Post: #1

Forgive me if we've already got a thread like this in here.

This was a book. The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today

Find at http://www.amazon.com/Most-Influential-B...er+written (there's a Kindle version too).

The book itself has mixed reviews, but the list might make an interesting and worthwhile reading list - although, many of us probably have a lot of these on our wish list already. Also, the book was written in 1998. Any newcomers that should be added (based on criteria the author may have used - not just because you liked it or because it was pretty popular)?

By the way, how is the Bible not on there?

Here's the list.

The I Ching or Book of Changes by Richard Wilhelm 1 - 14th century BCE
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 167 AD
Tanakh : a new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text by JPS 13th–4th century BCE
The Iliad by Homer 8th – early 7th century BCE
The Odyssey by Homer 8th – early 7th century BCE
The Upanishads by Anonymous 7th–5th century BCE
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu 3rd century BCE
Avesta: The Religious Books of the Parsees. Volumes 1-3 by Arthur Henry Bleeck 3rd century BCE – 3rd century CE
The Analects by Confucius 5th–4th century BCE
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides 5th century BCE
Hippocratic Writings (Penguin Classics) by Hippocrates 400 BCE
The Basic Works of Aristotle by Aristoteles 4th century BCE
The Histories by Herodotus 2 - 5th century BCE
The Republic by Plato 380 BCE
The Thirteen Books of the Elements, Vol. 1, books 1-2 by Euclid 280 BCE
The Dhammapada by Buddha 252 BCE
The Aeneid by Virgil 19 BCE
On the Nature of Things by Lucretius 55 BCE
The Works of Philo by Philo of Alexandria 1st century
Novum Testamentum Graece by Eberhard Nestle ca. 50–100 AD
Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch 120 AD
Annalium ab excessu divi Augusti by Tacitus 120 AD
The Nag Hammadi Library in English by James M. Robinson 2nd Century
Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus 150-210 AD
The Six Enneads by Plotinus 3rd century
The Confessions of St. Augustine by Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo 400 AD
al Qur'an by al-Qur'an 7th century
The Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides 1190
Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment (Classics of Western Spirituality) by Daniel Chanan Matt 12th century
Britannica Great Books: Aquinas I and II by St. Thomas Aquinas 1266–1273
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 1321
In Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus 1509
Three Treatises by Martinho Lutero 1520
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli 1532
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais 1534
Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin 1536
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus 1543
The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne 1580
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1615
Harmonies of the world. Book five. by Johannes Kepler 1619
The New Organon by Francis Bacon 1620
The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile by William Shakespeare 1623
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, Second Revised edition by Galileo Galilei 1632
Discourse on Method / Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes 1637
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 1651
Philosophical Writings (Everyman Paperback Classics) by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1663
Pensées by Blaise Pascal 1670
The Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza 1677
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke 1684
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan 1684
Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton 1687
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley 1710
New Science by Giambattista Vico 1725
A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume 1740
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson 1755
Candide by Voltaire 1759
Encyclopedia: Selections by Denis Diderot 1751-1772
Common Sense by Thomas Paine 1776
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith 1776
The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1781
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant 1787
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire {abridged by Hadas} by Edward Gibbon 1776-1787
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon 1776-1787
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke 1790
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft 1792
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness by William Godwin 1793
An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus 1803
Phenomenology of Spirit by G. W. F. Hegel 1807
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer 1819
Introduction to Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte 1830-1842
On War by Carl von Clausewitz 1832
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard 1843
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx 1848
Civil disobedience by Henry David Thoreau 1849
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill 1859
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin 1859
First Principles by Herbert Spencer 1862
Experiments in Plant Hybridisation by Gregor Mendel 1866
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 1869
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism by James Clerk Maxwell 1873
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche 1883-1885
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud 1900
Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: Popular Lectures on Philosophy by William James 1908
The mind and society by Vilfredo Pareto 1916
Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein 1916
Psychological Types by Carl Gustav Jung 1921
I and Thou by Martin Buber 1923
The Trial by Franz Kafka 1925
The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper 1934
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes 1936
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre 1943
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek 1943
Cybernetics, or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener 1948
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir 1948
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 1949
Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson by G. I. Gurdjieff 1950
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953
Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky 1957
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn 1962
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan 1963
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung by Mao Tse-Tung 1966
Beyond Freedom & Dignity by B. F. Skinner 1971

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #2

wut? no Bang by Roosh V? worst. list. ever.

Post: #3

No Bible...I wouldn't read, as the author is either a moron or has an agenda

Post: #4

^ The emphasis here was meant to be on the list itself. With additions invited.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #5

Interesting list. I like to think I'm pretty well-read for my age but I'm still a long way off from making a serious dent on that list. Quite a few were already on my "to-read list", and I'll be adding a few more today.

This actual book seems to be getting mixed reviews. Might just be because it's a difficult read though. Have you read it?

(12-21-2014 09:17 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  By the way, how is the Bible not on there?

Yeah, that's a pretty massive miss. They even put the Quran on, so it's not like they were shying away from religious texts. The Bible is definitely up there in terms of impact on human history. Also it's important for understanding a lot of references in older works.

I haven't read "Syntactic Structures" by Chomsky but I'm surprised it made it in over "Manufacturing Consent" though.

It's also missing "The Feminine Mystique" by BF.

Post: #6

^ The Feminine Mystique is on there.

Nah, I haven't read the book this list comes from. I was thinking about it.

The reviews put me off, but if you dig into them, they're mostly from finding it too opinionated and scholarly.

