The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

1. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 By Eric Hobsbawm | Used Price: 80% Off Dividing the century into the Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1950, the Golden Age, 1950-1973, and the Landslide, 1973-1991, Hobsbawm marshals a vast array of data into a volume of unparalleled inclusiveness, vibrancy, and insight, a work that ranks with his classics The Age of Empire and The Age of ... More »

2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions By Thomas Kuhn | Used Price: 60% Off A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once ... More »

3. The Guns of August By Barbara Tuchman | Used Price: 70% Off The Pulitzer Prize winning, The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, is focussed on the first month of World War I. Tuchman explains in detail the events that led to the war. The book was featured in the Modern Library's Top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century. More »

4. Eichmann in Jerusalem By Hannah Arendt | Used Price: 80% Off The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the HolocaustÂ Originally appearing as a series of articles inÂ The New Yorker, Hannah Arendtâ€™s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that ... More »

5. A History of Western Philosophy By Bertrand Russell | Used Price: 70% Off Hailed as â€œlucid and magisterialâ€Â by The Observer, this book is universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject of Western philosophy.Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique ... More »

6. The Story of Art By E. H. Gombrich | Used Price: 50% Off The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, ... More »

7. The Lonely Crowd By David Riesman | Used Price: 80% Off The Lonely Crowd is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the 'new middle class' in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that ... More »

8. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter By Richard Feynman | Used Price: 60% Off Celebrated for his brilliantly quirky insights into the physical world, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the general public. Here Feynman provides a classic and definitive introduction to QED (namely, quantum electrodynamics), that part of quantum field theory describing the ... More »

9. Discourses on Livy By Niccolo Machiavelli | Used Price: 70% Off Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli ... More »

10. Guns, Germs, and Steel By Jared Diamond | Used Price: 80% Off The Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel looks over the entirety of human history and explains why geography and available resources are determining factors in the success of any given civilisation. As such Diamond shows that race is not a determining factor in the success or failure ... More »

11. American Power and the New Mandarins By Noam Chomsky | Under $1.00 Back in print, the seminal work by "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). American Power and the New Mandarins is Noam Chomsky's first political book, widely considered to be among the most cogent and powerful statements against the American war in Vietnam. Long ... More »

12. Silent Spring By Rachel Carson | Used Price: 80% Off Rachel Carsonâ€™s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our ... More »

13. The Radicalism of the American Revolution By Gordon S. Wood | Used Price: 80% Off Awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History, The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood argues that the American Revolution by rights deserves a place among the French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions as one of the great events in history. Wood synthesizes all the pertinent issues ... More »

14. Eros and Civilization By Herbert Marcuse | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Â In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological ... More »

15. The Black Jacobins By C.L.R. James | Used Price: 70% Off The Black Jacobins is the authoritative history of the Haitian Revolution of 1794, the first revolution in the Third World."The prospect of a Black Republic is equally disturbing to the Spanish, the English and the Americans. Jefferson has promised that on the instant the French army has arrived ... More »

16. Microbe Hunters By Paul de Kruif | Used Price: 80% Off This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Â Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented ... More »

17. The Wretched of the Earth By Frantz Fanon; Jean-Paul Sartre | 50% Off A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanonâ€™s masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Saidâ€™s Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it ... More »

18. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity By Sarah Pomeroy | Used Price: 70% Off "The first general treatment of women in the ancient world to reflect the critical insights of modern feminism. Though much debated, its position as the basic textbook on women's history in Greece and Rome has hardly been challenged."--Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement. Illustrations. More »

19. The Shock of the New By Robert Hughes | Used Price: 70% Off A beautifully illustrated hundred-year history of modern art, from cubism to pop and avant-guard. More than 250 color photos. More »

20. Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society By Paul Goodman | Used Price: 70% Off Paul Goodmanâ€™s Growing Up Absurd was a runaway best seller when it was first published in 1960, and it became one of the defining texts of the New Left. Goodman was a writer and thinker who broke every mold and did it brilliantlyâ€”he was a novelist, poet, and ... More »

21. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire By Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a magisterial history of Rome, from its beginnings through to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It's considered to be one of the greatest works written during the enlightenment, and due to Gibbon's ... More »

22. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander | Used Price: 60% Off Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges ... More »

23. The Interpretation of Dreams By Sigmund Freud | Used Price: 50% Off What are the most common dreams and why do we have them? What does a dream about death mean? What do dreams of swimming, failing, or flying symbolize?First published by Sigmund Freud in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams considers why we dream and what it means in the ... More »

24. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics By John J. Mearsheimer | Used Price: 80% Off "A superb book....Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."â€”The National Interest, Barry R. Posen A decade after the cold war ended, policy makers and academics foresaw a new era of peace and prosperity, an era in which democracy and open ... More »

