Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction by Modern Library

Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction list.

Ranking Name of Novel Author(s)
1 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 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 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 Thompson
35 IDEAS AND OPINIONS Albert Einstein
36 THE AGE OF JACKSON Arthur Schlesinger by 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 Strache
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 TIME 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 by 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 THE GOLDEN BOUGH James George Frazer
90 THE POWER BROKER Robert A. Caro
91 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION Richard Hofstadter
92 THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY William Appleman Williams
93 THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE Herbert Croly
94 IN COLD BLOOD Truman Capote
95 THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER Janet Malcolm
96 THE TAMING OF CHANCE Ian Hacking
97 OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS Anne Lamott
98 MELBOURNE Lord David Cecil
99 THE GINGER MAN J.P. Donleavy
100 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS Booth Tarkington

Source: The Modern Library. To learn more about the nominees, visit Modern Library.

Updated: July 22, 2021 — 9:15 am