The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

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The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient
Times to Today
Martin Seymour-Smith - The 100 most influential books ever written the history o
f thought from ancient times to today.jpeg
Author(s)
Martin Seymour-Smith
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Publisher
Citadel
Publication date
September, 1998
Media type
Print (hardcover and paperback)
ISBN
978-0806520001
OCLC Number
38258131
The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient
Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual history written by Martin Seymo
ur-Smith, a British poet, critic, and biographer.[1]
Chronological list
The one hundred most influential books, according to Seymour-Smith, in the appro
ximate chronological order he gives:
#
Author or source
Title Date
Public domain?
1
Chinese classic texts I Ching
11th century BC
yes
2
Jewish scripture
Hebrew Bible
8th 4th century BC
yes
3
Homer Iliad and Odyssey
8th
early 7th century BC
yes
4
Hindu scripture
Upanishads
9th century BC yes
5
Lao Tsu
Tao Te Ching
4th century BC yes
6
Zoroastrian scripture Avesta 1st millennium BC
3rd century AD
yes
7
Confucius
Analects
5th 4th century BC
yes
8
Thucydides
History of the Peloponnesian War
5th century BC
yes
9
Hippocrates
Works 400 BC yes
10
Aristotle
Works 4th century BC yes
11
Herodotus
Histories
5th century BC yes
12
Plato The Republic
380 BC yes
13
Euclid Elements
280 BC yes
14
Theravada Buddhist scripture
Dhammapada (Path of the Dharma)
252 BC yes
15
Virgil Aeneid 19 BC yes
16
Lucretius
De Rerum Natura
55 BC yes
17
Philo of Alexandria
Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws
1st century AD yes
18
Christian scripture
New Testament ca. 50 100 AD yes
19
Plutarch
Parallel Lives 120 AD yes
20
Cornelius Tacitus
Annals, From the Death of the Divine Augustus
120 AD yes
21
Valentinus
Gospel of Truth (Gnostic text) 2nd century
yes
22
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
167
yes
23
Sextus Empiricus
Outlines of Pyrrhonism 150 210 AD
yes
24
Plotinus
Enneads
3rd century
yes
25
Augustine of Hippo
Confessions
400 AD yes
26
Muslim scripture
Quran 7th century
yes
27
Moses Maimonides
Guide for the Perplexed
1190
yes
28
Text of Judaic mysticism
Kabbalah
12th century
yes
29
Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae
1266 1273
yes

30
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
1321
yes
31
Desiderius Erasmus
In Praise of Folly
1509
yes
32
Niccol Machiavelli
The Prince
1532
yes
33
Martin Luther On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church
1520
yes
34
Franois Rabelais
Gargantua and Pantagruel
1532 and 1534
yes
35
John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion
1536
yes
36
Nicolaus Copernicus
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
1543
yes
37
Michel de Montaigne
Essays 1580
yes
38
Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote
1605 and 1615 yes
39
Johannes Kepler
Harmony of the Worlds 1619
yes
40
Francis Bacon Novum Organum 1620
yes
41
William Shakespeare
First Folio
1623
yes
42
Galileo Galilei
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
1632
yes
43
Ren Descartes Discourse on Method
1637
yes
44
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
1651
yes
45
Gottfried Leibniz
Works 1663 1716
yes
46
Blaise Pascal Penses
1670
yes
47
Baruch de Spinoza
Ethics 1677
yes
48
John Bunyan
Pilgrim's Progress
1678 1684
yes
49
Isaac Newton
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 1687
yes
50
John Locke
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1689
yes
51
George Berkeley
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Know
ledge 1710, revised 1734
yes
52
Giambattista Vico
The New Science
1725, revised 1744
yes
53
David Hume
A Treatise of Human Nature
1739 1740
yes
54
Denis Diderot (ed.)
Encyclopdie
1751 1772
yes
55
Samuel Johnson A Dictionary of the English Language
1755
yes
56
Voltaire
Candide
1759
yes
57
Thomas Paine
Common Sense
1776
yes
58
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations 1776
yes
59
Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1776 1787
yes
60
Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason
1781, revised 1787
yes
61
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Confessions
1781
yes
62
Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France
1790
yes
63
Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1792
yes
64
William Godwin An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
1793
yes
65
Thomas Robert Malthus An Essay on the Principle of Population
1798, revised 1803
yes
66
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit
1807
yes
67
Arthur Schopenhauer
The World as Will and Idea
1819
yes
68
Auguste Comte The Course in Positive Philosophy
1830 1842
yes
69
Carl von Clausewitz
On War 1832
yes
70
Sren Kierkegaard
Either/Or
1843
yes
71
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Communist Manifesto
1848
yes
72
Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
1849
yes
73
Charles Darwin The Origin of Species 1859
yes
74
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
1859
yes

75
Herbert Spencer
First Principles
1862
yes
76
Gregor Mendel Experiments on Plant Hybridization
1866
77
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace 1868 1869
yes
78
James Clerk Maxwell
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
1873
yes
79
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883 1885
80
Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams
1900
yes
81
William James Pragmatism
1908
yes
82
Albert Einstein
Relativity
1916
yes
83
Vilfredo Pareto
The Mind and Society
1916
yes
84
Carl Jung
Psychological Types
1921
85
Martin Buber
I and Thou
1923
86
Franz Kafka
The Trial
1925
yes
87
Karl Popper
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
1934
88
John Maynard Keynes
General Theory of Employment, Interest,
y
1936
yes
89
Jean-Paul Sartre
Being and Nothingness 1943
90
Friedrich von Hayek
The Road to Serfdom
1944
91
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex 1948
92
Norbert Wiener Cybernetics
1948, revised 1961
93
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four
1949
94
George Gurdjieff
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
95
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations
1953
96
Noam Chomsky
Syntactic Structures
1957
97
Thomas Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
vised 1970
98
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique 1963
99
Mao Zedong
(attributed)
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (Little Red Book)
100
B. F. Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity
1971

yes

yes

and Mone

1950
1962, re

1966