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BH Report: Most Influential Books 2014/11/26
Context
I don't read newspaper, I don't read magazines, and I don't read books. It's not just because I don't have
time (it's always possible to curve out time if you put your mind to it) but also because I tend to fall
asleep trying to read...
I'm thankful that my high-scohol and college education required me to read some classics – but how
much 'dent' did I make in the grand list of 'top books' to be read? Do I need to think about different time
period to cover the ground?
In this report, I tried to explore the following:
• Which centuries produced most influential books? how many of the influential books are 100+
years, having survived the test of time?
• What is the characteristics of each century?
I excluded deep-dive analyses on books from 20th century and beyond – I think it may be too soon to do
robust analyses on these...
Back-up: Methodology
Source 1 Source 2 Source 3 Source 4
Used 4 different sources (each with "100 top books") for the analyses
"Books that have
stayed with us"
• Based on
profiles of
people picking
"favorite books"
"Greatest Novels
All Time"
• Author applied
specific filter to
define "novels"
"Books That
Shaped World
History"
"Most Influential
Books Ever
Written"
What it is
When? 2014 2004 2002 1998
Who? Facebook Daniel Burt Miriam Raftery Martin Seymour-
Smith
Which centuries produced "most influential books"? (according to us)
49
23
75
311101
3
7
0
10
20
30
40
50
18th century
17th century
16th century
15th century
14th century
13th century
12th century
11th century
1st-10th century
B.C.
% share within "most influential books" (total 100%)
20th-21st century
19th century
Not surprisingly – 20th century and beyond represent ~50%
Interesting that B.C. is as prominent as 1st-15th century
Source: Facebook "Books that have stayed with us" (2014); Daniel S. Burt "The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time" (2004); Miriam Raftery "100 Books That Shaped World History" (2002); Martin Seymour-Smith "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" (1998)
Gutenberg's press invention in mid 15th
century
Each source with varying distribution
0
20
40
60
80
100
B.C. 20th-21st century
19th century
12th century
11th century
1st-10th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
15th century
14th century
13th century
% share within "most influential books" (total 100%)
"Books that shaped World History"
"Most Influential Books Ever Written"
Aggregation
"Greatest Novels"
Facebook "Favorite books"
Source: Facebook "Books that have stayed with us" (2014); Daniel S. Burt "The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time" (2004); Miriam Raftery "100 Books That Shaped World History" (2002); Martin Seymour-Smith "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" (1998)
Facebook has the most skew toward recent publications
Consensus is that there isn't much from 11th-15th century
(after ancient time & before printing press)
B.C. & 1st-15th century: Ancient philosophy, epic tales and outlier novels/records
Century Books
B.C. Epic of Gilgamesh, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Old Testament, Homer's The Iliad, Homer's The Odyssey, The Upanishads, Lao-Tzu's The Way and Its Power, Sun-Tzu's The Art of War, The Avesta, Confucius' Analects, History of the Peleponnesian War, Hippocrates's Works, Aristotle's Works, Herodotus's History, Plato's The Republic, Euclid's Elements, The Dhammapada, Virgil's The Aeneid, On the Nature of Reality
1st – 10th Quran, The New Testament, Allegorial Expositios of the Holy Laws, Plutarch's Lives, Annals From the Death of the Divine Augstus, The Gospel of Truth, Marcus Aurelius's Meditatios, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Enneads, Confessions
11th The Tale of Genji
12th Guide for the Perplexed
13th Quabala Summa Theologiae
14th The Travels of Marco Polo The Divine Comedy
15th Gutenberg Bible
Source: Facebook "Books that have stayed with us" (2014); Daniel S. Burt "The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time" (2004); Miriam Raftery "100 Books That Shaped World History" (2002); Martin Seymour-Smith "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" (1998)
16th-18th century: Politics, to Theology, to Plays and back again to Politics...
11
66
1
6
4
2
5
2
0
55
0
5
10
15
16c 1Q 16c 2Q 16c 3Q
# books in the lists (among 4 sources)
16c 4Q 17c 1Q 17c 2Q 17c 3Q 17c 4Q 18c 1Q 18c 2Q 18c 3Q 18c 4Q
Source: Facebook "Books that have stayed with us" (2014); Daniel S. Burt "The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time" (2004); Miriam Raftery "100 Books That Shaped World History" (2002); Martin Seymour-Smith "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" (1998)
Utopia, The Prince, On the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church...
Hamlet, The First Folio, Don Quixote, Novum
Organum
Common Sense, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Reflections
on the Revolution in France
19th century: Novels, novels and novels (occasionally mixed with Politics e.g., "Civil Disobedience", "Das Kapital")
Title Year
Phenomenology of Spirit 1807
Cartagena Manifesto 1812
Pride and Prejudice 1813
Waverley 1814
Emma 1816
Frankenstein 1818
The World as Will and Idea 1819
The Last of the Mohicans 1826
The Betrothed 1827
Course in the Positivist Philosophy 1830
The Book of Mormon 1830
The Red and the Black 1830
On War 1832
Le Pere Goriot 1835
Nature 1836
The Pickwick Papers 1836
Dead Souls 1842
A Christmas Carol 1843
Either/Or 1843
The Count of Monte Cristo 1844
The Three Musketeers 1844
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 1845
Tales 1845
Jane Eyre 1847
Vanity Fair 1847
Title Year
Wuthering Heights 1847
The Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848
Civil Disobedience 1849
David Copperfield 1849
The Scarlet Letter 1850
Moby-Dick 1851
Bleak House 1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852
Germinal 1855
Madame Bovary 1857
A Tale of Two Cities 1859
Oblomov 1859
On Liberty 1859
On the Origin of Species 1859
Great Expectations 1860
The Woman in White 1860
Fathers and Sons 1862
First Principles 1862
Les Miserables 1862
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1865
Crime and Punishment 1866
Experiments With Plant Hybrids 1866
The Last Chronicle of Barset 1866
Das Kapital 1867
Little Women 1868
Title Year
War and Peace 1868
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 1870
Middlemarch 1871
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism 1873
Anna Karenina 1877
The Brothers Karamazov 1880
The Portrait of a Lady 1881
Thus Spake Zarathustra 1883
Treasure Island 1883
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884
A Study in Scarlet 1887
Hunger 1890
The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890
Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1891
The Red Badge of Courage 1895
The Jewish State 1896
Dracula 1897
The War of the Worlds 1898
The Awakening 1899
The Interpretation of Dreams 1900
Source: Facebook "Books that have stayed with us" (2014); Daniel S. Burt "The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time" (2004); Miriam Raftery "100 Books That Shaped World History" (2002); Martin Seymour-Smith "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" (1998)
Out of the 70 on the list above, I have only read 11...
how many have you read?
Disclaimer
This document is provided for general information only and nothing contained in the material constitutes a recommendation for the purchase or sale of any security. Although the statements of fact in this report are obtained from sources that I consider reliable, I do not guarantee their accuracy and any such information may be incomplete or condensed. Views are subject to change on the basis of additional or new research, new facts or developments.
