The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century

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

About this list

National Review, 100 Books

The 100 best non-fiction books of all time judged by a panel of historians, authors, publishers, and experts for the National Review Magazine.

voters:
Richard Brookhiser, NR senior editor; David Brooks, senior editor of The Weekly Standard; Christopher Caldwell, senior writer at The Weekly Standard; Robert Conquest, historian; David Gelernter, writer and computer scientist; George Gilder, writer; Mary Ann Glendon, professor at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey Hart, NR senior editor; Mark Helprin, novelist; Arthur Herman, author of The Idea of Decline in Western History; John Keegan, military historian; Michael Kelly, editor of National Journal; Florence King, author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady; Michael Lind, journalist and novelist; John Lukacs, historian; Adam Meyerson, vice president at the Heritage Foundation; Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things; John O’Sullivan, NR editor-at-large; Richard Pipes, historian; Abigail Thernstrom, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; Stephan Thernstrom, historian; James Q. Wilson, author of The Moral Sense.

This list was originally published in 2005 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
941 Collected Essays of George Orwell George Orwell 1968 British English
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
1082 The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis 1943 British English
850 The Revolt of the Masses José Ortega y Gasset 1930 Spanish Spanish
1412 The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich von Hayek 1960 Austrian English
1170 Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman 1962 American English
2434 Modern Times Paul Johnson 1983 British English
2079 Rationalism in Politics Michael Oakeshott 1962 British English
664 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter 1942 Austrian English
870 Economy and Society Max Weber 1922 German German
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
580 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
4616 Sociobiology E. O. Wilson 1975 American English
6336 Centesimus Annus Pope John Paul II 1991 Vatican City Latin
1943 The Pursuit of the Millennium Norman Cohn 1957 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
4069 The Great Terror Robert Conquest 1968 British English
4444 Chronicles of Wasted Time Malcolm Muggeridge 1972 British English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
1150 Witness Whittaker Chambers 1952 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
1011 Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis 1952 British English
1188 The Quest for Community Robert Nisbet 1953 American English
714 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
3277 Up in the Old Hotel Joseph Mitchell 1992 American English
2525 The Everlasting Man G. K. Chesterton 1925 British English
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
1363 The Liberal Imagination Lionel Trilling 1950 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
1276 The Feynman Lectures on Physics Richard P. Feynman 1963 American English
3093 Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Tom Wolfe 1970 American English
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
4469 The Unheavenly City Edward C. Banfield 1970 American English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
1007 The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 American English
3952 The End of History and the Last Man Francis Fukuyama 1992 American English
675 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
2070 The Age of Reform Richard Hofstadter 1955 American English
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
1320 God and Man at Yale William F. Buckley, Jr 1951 American English
1045 Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1932 British English
3440 Ideas Have Consequences Richard M. Weaver 1948 American English
4477 The Economy of Cities Jane Jacobs 1969 American English
3452 The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom 1987 American English
5495 Ethnic America Thomas Sowell 1981 American English
1462 An American Dilemma Gunnar Myrdal 1944 Swedish English
3940 Three Case Histories Sigmund Freud 1963 Austrian German
1580 The Struggle for Europe Chester Wilmot 1952 British English
2621 Main Currents in American Thought Vernon L. Parrington 1927 American English
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
6325 Systematic Theology Wolfhart Pannenberg 1988 German German
3476 The Campaign of the Marne Sewell Tyng 1927 American English
369 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
3561 Insight Bernard Lonergan 1957 Canadian English
517 Being and Time Martin Heidegger 1927 German German
1641 Disraeli Robert Blake 1966 British English
3491 Democracy and Leadership Irving Babbitt 1924 American English
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
1881 The Machiavellians James Burnham 1943 American English
3500 Reflections of a Russian Statesman Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev 1898 Russian Russian
2574 The Hedgehog and the Fox Isaiah Berlin 1953 British English
2471 Roll, Jordan, Roll Eugene Genovese 1974 American English
2647 The ABC of Reading Ezra Pound 1934 American English
6476 Second World War John Keegan 1989 British English
4731 The Making of Homeric Verse Milman Parry 1971 American English
5277 The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling Angus Wilson 1977 British English
3512 Scrutiny F. R. Leavis 1932 British English
3823 The Edge of the Sword Charles De Gaulle 1959 French French
1434 R. E. Lee Douglas Southall Freeman 1934 American English
3518 Bureaucracy Ludwig von Mises 1944 Austrian English
1068 The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1948 American English
3522 Balzac Stefan Zweig 1946 Austrian German
3524 The Good Society Walter Lippmann 1937 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
4743 The Christian Tradition Jaroslav Pelikan 1971 American English
3525 Strange Defeat Marc Bloch 1946 French French
3526 Looking Back Norman Douglas 1933 British English
1076 Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Henry Adams 1904 American English
3528 Poetry and the Age Randall Jarrell 1953 American English
3529 Love in the Western World Denis de Rougemont 1939 Swiss French
1248 The Conservative Mind Russell Kirk 1953 American English
5618 Wealth and Poverty George Gilder 1981 American English
2381 Battle Cry of Freedom James M. McPherson 1988 American English
868 Henry James Leon Edel 1953 American English
993 Essays of E. B. White E. B. White 1977 American English
514 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
540 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 1968 American English
7677 Darwin's Black Box Michael J. Behe 1996 American English
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
5368 The Way the World Works Jude Wanniski 1978 American English
1872 To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson 1940 American English
4611 Civilisation Kenneth Clark 1969 British English
6609 The Russian Revolution Richard Pipes 1990 American English
1952 The Idea of History R. G. Collingwood 1946 British English
2198 The Last Lion William Manchester 1983 American English
7960 The Starr Report Kenneth W. Starr 1998 American English