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Modern
Library "100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century"
The Modern Library announced
this list of the 100 best nonfiction books written in English and
published in the 20th Century on April 29, 1999. The voting members
of the Modern Library editorial board were: A. S. Byatt, Caleb Carr,
Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Stephen Jay Gould, Vartan Gregorian,
Charles Johnson, Jon Krakauer, Edmund Morris, Elaine Pagels, John
Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Carolyn See.
"The Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books were chosen for their
literary and intellectual merit. Board members could vote only for
books that they themselves had read and could not vote for their
own books, although books by board members are included on the final
list. Books were selected regardless of publisher and it was agreed
that any author would be represented by only one title. Finally,
each board member was allowed to add to the list one book that he
or she felt passionately should be included.
"The list was carefully compiled during an eight-month process.
Voting was conducted from a master ballot of over 900 titles that
had been assembled by Modern Library and Random House staff and
then added to by the board members. The board met twice in New York,
first to determine the selection criteria and then to assess the
list's progress.
"Every book was rated by each board member on a numeric scale, with
two rounds of voting. To assemble the final list of 100 titles,
Professor Albert Madansky of the University of Chicago undertook
the delicate task of ranking the votes of all of the voting board
members. His statistical analysis explicitly took into account several
variables, and applied a rigorous and systematic methodology to
the ranking. When an author had more than one book in the list,
the editorial board decision to include only one book by each author
was implemented by including only the author's highest ranked book.
"Of the 100 books on the best nonfiction list, seven are currently
out of print and six were written by authors who had works on last
year's Modern Library 100 Best Novels list: Virginia Woolf, William
Styron, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Wright, and E.
M. Forster."
--from Modern Library press release, April 29, 1999
click on any title for more information or to order from Amazon
1. Adams, Henry. The
Education of Henry Adams
2. James, William. The
Varieties of Religious Experience
3. Washington, Booker T.. Up
from Slavery
4. Woolf, Virginia. A
Room of One’s Own
5. Carson, Rachel. Silent
Spring
6. Eliot, T. S.. Selected
Essays, 19171932
7. Watson, James D.. The
Double Helix
8. Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak,
Memory
9. Mencken, H. L.. The
American Language
10. Keynes, John Maynard. The
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
11. Thomas, Lewis. The
Lives of a Cell
12. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The
Frontier in American History
13. Wright, Richard. Black
Boy
14. Forster, E. M.. Aspects
of the Novel
15. Foote, Shelby. The
Civil War
16. Tuchman, Barbara. The
Guns of August
17. Berlin, Isaiah. The
Proper Study of Mankind
18. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The
Nature and Destiny of Man
19. Baldwin, James. Notes
of a Native Son
20. Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice. Toklas
21. Strunk, William and E. B. White. The
Elements of Style
22. Myrdal, Gunnar. An
American Dilemma
23. Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell. Principia
Mathematica
24. Gould, Stephen Jay. The
Mismeasure of Man
25. Abrams, Meyer Howard. The
Mirror and the Lamp
26. Medawar, Peter B.. The
Art of the Soluble
27. Hoelldobler, Bert and Edward O. Wilson. The
Ants
28. Rawls, John. A
Theory of Justice
29. Gombrich, Ernest H.. Art
and Illusion
30. Thompson, E. P.. The
Making of the English Working Class
31. Du Bois, W.E.B.. The
Souls of Black Folk
32. Moore, G. E.. Principia
Ethica
33. Dewey, John. Philosophy
and Civilization
34. Thompson, D’Arcy. On
Growth and Form
35. Einstein, Albert. Ideas
and Opinions
36. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr.. The
Age of Jackson
37. Rhodes, Richard. The
Making of the Atomic Bomb
38. West, Rebecca. Black
Lamb and Grey Falcon
39. Yeats, W. B.. Autobiographies
40. Needham, Joseph. Science
and Civilization in China
41. Graves, Robert. Goodbye
to All That
42. Orwell, George. Homage
to Catalonia
43. Twain, Mark. The
Autobiography of Mark Twain
44. Coles, Robert. Children
of Crisis
45. Toynbee, Arnold J.. A
Study of History
46. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The
Affluent Society
47. Acheson, Dean. Present
at the Creation
48. McCullough, David. The
Great Bridge
49. Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic
Gore
50. Bate, Walter Jackson. Samuel
Johnson
51. Haley Alex, and Malcolm X. The
Autobiography of Malcolm X
52. Wolfe, Tom. The
Right Stuff
53. Strachey, Lytton. Eminent
Victorians
54. Terkel, Studs. Working
55. Styron, William. Darkness
Visible
56. Trilling, Lionel. The
Liberal Imagination
57. Churchill, Winston. The
Second World War
58. Dinesen, Isak. Out
of Africa
59. Malone, Dumas. Jefferson
and His Time
60. Williams, William Carlos. In
the American Grain
61. Reisner, Marc. Cadillac
Desert
62. Chernow, Ron. The
House of Morgan
63. Liebling, A. J.. The
Sweet Science
64. Popper, Karl. The
Open Society and Its Enemies
65. Yates, Frances A.. The
Art of Memory
66. Tawney, R. H.. Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism
67. Lippmann, Walter. A
Preface to Morals
68. Spence, Jonathan D.. The
Gate of Heavenly Peace
69. Kuhn, Thomas S.. The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
70. Woodward, C. Vann. The
Strange Career of Jim Crow
71. McNeill, William H.. The
Rise of the West
72. Pagels, Elaine. The
Gnostic Gospels
73. Ellmann, Richard. James
Joyce
74. Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Florence
Nightingale
75. Fussell, Paul. The
Great War and Modern Memory
76. Mumford, Lewis. The
City in History
77. McPherson, James M.. Battle
Cry of Freedom
78. King, Martin Luter, Jr.. Why
We Can’t Wait
79. Morris, Edmund. The
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
80. Panofsky, Erwin. Studies
in Iconology
81. Keegan, John. The
Face of Battle
82. Dangerfield, George. The
Strange Death of Liberal England
83. Gowing, Lawrence. Vermeer
84. Sheehan, Neil. A
Bright Shining Lie
85. Markham, Beryl. West
with the Night
86. Wolff, Tobias. This
Boy’s Life
87. Hardy, G. H.. A
Mathematician’s Apology
88. Feynman, Richard P.. Six
Easy Pieces
89. Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim
at Tinker Creek
90. Frazer, James George. The
Golden Bough
91. Ellison, Ralph. Shadow
and Act
92. Caro, Robert A.. The
Power Broker
93. Hofstadter, Richard. The
American Political Tradition
94. Williams, William Appleman. The
Contours of American History
95. Croly, Herbert. The
Promise of American Life
96. Capote, Truman. In
Cold Blood
97. Malcolm, Janet. The
Journalist and the Murderer
98. Hacking, Ian. The
Taming of Chance
99. Lamott, Anne. Operating
Instructions
100. Cecil, Lord David. Melbourne
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