I think it would be interesting to check it out anyways. I recall a review mentioning that he dogs on PC thinking, so maybe he's opinionated in a good way and rags on the whole feminist paradigm or something.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #7

(12-22-2014 10:23 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  ^ The Feminine Mystique is on there.

Oh shit I have no clue how I missed that. I haven't read it, but it certainly has had an impact.

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I could see "The God Delusion" getting on there someday. Atheism is growing and that book did a lot to make it mainstream.

I haven't read a "Brief History of Time" by Hawking but I've heard great things.

For Holocaust history "Anne Frank" and "Man's Search for Meaning" are both pretty important. "Man's Search for Meaning" is the much better book in my opinion, but both do a lot to humanize something that is difficult to even imagine.

"Atlas Shrugged" could get up there if there was a massive shift in economic policies.

---

"Dead Aid" and "End of Poverty" are two incredible reads on global poverty. Both criticize aid and call for more direct economic investment to spur growth.

"Banker for the Poor" is on micro-lending and has a similar point to make.

None of those three belong in the top 100 of all time, but are incredibly important books for the future of the 21st century. All three could have a major impact.

Post: #8

(12-21-2014 09:17 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  Novum Testamentum Graece by Eberhard Nestle ca. 50–100 AD

On closer inspection, the Bible is part of the list. Although the title as cited makes it hard to recognize.

Post: #9

(12-22-2014 10:50 AM)Tigre Wrote:  

(12-21-2014 09:17 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  Novum Testamentum Graece by Eberhard Nestle ca. 50–100 AD

On closer inspection, the Bible is part of the list. Although the title as cited makes it hard to recognize.

Well played, Tigre. It occurred to me it might be concealed in there somewhere but I never would have caught that.

I stand corrected.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #10

Hate to nitpick but:


The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Post: #11

I'm surprised Atlas Shrugged is not on the list either.

Post: #12

PROVERBS/Ecclesiastes....best books ever written ..Short no B.S. ....Has VERY little to do with religion... read them, takes about 45 min ...they do not try to convert you and have more insight to dealing with human nature than anything else written.

Post: #13

^^Preach. I read those as a kid. Pure gold. Sad to think the Bible, a work of fiction, comprising of racism, sexism, self mutilation, genocide and fairy tales.

The most influential books have to be Charles Darwin's Descent of Man and Origin of Species.

Post: #14

(12-24-2014 02:45 AM)Pride male Wrote:  The most influential books have to be Charles Darwin's Descent of Man and Origin of Species.

At least Origin of Species made it on. It seems like the author wanted to avoid any repeats of author. Homer might be the only on that got the honor.

I found this chart of the 10 most read books of the 50-years, thought it kinda went along with this.



It's interesting that only 5 were first published within the last 50 years, and that includes Mao which was published in '64.

I was going to make the argument that Harry Potter encouraged reading which could make it incredibly influential, not top 100, but still influential. To be honest though I'm not sure if I really believe that. I know a lot of people who say that it's true for them, but those people mainly just graduated to reading trashy novels

Post: #15

Seriously, Harry Potter? I didn't even read that or watch that movie. Personally, I preferred Animal Farm to 1984.

Post: #16

(12-24-2014 07:40 AM)Pride male Wrote:  Seriously, Harry Potter? I didn't even read that or watch that movie. Personally, I preferred Animal Farm to 1984.

Haha, I mean what did you expect to be the best-selling book? I'm not saying it should be top-100.

I actually liked Animal Farm better than 1984 too. I also think Brave New World, or even Fahrenheit 451, is a better portrayal of modern-society than 1984.

Post: #17

I'm surprised that In Search of Lost Time by Proust didn't make the list.

And a strong case can be made for Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Just kick out the Chomsky book. How did he make the list?

Quote:Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire {abridged by Hadas} by Edward Gibbon 1776-1787
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon 1776-1787

Now hold on a minute.

The abridged version also took up a spot on the list?

Post: #18

Uncle Tom's Cabin? That book basically ended slavery in the USA, I'd say that was pretty important. And the Bible should be on there.

In other news, my to-read list just increased by about 94 books.

Post: #19

That book my nigga von clautzwhich wrote.

I forgot what it's called, something about war.

Post: #20

(12-28-2014 02:56 AM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  That book my nigga von clautzwhich wrote.

I forgot what it's called, something about war.

I wrote my thesis on this influential work: Vom Kriege ("On War"). Interesting fact: did you know that Vom Kriege was published posthumously by his wife, Marie? She also wrote the preface, part of which reads:


They sure don't make them like they used to, do they?

Post: #21

I have to give a nod to 1984 over Animal Farm. Mainly because of the Emmanuel Goldstein pamphlet, especially the bit about how society is tiered. However, my favorite Orwell book is "Down and Out in Paris and London".

As for top 100 of all time, Sun Tzu's "Art of War" should be on it.

Post: #22

(12-28-2014 02:07 AM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  Just kick out the Chomsky book. How did he make the list?

LOL come on man. Dude is one of the if not THE most influential linguists in history.

Post: #23

(12-22-2014 10:13 AM)heavy Wrote:  No Bible...I wouldn't read, as the author is either a moron or has an agenda

Perhaps that's simply a given, if you're intelligent enough to even read this list let alone the books themselves I assume you understand the impact of the bible. Although it is also possible he's simply an atheist.

Post: #24

(12-24-2014 07:22 AM)Hedonistic Traveler Wrote:  

One has to wonder how effective Think and Grow Rich is if so many people read it but they're still all poor

Post: #25

^ Many rich and successful people swear by the book and credit it to their rise to the top.

I think the difference lies in application. It's one thing to read; it's another to put it to use.

To make a concise example, most people in this day and age know what they need to do to get in shape. It's making the sacrifices that prevents them from doing it.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling