Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Book, 49 Books

A 208 page book written in 2009 by Journalist and Author Andrew Taylor.

Books from every field of human creativity and intellectual endeavor - from poetry to politics, from fiction to philosophy, from theology to anthropology, and from economics to physics – have been selected to create a rounded and satisfying picture of how 50 towering achievements of the human intellect have built our societies, shaped our values, enhanced our understanding of the nature of the world, enabled technological advancements, and reflected our concerns and dilemmas, strengths and failings. In a series of engaging and lively essays, Andrew Taylor sets each work and its author firmly in historical context, summarizes the content of the work in question, and explores its wider influence and legacy. A fascinating and richly informative read.

This list was originally published in 2009 and was added to this site almost 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
624 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
518 The Odes Horace 23 Roman Latin
14112 Geography Ptolemy 150 Greek Greek
1968 Kama Sutra Vātsyāyana -400 Indian Sanskrit
505 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
15897 Canon of Medicine Avicenna 1025 Persian Arabic
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
15897 Atlas Gerardus Mercator 1595 Belgian Latin
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
14787 An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings William Harvey 1628 British Latin
863 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo 1632 Italian Italian
1018 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton 1687 British Latin
10303 A Dictionary of the English Language Samuel Johnson 1755 British English
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
3424 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
2415 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
216 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843 British English
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
15897 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Unknown 1903 Multiple Russian
14156 The Poems of Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen 1920 British English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English