Recommended Books

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

About this list

Academy of Achievement, 72 Books

Here, in their own words, are the answers to the question, What book did you read when you were young that most influenced your life? The answers reflect the wonderfully varied power of books, and remind us of some neglected timeless classics and other works we may want to take into our own lives.

This seems to be recommendations from celebrities, authors, critics, and other famous people

This list was originally published in 2017 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
304 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
1434 R. E. Lee Douglas Southall Freeman 1934 American English
671 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne 1870 French French
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
292 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
1593 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson 1992 American English
655 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
455 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
1008 Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis 1952 British English
337 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
1391 A Separate Peace John Knowles 1959 American English
3450 Profiles in Courage John F. Kennedy 1956 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
3307 Roughing It Mark Twain 1872 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1096 My Name Is Aram William Saroyan 1940 American English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
348 The Adventures of Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 1837 British English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
5907 Reveille in Washington Margaret Leech 1941 American English
431 Lost Illusions Honoré de Balzac 1837 French French
76 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
181 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
183 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
110 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
3239 Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau 1849 American English
375 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
1655 Arrowsmith Sinclair Lewis 1925 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
1651 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
294 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
243 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
1219 Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell 1932 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
7199 Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book Edmund Dulac 1916 British English
7199 Galapagos William Beebe 1924 American English
7199 The Little Grey Men Denys Watkins-Pitchford 1942 British English
6658 Future Shock Alvin Toffler 1980 American English
7199 The Two-Ocean War Samuel Eliot Morison 1963 American English
5831 Miss Susie Slagle's Augusta Tucker 1939 American English
599 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams 1947 American English
2669 Microbe Hunters Paul de Kruif 1926 American English
7755 Napoleon Vincent Cronin 1971 British English
7199 The Scarlet Plague Jack London 1912 American English
2357 One Two Three . . . Infinity George Gamow 1947 American English
4787 The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle Hugh Lofting 1922 British English
6135 Roosevelt James MacGregor Burns 1970 American English
7199 The Little Engine that Could Platt & Munk 1930 American English
7199 The Reason Why Cecil Woodham-Smith 1953 British English
7755 The Name Above the Title Frank Capra 1971 American English
5900 The Warlord of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs 1914 American English
1607 The Song of Hiawatha Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1855 American English
2404 The Fear Of Freedom Erich Fromm 1941 German English
7199 The Moon is Down John Steinbeck 1942 American English
7199 Smoky the Cowhorse Will James 1926 American English
2279 The Cloister and the Hearth Charles Reade 1861 British English
1053 Story of Ferdinand Munro Leaf 1936 American English
7199 The Island Within Ludwig Lewisohn 1928 American English
10238 Forever Pete Hamill 2002 American English
7199 Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars Ellen Macgregor 1951 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English