The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

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

About this list

Martin Seymour-Smith, 100 Books

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual history written by Martin Seymour-Smith (1928–1998), a British poet, critic, and biographer.

This list was originally published in 1998 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
14984 Beyond Freedom and Dignity B. F. Skinner 1971 American English
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
14201 Syntactic Structures Noam Chomsky 1957 American English
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
16620 Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff 1950 Armenian Russian
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1283 Cybernetics Norbert Wiener 1948 American English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
638 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
5522 The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper 1934 Austrian German
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
1357 I and Thou Martin Buber 1923 Austrian German
2751 Psychological Types Carl Jung 1921 Swiss German
7789 The Mind and Society Vilfredo Pareto 1916 Italian Italian
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
1721 Pragmatism William James 1907 American English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
15903 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism James Clerk Maxwell 1873 Scottish English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
14787 Experiments on Plant Hybridization Gregor Mendel 1866 Austrian German
15903 First Principles Herbert Spencer 1862 British English
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
3245 Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau 1849 American English
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
4122 Either Or Soren Kierkegaard 1843 Danish Danish
1041 On War Carl Von Clausewitz 1832 German German
11545 The Course in Positive Philosophy Auguste Comte 1830 French French
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
551 Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan 1678 British English
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
1102 I Ching China -1000 Chinese Chinese
1083 Upanishads Unknown -799 Indian Sanskrit
585 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu -300 Chinese Classical chinese
15903 Avesta Zoroastrian scripture -1200 Iranian Avestan
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
13349 Hippocratic Corpus Hippocrates -429 Greek Greek
1449 Corpus Aristotelicum Aristotle -322 Greek Greek
624 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
1843 Euclid's Elements Euclid -300 Greek Ancient greek
15903 Dhammapada Unknown -299 Multiple Pali
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
14722 Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws Philo of Alexandria 50 Jewish Greek
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
1180 Annals Cornelius Tacitus 109 Roman Latin
15903 Gospel of Truth Valentinus 150 Unknown Coptic
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
14753 Outlines of Pyrrhonism Sextus Empiricus -180 Greek Greek
14110 Enneads Plotinus -270 Greek Greek
505 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
15903 The Guide for the Perplexed Moses Maimonides 1190 Jewish Arabic
15903 Kabbalah Unknown 1300 Multiple Hebrew
653 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
654 The Praise of Folly Erasmus 1511 Dutch Latin
1601 Three Treatises Martin Luther 1520 German German
3496 Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin 1536 French Latin
2030 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Nicolaus Copernicus 1543 Polish Latin
14787 The Harmony of the Worlds Johannes Kepler 1619 German Latin
8518 Novum Organum Francis Bacon 1620 British Latin
863 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo 1632 Italian Italian
543 Discourse on Method Rene Descartes 1637 French French
15903 Works of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1700 German Latin
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
374 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
1018 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton 1687 British Latin
1327 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
10629 A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley 1710 Irish English
5862 The New Science Giambattista Vico 1725 Italian Italian
2239 A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume 1739 British English
1713 Encyclopédie Denis Diderot 1751 French French
10305 A Dictionary of the English Language Samuel Johnson 1755 British English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
3424 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
458 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
15903 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice William Godwin 1793 British English
1477 An Essay on the Principle of Population Thomas Robert Malthus 1798 British English
1515 The World as Will and Idea Arthur Schopenhauer 1818 German German
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
1295 Phenomenology of Mind G. W. F. Hegel 1807 German German
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek