. "WEST WITH THE NIGHT," Beryl Markham

86. "THIS BOY'S LIFE," Tobias Wolff

87. "A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY," G. H. Hardy

88. "SIX EASY PIECES," Richard P. Feynman

89. "PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK," Annie Dillard

90. "THE GOLDEN BOUGH," James George Frazer

91. "SHADOW AND ACT," Ralph Ellison

92. "THE POWER BROKER," Robert A. Caro

93. "THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION," Richard Hofstadter

94. "THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY," William Appleman Williams

95. "THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE," Herbert Croly

96. "IN COLD BLOOD," Truman Capote*

97. "THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER," Janet Malcolm

98. "THE TAMING OF CHANCE," Ian Hacking

99. "OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS," Anne Lamott

100. "MELBOURNE," Lord David Cecil

* Published, or soon to be published, by the Modern Library.