The 50 Best Books of the Century

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

About this list

Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 50 Books

ISI defined "best" as "volumes of extraordinary reflection and creativity in a traditional form, which heartens us with the knowledge that fine writing and clear-mindedness are perennially possible."

All the books are non-fiction.

The first 5 are ranked, the rest are alphabetical.

This list was originally published in 2014 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
1082 The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis 1943 British English
1150 Witness Whittaker Chambers 1952 American English
1045 Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1932 British English
645 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
10241 Teacher in America Jacques Barzun 1945 French English
3547 Samuel Johnson Walter Jackson Bate 1977 American English
10241 Understanding Poetry Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks 1938 American English
10241 The Whig Interpretation of History Herbert Butterfield 1931 British English
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
10241 A History of Philosophy Frederick Charles Copleston 1946 British English
10241 Religion and the Rise of Western Culture Christopher Dawson 1950 British English
10794 The Stripping of the Altars Eamon Duffy 1992 British English
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
1434 R. E. Lee Douglas Southall Freeman 1934 American English
1170 Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman 1962 American English
2472 Roll, Jordan, Roll Eugene Genovese 1974 American English
1412 The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich von Hayek 1960 Austrian English
10241 Protestant, Catholic, Jew Will Herberg 1955 American English
1007 The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 American English
2435 Modern Times Paul Johnson 1983 British English
2391 The Face of Battle John Keegan 1976 British English
1248 The Conservative Mind Russell Kirk 1953 American English
10241 The Great Chain of Being Arthur Lovejoy 1936 American English
5999 After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre 1981 British English
2961 Jefferson and His Time Dumas Malone 1948 American English
8720 Prejudices H. L. Mencken 1919 American English
1068 The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1948 American English
1188 The Quest for Community Robert Nisbet 1953 American English
2012 The Habit of Being Flannery O'Connor 1979 American English
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
3251 Lost in the Cosmos Walker Percy 1983 American English
1750 The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 1986 American English
10399 The Triumph of the Therapeutic Philip Rieff 1966 American English
10241 Persons and Places George Santayana 1944 American English
664 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter 1942 Austrian English
2421 Natural Right and History Leo Strauss 1953 American English
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
1363 The Liberal Imagination Lionel Trilling 1950 American English
1929 The Frontier in American History Frederick J. Turner 1920 American English
10241 The New Science of Politics Eric Voegelin 1952 Austrian English
906 Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington 1901 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
2576 Patriotic Gore Edmund Wilson 1962 American English
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
3617 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
1572 Nature and Destiny of Man Reinhold Niebuhr 1941 American English