The New York Public Library's Books of the Century

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

About this list

New York Public Library, 175 Books

The following is a complete list of the titles included in the exhibition Books of the Century at The New York Public Library's Center for the Humanities, May 20, 1995-July 13, 1996, and in The New York Public Library's Books of the Century, published by Oxford University Press.

who voted?
there is a list of the librarians (named) in the actual book - about 32 of them

A celebration of the NYPL's centenary. The books were selected by public service and research librarians

This list was originally published in 1996 and was added to this site over 6 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
848 Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl 1896 Austro-Hungarian German
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
887 Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1915 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
828 Lost Horizon James Hilton 1933 British English
3870 Walden Two B. F. Skinner 1948 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
3638 Armenian Atrocities Arnold J. Toynbee 1915 British English
1927 Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed 1919 American English
3638 War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon 1919 British English
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
716 Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler 1925 German German
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
610 Requiem Anna Akhmatova 1963 Russian Russian
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
598 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
558 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
1104 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
1428 The Country of the Pointed Firs Sarah Orne Jewett 1896 American English
2203 The Story of My Life Helen Keller 1903 American English
581 The Innocence of Father Brown G. K. Chesterton 1911 British English
499 Platero Juan Ramón Jiménez 1914 Spanish Spanish
954 Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw 1913 British English
3638 Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home Emily Post 1922 American English
1185 The Inimitable Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1923 British English
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
2139 Shadows on the Rock Willa Cather 1931 American English
675 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
636 Goodnight Moon Margaret Wise Brown 1947 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
4855 Best of Simple Langston Hughes 1961 American English
576 Complete Poems Elizabeth Bishop 1969 American English
1014 The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter 1902 British English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
823 The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats 1962 American English
320 Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak 1963 American English
4785 Sarah, Plain and Tall Patricia MacLachlan 1985 American English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English