Books That Changed the World

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Book, 59 Books

Scholar Robert B. Downs selects the "great works that revolutionized our ideas about the universe - and ourselves".

This list was originally published in 2004 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
648 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
1015 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton 1687 British Latin
3419 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
773 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
1476 An Essay on the Principle of Population Thomas Robert Malthus 1798 British English
3239 Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau 1849 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
326 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
1347 Seven Against Thebes Aeschylus -467 Greek Ancient greek
284 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
613 The Persians Aeschylus -471 Greek Ancient greek
1348 The Suppliants Aeschylus -463 Greek Ancient greek
1255 Prometheus Bound Aeschylus -455 Greek Ancient greek
383 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
1124 Philoctetes Sophocles -409 Greek Ancient greek
105 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
1123 Ajax Sophocles -440 Greek Ancient greek
1125 Women of Trachis Sophocles -450 Greek Ancient greek
985 Electra Sophocles -409 Greek Ancient greek
124 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
942 The Bacchae Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
305 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
2187 Trojan Women Euripides -415 Greek Ancient greek
2512 Hippolytus Euripides -428 Greek Ancient greek
876 Lysistrata Aristophanes -411 Greek Ancient greek
931 The Clouds Aristophanes -423 Greek Ancient greek
1382 The Birds Aristophanes -414 Greek Ancient greek
623 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
332 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
388 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
1449 Corpus Aristotelicum Aristotle -322 Greek Greek
14671 The Dyskolos Menander -316 Greek Ancient greek
782 Anabasis Xenophon -390 Greek Ancient greek
14674 The Histories Polybius -150 Greek Greek
14642 Catiline's War, The Jugurthine War, Histories Sallust -40 Roman Latin
6089 The History of Rome Livy -27 Roman Latin
1179 Annals Cornelius Tacitus 109 Roman Latin
1833 Histories Cornelius Tacitus 100 Roman Latin
13316 Hippocratic Corpus Hippocrates -429 Greek Greek
17008 Theophrastus William Wall Fortenbaugh, Dimitri Gutas 1992 Greek English
14685 The Works of Archimedes Archimedes -287 Greek Ancient greek
2701 Natural History Pliny the Elder 77 Roman Latin
1459 The City of God Augustine 413 Roman Latin
2025 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Nicolaus Copernicus 1543 Polish Latin
4282 On the Fabric of the Human Body Andreas Vesalius 1543 Belgian Latin
14701 An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings William Harvey 1628 British Latin
15786 An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae Edward Jenner 1798 British English
15786 The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 Alfred Thayer Mahan 1890 American English