25. Stonewall By Martin Duberman | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "As scholars we should read Stonewall, and as teachers we should assign it. All of us will be challenged to build on it."â€”Michael Sherry, Northwestern Univ. "Both a fascinating account of the birth of gay liberation and a replay of the turbulent, society-changing 60s."â€”San Francisco Chronicle. More »

26. The Affluent Society By John Kenneth Galbraith | 80% Off John Kenneth Galbraith's classic investigation of private wealth and public poverty in postwar America Â With customary clarity, eloquence, and humor, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith gets at the heart of what economic security means in The Affluent Society. Warning against individual and societal complacence about economic inequity, ... More »

27. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger By Richard G. Wilkinson; Kate Pickett | 60% Off It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree ... More »

28. The Power Elite By C. Wright Mills | Used Price: 70% Off First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The ... More »

29. What Evolution Is By Ernst Mayr | Under $1.00 At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern ... More »

30. Studies in Iconology By Erwin Panofsky | Used Price: 80% Off In Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies. More »

31. China Along the Yellow River: Reflections on Rural Society By Cao Jinqing This text had a major impact in its original Chinese version. Reviewed in the Far East Economic Review as 'one of the richest portraits of the Chinese countryside published in the reform era', it charts a long journey through the hinterland region of the Yellow River undertaken by ... More »

32. The Republic By Plato | Under $1.00 The central work of one of the West's greatest philosophers, The Republic of Plato is a masterpiece of insight and feeling, the finest of the Socratic dialogues, and one of the great books of Western culture. This new translation captures the dramatic realism, ... More »

33. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon By Rebecca West | Used Price: 70% Off "Rebecca West's magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time." —The New Yorker Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of ... More »

34. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government By Philip Pettit This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception ... More »

35. Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition By Alastair McIntosh | Used Price: 80% Off Climate change is the greatest challenge that the world has ever faced. In this groundbreaking new book, Alastair McIntosh summarises the science of what is happening to the planet - both globally and using Scotland as a local case study. He moves on, controversially, to suggest that politics ... More »

36. Against Method By Paul Feyerabend Paul Feyerabendâ€™s globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy ... More »

37. Mythologies By Roland Barthes â€œNo denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis,â€Â Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this bookâ€”one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers ... More »

38. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy By Barrington Moore | Used Price: 70% Off A landmark in comparative history and a challenge to scholars of all lands who are trying to learn how we arrived at where we are now.Â -New York Times Book Review More »

39. Coming of Age in the Milky Way By Timothy Ferris | Used Price: 70% Off From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those ... More »

40. Godel, Escher, Bach By Douglas R. Hofstadter | 60% Off Douglas Hofstadterâ€™s book is concerned directly with the nature of Â“mapsâ€Â or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if ... More »

41. Democracy And Education By John Dewey | Used Price: 50% Off John Dewey's best-known and still-popular classic, Democracy and Education, is presented here as a new edition in Volume 9 of the Middle Works. Sidney Hook, who wrote the introduction to this volume, describes Democracy and Education: It illuminates directly or indirectly all the basic issues that are central ... More »

42. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales By Bruno Bettelheim | Used Price: 60% Off Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development.Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of ... More »

43. The Second Sex By Simone de Beauvoir | Used Price: 50% Off Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoirâ€™s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of â€œwoman,â€Â and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. Â This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in ... More »

44. The Autobiography of Malcolm X By Malcolm X; Alex Haley | 70% Off From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct ... More »

45. America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 By Alfred W. Crosby Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives - more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In ... More »

47. The Varieties of Religious Experience By William James | Used Price: 80% Off 'Is life worth living? Yes, a thousand times yes when the world still holds such spirits as Professor James.' - Gertrude Stein A classic of American thought, William Jamesâ€™ The Varieties of Religious Experience is an extraordinary study of human spirituality in all its forms and one ... More »

48. The Great War and Modern Memory By Paul Fussell | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The Great War and Modern Memory is a book that describes the literary works by English participants in World War I to their experiences in trench warfare. Fussell describes how the futility and insanity of war defined the thinking of a generation and led England away from Romantacism. The book won the ... More »

49. Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present By Frank M. Snowden A "brilliant and sobering" (Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal) look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaks As seen on "60 Minutes" The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks ... More »

50. Orientalism By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 70% Off Orientalism examines how the West has historically perceived the East and how Western imperialism has shaped these perceptions. Published in 1978, Said's work is a landmark in post-colonial studies. More »

51. Democracy By Charles Tilly | Used Price: 80% Off Charles Tilly's Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centers ... More »

52. Illuminations By Walter Benjamin; Hannah Arendt | 70% Off Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included ... More »

