100 Most Influential Books of the Century

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

About this list

Boston Public Library, 100 Books

Boston Public Library's list of "The 100 Most Influential Books of the Century". A booklist for Adults.
Compiled by Dawn Cook, General Library, Adult Reader and Information Services, Boston Public Library, May 2000

This list was originally published in 2000 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
15897 Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation Alfred Adler 1907 Austrian German
15897 Philosophy of Modern Music Theodor Adorno 1949 German German
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
2803 Mastering the Art of French Cooking Julia Child, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle 1961 American English
14787 Patterns of Culture Ruth Benedict 1934 American English
15897 The Engineering of Consent Edward Bernays 1947 American English
4675 Our Bodies, Ourselves Unknown 1970 American English
1357 I and Thou Martin Buber 1923 Austrian German
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
1207 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
877 The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov 1904 Russian Russian
1004 2001 Arthur C. Clarke 1968 British English
14232 The Joy of Sex Alex Comfort 1972 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
15897 Looking at Dance Edwin Denby 1949 American English
15897 The School and the Child John Dewey 1902 American English
14787 Genetics and the Origin of Species Theodosius Dobzhansky 1937 American English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
10071 Prufrock and Other Observations T. S. Eliot 1917 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
582 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
1141 The Golden Bough James George Frazer 1890 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
15897 The Masters and the Slaves Gilberto Freyre 1933 Brazilian Portuguese
2750 Satyagraha in South Africa Gandhi 1928 Indian Gujarati
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
748 Howl and Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
11435 In the Shadow of Man Jane Goodall 1971 British English
15897 Creatures that Once Were Men Maxim Gorky 1905 Russian Russian
14983 Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus John Gray 2024 American English
17117 Art and Culture Clement Greenberg 1961 American English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
517 Being and Time Martin Heidegger 1927 German German
15897 Uncertainty Principle Werner Heisenberg 1927 German Unknown
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
17117 Reflections from Captivity Ho Chi Minn 1965 Vietnamese Vietnamese
1721 Pragmatism William James 1907 American English
17117 Encyclicals of Pope John XXIII Pope John XXIII 1961 Vatican City Latin
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
15897 Psychology of the Unconscious Carl Jung 1912 Swiss German
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
945 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Alfred C. Kinsey 1948 American English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
17117 The Raw and the Cooked Claude Lévi-Strauss 1964 French French
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
1862 On Aggression Konrad Lorenz 1963 Austrian German
172 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
17117 Motivation and Personality Abraham Maslow 1954 American English
905 Coming of Age in Samoa Margaret Mead 1928 American English
1068 The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1948 American English
17117 The Power Elite C. Wright Mills 1956 American English
15897 A Critique of the Theory of Evolution Thomas Hunt Morgan 1916 American English
2750 The Montessori Method Maria Montessori 1909 Italian Italian
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
15897 Conditioned Reflexes Ivan Pavlov 1927 Russian Russian
15897 Judgement and Reasoning in the Child Jean Piaget 1924 Swiss French
1386 Six Characters in Search of an Author Luigi Pirandello 1921 Italian Italian
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
1927 Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed 1919 American English
15897 Function of the Orgasm Wilhelm Reich 1927 Austrian German
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
5348 How the Other Half Lives Jacob A. Riis 1890 Danish English
17117 Intelligent Life in the Universe Carl Sagan 1966 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
15897 Happiness in Marriage Margaret Sanger 1926 American English
638 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
14983 Beyond Freedom and Dignity B. F. Skinner 1971 American English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
1540 Decline of the West Oswald Spengler 1918 German German
795 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
1896 Smoking and Health Surgeon General 1964 American English
4168 The History of the Standard Oil Company Ida Tarbell 1904 American English
15897 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior John Von Neumann 1944 American English
2632 AA Big Book Bill W 1939 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
15897 Behaviorism John Watson 1924 American English
1283 Cybernetics Norbert Wiener 1948 American English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
14201 Syntactic Structures Noam Chomsky 1957 American English
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
716 Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler 1925 German German