The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

The 100 Most Influential BooksEver Written: The History of

Thought from Ancient Times toToday

Author Martin Seymour-Smith

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Publisher Citadel

Publication date September, 1998

Media type Print (hardcover and

paperback)

The 100 Most Influential BooksEver Written (book)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written)

The 100 Most InfluentialBooks Ever Written: TheHistory of Thought fromAncient Times to Today(1998) is a book ofintellectual history writtenby Martin Seymour-Smith, aBritish poet, critic, andbiographer.

Chronological list

The one hundred mostinfluential books, accordingto Seymour-Smith, in theapproximate chronological order he gives:

# Author or source Title Date

1Chinese classictexts

I Ching14th centuryBCE

2 Jewish scripture Hebrew Bible13th–4thcentury BCE

3 Homer Iliad and Odyssey8th – early 7thcentury BCE

4 Hindu scripture Upanishads7th–5thcentury BCE

5 Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching3rd centuryBCE

Zoroastrian3rd century

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6Zoroastrianscripture

Avesta BCE – 3rdcentury AD

7 Confucius Analects5th–4thcentury BCE

8 ThucydidesHistory of thePeloponnesian War

5th centuryBCE

9 Hippocrates Works 400 BCE

10 Aristotle Works4th centuryBCE

11 Herodotus Histories5th centuryBCE

12 Plato The Republic 380 BCE

13 Euclid Elements 280 BCE

14TheravadaBuddhist scripture

Dhammapada (Path of theDharma)

252 BCE

15 Virgil Aeneid 19 BCE

16 Lucretius De Rerum Natura 55 BCE

17 Philo of AlexandriaAllegorical Expositions ofthe Holy Laws

1st century

18 Christian scripture New Testamentca. CE 50– CE100

19 Plutarch Parallel Lives CE 120

20 Cornelius TacitusAnnals, From the Death ofthe Divine Augustus

CE 120

21 ValentinusGospel of Truth (Gnostictext)

2nd century

22 Marcus Aurelius Meditations 167

23 Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism CE 150-210

24 Plotinus Enneads 3rd century

25 Augustine of Hippo Confessions CE 400

26 Muslim scripture Quran 7th century

27 Moses Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed 1190




28Text of Judaicmysticism

Kabbalah 12th century

29 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 1266–1273

30 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy 1321

31 Desiderius Erasmus In Praise of Folly 1509

32NiccolòMachiavelli

The Prince 1532

33 Martin LutherOn the Babylonian Captivityof the Church

1520

34 François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel 1532 & 1534

35 John CalvinInstitutes of the ChristianReligion

1536

36NicolausCopernicus

On the Revolutions of theHeavenly Spheres

1543

37Michael Eyquem deMontaigne

Essays 1580

38Miguel deCervantes

Don Quixote 1605 & 1615

39 Johannes Kepler Harmony of the Worlds 1619

40 Francis Bacon Novum Organum 1620

41WilliamShakespeare

First Folio 1623

42 Galileo GalileiDialogue Concerning theTwo Chief World Systems

1632

43 René Descartes Discourse on Method 1637

44 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 1651

45Gottfried WilhelmLeibniz

Works 1663–1716

46 Blaise Pascal Pensées 1670

47 Baruch de Spinoza Ethics 1677

48 John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress 1678–1684

49 Isaac NewtonMathematical Principles of

1687




49 Isaac NewtonNatural Philosophy

1687

50 John LockeEssay Concerning HumanUnderstanding

1689

51 George BerkeleyTreatise Concerning thePrinciples of HumanKnowledge

1710, revised1734

52 Giambattista Vico The New Science1725, revised1744

53 David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature 1739–1740

54 Denis Diderot (ed.) Encyclopédie 1751–1772

55 Samuel JohnsonA Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage

1755

56François-Marie deVoltaire

Candide 1759

57 Thomas Paine Common Sense 1776

58 Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations 1776

59 Edward GibbonThe History of the Declineand Fall of the RomanEmpire

1776–1787

60 Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason1781, revised1787

61Jean-JacquesRousseau

Confessions 1781

62 Edmund BurkeReflections on theRevolution in France

1790

63MaryWollstonecraft

Vindication of the Rights ofWoman

1792

64 William GodwinAn Enquiry ConcerningPolitical Justice

1793

65Thomas RobertMalthus

An Essay on the Principle ofPopulation

1798, revised1803

66George WilhelmFriedrich Hegel

Phenomenology of Spirit 1807

Arthur




67ArthurSchopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea 1819

68 Auguste ComteThe Course in PositivePhilosophy

1830–1842

69Carl vonClausewitz

On War 1832

70 Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or 1843

71Karl Marx &Friedrich Engels

Communist Manifesto 1848

72Henry DavidThoreau

Civil Disobedience 1849

73 Charles Darwin The Origin of Species 1859

74 John Stuart Mill On Liberty 1859

75 Herbert Spencer First Principles 1862

76 Gregor MendelExperiments on PlantHybridization

1866

77 Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 1868–1869

78James ClerkMaxwell

Treatise on Electricity andMagnetism

1873

79 Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883–1885

80 Sigmund FreudThe Interpretation ofDreams

1900

81 William James Pragmatism 1908

82 Albert Einstein Relativity 1916

83 Vilfredo Pareto The Mind and Society 1916

84 Carl Gustav Jung Psychological Types 1921

85 Martin Buber I and Thou 1923

86 Franz Kafka The Trial 1925

87 Karl PopperThe Logic of ScientificDiscovery

1934

88John MaynardKeynes

General Theory ofEmployment, Interest, andMoney

1936




89 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness 1943

90Friedrich vonHayek

The Road to Serfdom 1944

91Simone deBeauvoir

The Second Sex 1948

92 Norbert Wiener Cybernetics1948, revised1961

93 George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949

94George IvanovitchGurdjieff

Beelzebub's Tales to HisGrandson

1950

95LudwigWittgenstein

Philosophical Investigations 1953

96 Noam Chomsky Syntactic Structures 1957

97 Thomas KuhnThe Structure of ScientificRevolutions

1962, revised1970

98 Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique 1963

99 Mao ZedongQuotations From ChairmanMao Tse-tung (Little RedBook)

1966

100 B. F. SkinnerBeyond Freedom andDignity

1971

See also

List of best-selling booksThe 100 Best Books of All Time

References

Seymour-Smith, Martin (1998). The 100 Most Influential BooksEver Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today,Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, 1998, ISBN 0806520000

Retrieved from"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_Most_Influential_Books_Ever_Written_(book)"




Categories: Books about books | History of ideas | Lists of books | Toplists

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