54. The Basic Works of Aristotle By Aristotle; Richard McKeon | 60% Off Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotleâ€™s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeonâ€™s The Basic Works of Aristotleâ€“constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty yearsâ€“has long ... More »

55. Man, the State, and War By Kenneth N. Waltz | Used Price: 60% Off What are the causes of war? To answer this question, Professor Waltz examines the ideas of major thinkers throughout the history of Western civilization. He explores works both by classic political philosophers, such as St. Augustine, Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, and by modern psychologists and anthropologists to discover ... More »

56. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution By Peter Kropotkin | Used Price: 50% Off In this cornerstone of modern liberal social theory, Peter Kropotkin states that the most effective human and animal communities are essentially cooperative, rather than competitive. Kropotkin based this classic on his observations of natural phenomena and history, forming a work of stunning and well-reasoned scholarship. Essential to the ... More »

57. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II By Fernand Braudel | Used Price: 60% Off The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II is the most influencial work of the great 20th century historian Fernand Braudel, a leader of the Annales School. This work perfectly demonstrates Braudel’s l'histoire totale, writing history from as many perspectives as possible, including ... More »

58. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money By John Maynard Keynes | Used Price: 90% Off In 1936 Keynes published the most provocative book written by any economist of his generation. Arguments about the book continued until his death in 1946 and still continue today. This new edition, published 70 years after the original, features a new introduction by Paul Krugman which discusses the ... More »

59. Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville | 80% Off Â Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that polit?ical commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the soci?ety of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the ... More »

61. Tristes Tropiques By Claude Levi-Strauss | Used Price: 60% Off A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology. This watershed work records Claude LÃ©vi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, LÃ©vi-Strauss found ... More »

62. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth By Chris Hadfield | Used Price: 50% Off Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging ... More »

63. The City in History By Lewis Mumford | Used Price: 80% Off The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, by Lewis Mumford, charts the rise of various types of cities throughout human history. The text won the National Book Award in 1961 and was included on the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction books list. More »

64. Imagined Communities By Benedict Anderson | Used Price: 60% Off Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is the most read book on nationalism. It's a historical, political and sociological analysis of nations which are really imagined communities or socially constructed communities. More »

65. Capital By Karl Marx | Used Price: 70% Off A landmark work in the understanding of capitalism, bourgeois society and the economics of class conflict, Karl Marx's Capital is translated by Ben Fowkes with an introduction by Ernest Mandel in Penguin Classics. One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one ... More »

66. A Theory of Justice By John Rawls A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In A ... More »

67. King Solomon's Ring By Konrad Lorenz | Used Price: 80% Off Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. ... More »

68. The Psychology of Intelligence By Jean Piaget Think of developmental psychology, and the name of Jean Piaget immediately springs to mind. His theory of learning lies at the very heart of the modern understanding of the human learning process, and he is celebrated as the founding father of child psychology. A prolific writer, is ... More »

69. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City By Matthew Desmond | Used Price: 60% Off WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted ... More »

70. Notes of a Native Son By James Baldwin | Used Price: 50% Off A new edition of the book many have called James Baldwinâ€™s most influential workWritten during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn ... More »

71. The Origin of Species By Charles Darwin | Used Price: 70% Off In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an ... More »

72. The Story of Egypt By Joann Fletcher The story of the world's greatest civilization spans 4,000 years of history that have shaped the world. It is full of spectacular cities and epic stories-an evolving society rich in inventors, heroes, heroines, villains, artisans, and pioneers. Professor Joann Fletcher pulls together the complete story of Egypt, charting ... More »

73. The Sources of Social Power By Michael Mann While Marx considered economics to be the driving force in the evolution of societies, and Weber believed religion played a role, with his protestant ethic theory, In the Sources of Social Power, Mann identifies 4 different forces - economic, military, ideological and political - and demonstrates their role ... More »

74. Science and the Modern World By Alfred North Whitehead | 70% Off Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science. Presaging by more than half a century most of today's cutting-edge thought on the cultural ramifications of science and technology, Whitehead demands that readers understand and celebrate the contemporary, ... More »

75. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water By Marc Reisner | Used Price: 90% Off "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --NewsweekThe story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological ... More »

76. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine By Ilan Pappe Here the famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe offers Israeli archival evidence that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949. More »

77. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 By Tony Judt | Used Price: 70% Off Tony Judt's Postwar is an inimitable history of Europe since 1045. Postwar ties together the histories of over 40 European nations, both Eastern and Western, in a grand narrative that also serves as a history of the development of the European Union. More »

78. The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II By Svetlana Alexievich | Used Price: 50% Off A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia-from the winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Guardian • NPR • The Economist • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • Kirkus ReviewsFor more than three ... More »

