The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

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

About this list

The Guardian, 100 Books

After two years of careful reading, moving backwards through time, Robert McCrum has concluded his selection of the 100 greatest nonfiction books. Take a quick look at five centuries of great writing

This list was originally published in 2017 and was added to this site almost 8 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1844 The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert 2014 American English
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
2184 No Logo Naomi Klein 1999 Canadian English
4078 Birthday Letters Ted Hughes 1998 British English
2207 Dreams from My Father Barack Obama 1995 American English
1122 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
3618 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
1529 Orientalism Edward W. Said 1978 Palestinian English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
2308 The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins 1976 British English
3169 North Seamus Heaney 1975 Irish English
11873 Awakenings Oliver Sacks 1973 British English
1259 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Australian English
9987 Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom Nik Cohn 1969 British English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
7664 Against Interpretation Susan Sontag 1966 American English
2657 Ariel Sylvia Plath 1965 American English
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
1663 The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 British English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
10659 Grief Observed C. S. Lewis 1961 British English
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
2162 The Uses of Literacy Richard Hoggart 1957 British English
3155 Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 1955 American English
13362 The Nude Kenneth Clark 1956 British English
2575 The Hedgehog and the Fox Isaiah Berlin 1953 British English
101 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
13362 A Book of Mediterranean Food Elizabeth David 1950 British English
13362 The Great Tradition F. R. Leavis 1948 British English
11577 The Last Days of Hitler Hugh Trevor-Roper 1947 British English
795 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
640 Black Boy Richard Wright 1945 American English
2837 How to Cook a Wolf M. F. K. Fisher 1942 American English
11546 Enemies of Promise Cyril Connolly 1938 British English
10622 The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell 1937 British English
1163 The Road to Oxiana Robert Byron 1937 British English
1207 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936 American English
642 Testament Of Youth Vera Brittain 1933 British English
3175 My Early Life Winston Churchill 1930 British English
1621 Good-Bye to All That Robert Graves 1929 British English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
1928 Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed 1919 American English
11541 The Economic Consequences of the Peace John Maynard Keynes 1919 British English
2187 The American Language H. L. Mencken 1919 American English
965 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
4631 De Profundis Oscar Wilde 1905 British English
646 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
1871 Brief Lives John Aubrey 1898 British English
2613 Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant U. S. Grant 1885 American English
1415 Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain 1883 American English
4791 Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Robert Louis Stevenson 1879 British English
10633 Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense Edward Lear 1846 British English
13362 Culture and Anarchy Matthew Arnold 1869 British English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
5972 Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands Mary Seacole 1857 Jamaican English
1406 The Life of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth Gaskell 1857 British English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
13362 Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Peter Mark Roget 1852 British English
13362 London Labour and the London Poor Henry Mayhew 1851 British English
13362 Household Education Harriet Martineau 1848 British English
913 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass 1845 American English
3238 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 2000 American English
8655 Domestic Manners of the Americans Fanny Trollope 1832 British English
2671 Webster's Dictionary Noah Webster 1828 American English
3638 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Thomas de Quincey 1821 British English
13362 Tales from Shakespeare Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb 1807 British English
11532 Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa Mungo Park 1799 British English
689 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
1925 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano 1789 African English
1982 The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne Gilbert White 1789 British English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
13362 The Diary of Fanny Burney Fanny Burney 1768 British English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
3424 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
10308 A Dictionary of the English Language Samuel Johnson 1755 British English
2240 A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume 1739 British English
1915 A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works Jonathan Swift 1729 Irish English
13362 A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain Daniel Defoe 1724 British English
1327 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
2613 Book of Common Prayer Thomas Cranmer 1549 British English
2881 The Diary of Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 1825 British English
3638 Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial Sir Thomas Browne 1658 British English
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
3638 Areopagitica John Milton 1644 British English
5393 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions John Donne 1624 British English
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
2799 The Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton 1621 British English
13362 The History of the World Sir Walter Raleigh 1614 British English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek