Monday, June 21, 2010

Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, Part III

On Saturday and Sunday, I gave you the first two-thirds of a recommended reading list that I clipped out of the April 30, 1999 edition of USA Today, that is, the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century.
This list includes many of the most influential, award-winning books of the past century, and I’ve enjoyed the few that I’ve had a chance to read. Today, I give you selections 67-100. Here they are:
67. A Preface to Morals by Walter Lippman
68. The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Jonathan D. Spence
69. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
70. The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward
71. The Rise of the West by William H. McNeill
72. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
73. James Joyce by Richard Ellmann
74. Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith
75. The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
76. The City in History by Lewis Mumford
77. Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
78. Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.
79. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
80. Studies in Iconology by Erwin Panofsky
81. The Face of Battle by John Keegan
82. The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield
83. Vermeer by Lawrence Gowing
84. A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
85. West With the Night by Beryl Markham
86. This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
87. A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy
88. Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman
89. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
90. The Golden Bough by James George Frazer
91. Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison
92. The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
93. The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter
94. The Contours of American History by William Appleman Williams
95. The Promise of American Life by Herbert Coly
96. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
97. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
98. The Taming of Chance by Ian Hacking
99. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
100. Melbourne by Lord David Cecil
In the end, I’d like to know if you’ve read any of these, what you thought about them and which you’d recommend. I’ve denoted the few that I’ve had a chance to read with italics. Let me hear from you in the comments section below.

No comments:

Post a Comment