79. News of a Kidnapping By Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Under $1.00 In 1990, fearing extradition to the United States, Pablo Escobar â€“ head of the MedellÃ­n drug cartel â€“ kidnapped ten notable Colombians to use as bargaining chips. With the eye of a poet, GarcÃ­a MÃ¡rquez describes the survivorsâ€™ perilous ordeal and the bizarre drama of the negotiations for ... More »

80. The Origins of The Second World War By A.J.P. Taylor The Origins of the Second World War is a history book by A.J.P. Taylor. In it he looks at the causes of World War II. It was controversial at the time for holding all sides to account for the outbreak of war, but has since been recognised as ... More »

81. The Contours of American History By William Appleman Williams | 70% Off William Appleman Williams was one of the greatest opponents of US imperialism. The Modern Library chose The Contours of American History as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the Twentieth Century. More »

82. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life By Emile Durkheim | Used Price: 50% Off In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. ... More »

83. Working By Studs Terkel | Used Price: 80% Off Perhaps Studs Terkel's best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless snapshot of people's feelings about their working lives, as ... More »

84. This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright By Emma Smith A THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 'The best introduction to the plays I've read, perhaps the best book on Shakespeare, full stop' Alex Preston, Observer 'It makes you impatient to see or re-read the plays at once' Hilary Mantel A genius and prophet ... More »

85. The Making of the English Working Class By E. P. Thompson | Used Price: 60% Off This book transformed our understanding of English social history. Thompson revealed how working class people were not merely victims of history, moved by powerful forces outside of themselves, but were also active in creating their own culture and future, during the degradation of the industrial revolution. More »

86. The Education of Henry Adams By Henry Adams | Used Price: 60% Off As a journalist, historian, and novelist born into a family that included two past Presidents, Henry Adams was forever focused on the experiences and expectations unique to America. A prompt bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) recounts his own and his country's development from ... More »

87. The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins | Used Price: 60% Off Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands ... More »

88. Against Interpretation By Susan Sontag | Used Price: 50% Off Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well ... More »

89. The Kingdom of God Is Within You By Leo Tolstoy | Used Price: 60% Off "The Kingdom Of God Is Within You" is one of the most provocative anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian pieces of literature ever written. In the context of a sincere and scathing account of what is living and dead in modern Christianity, Tolstoy presents a view of history and society that ... More »

90. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution By Jonathan Spence | Used Price: 90% Off "A milestone in Western studies of China." (John K. Fairbank) In this masterful, highly original approach to modern Chinese history, Jonathan D. Spence shows us the Chinese revolution through the eyes of its most articulate participants—the writers, historians, philosophers, and insurrectionists who shaped and were shaped by the turbulent ... More »

92. On War By Carl von Clausewitz | Used Price: 60% Off On War is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832, it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of soldiers, statesmen, and intellectuals. More »

93. The Mismeasure of Man By Stephen Jay Gould | Used Price: 80% Off The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of ... More »

94. The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies By E. O. Wilson; Bert Holldobler | 60% Off The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume.The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands ... More »

95. The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria By Janine di Giovanni | Used Price: 70% Off A New York Post Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 2016 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award Winner of the 2016 Hay Festival Medal for Prose "Destined to become a classic." -Lisa Shea, ElleA masterpiece of war reportage, The Morning They Came for Us ... More »

96. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time By Karl Polanyi | Used Price: 50% Off In Polanyi's classic work of economic history and sociology, he examines societal changes since the Industrial Revolution and expertly explains the inadequacies of the free market. Published in 1944, it is as relevant as today as ever, with Harvard Professor Stephen Walt recommending it in his Top 10 ... More »

97. The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism By Daniel Bell | Used Price: 70% Off With a new afterword by the author, this classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalismâ€”and the culture it createsâ€”harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratificationâ€”a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their ... More »

98. A People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn | Used Price: 70% Off A People's History of the United States is an attempt by Howard Zinn to present an alternative history of America from below. It's a view of US history from the perspective of ordinary and oppressed people. It's extremely popular and - in addition to being on many high ... More »

99. The Periodic Table By Primo Levi | Used Price: 50% Off (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Leviâ€™s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community ... More »

100. The Talented Women of the Zhang Family By Susan Mann Susan Mann illuminates a history of China that's largely been hidden. By exploring the memoirs of three generations of educated women from one Chinese family, Mann transforms our understanding of everyday life for women during the late imperial period. More »

The Best Books: Top 100 Nonfiction list is a concise selection of books that provides the reader with an understanding of the social and natural world.It teaches world civilisation - East and West - from the beginning to the present, including history, economics, sociology, literature, science, philosophy, and religion.All the texts were chosen for their importance and their accessibility, finishing them gives at least a glimmering of what our race is all about.This list is best read in conjunction with the 100 best short nonfiction books list