100 Best Political Books

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

About this list

Guardian, 103 Books

"We thought now was an excellent moment to publish a supplement which highlights outstanding books that have shaped political thought, deepened our understanding of how politics ticks and offered signposts to future directions for our world. It felt timely because this era is characterised by exceptional flux. Today’s orthodoxy can turn into tomorrow’s redundancy and today’s unthinkable can become tomorrow’s inevitable".

The selectors consisted of authors, historians, political commentators and the Guardian staff.

This list was originally published in 2017 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
952 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
527 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
1416 Rights of Man Thomas Paine 1791 British English
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
3424 Common Sense Thomas Paine 1776 British English
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
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
1227 What Is To Be Done? Vladimir Il’ich Lenin 1902 Russian Russian
15915 The Beveridge Report William Beveridge 1942 British English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
17160 Margaret Thatcher Charles Moore 2013 British English
17160 Harold Wilson Ben Pimlott 1992 British English
17160 Churchill Roy Jenkins 2001 British English
17160 Roy Jenkins John Campbell 1983 British English
17160 Aneurin Bevan Michael Foot 1973 British English
5359 Team of Rivals Doris Kearns Goodwin 2005 American English
13560 The Path to Power Robert Caro 1982 American English
14232 Means Of Ascent Robert Caro 1990 American English
2340 Master of the Senate Robert Caro 2002 American English
2524 The Passage Of Power Robert Caro 2012 American English
1641 Disraeli Robert Blake 1966 British English
14985 Citizen Clem John Bew 2016 British English
17160 Jeremy Thorpe Michael Bloch 2006 British English
17160 The Benn Diaries, 1940 90 Tony Benn 1987 British English
5743 Diaries Alan Clark 1993 British English
17160 A View From The Foothills Chris Mullin 2009 British English
11335 The Blair Years Alastair Campbell 2007 British English
17160 House Music Oona King 2008 Unknown Korean
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
492 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell, Peter Miles 1914 British English
2327 What a Carve Up! Jonathan Coe 1994 British English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
703 The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope 1875 British English
950 Richard III William Shakespeare 1592 British English
1084 Mother Courage and Her Children Bertolt Brecht 1941 German German
16549 Soldiers Rolf Hochhuth 1968 German German
3949 Top Girls Caryl Churchill 1982 British English
17160 Mountain Language Harold Pinter 1988 British English
4849 The Strange Death of Liberal England George Dangerfield 1935 British English
15915 In Defence Of Politics Bernard Crick 1962 British English
16647 The State In Capitalist Society Ralph Miliband 1969 British English
17160 The Politics Of Thatcherism Stuart Hall, Martin Jacques 1983 British English
17160 Whitehall Peter Hennessy 1989 British English
17160 The State We're In Will Hutton 1995 British English
17160 Political Recruitment Pippa Norris 1997 British English
17160 Unjust Rewards Polly Toynbee, David Walker 2008 British English
17160 The End Of The Party Andrew Rawnsley 2010 British English
17160 After The Coalition Kwasi Kwarteng 2011 British English
1529 Orientalism Edward W. Said 1978 Palestinian English
17160 Islam And The West Bernard Lewis 1993 British English
17160 From The Ruins Of Empire Pankaj Mishra 2012 Indian English
17160 The Endtimes Of Human Rights Stephen Hopgood 2013 British English
3090 Factory Girls Leslie T. Chang 2008 American English
1884 The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright 2006 American English
9159 Decolonising The Mind Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1986 Kenyan English
14985 Fiasco Thomas E. Ricks 2005 American English
14985 The Great Partition Yasmin Khan 2007 British English
9184 A Theology Of Liberation Gustavo Gutierrez 1971 Peruvian Spanish
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
15915 Discourse On Colonialism Aimé Césaire 1950 French French
17160 The Black Atlantic Paul Gilroy 1993 British English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
1701 The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander 2010 American English
17160 The History Of White People Nell Irvin Painter 2010 American English
10023 Race Matters Cornel West 1993 American English
3918 Staying Power Peter Fryer 1984 British English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
2276 Long Walk To Freedom Nelson Mandela 1994 South African English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
1787 Sexual Politics Kate Millett 1970 American English
1259 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Australian English
2221 Against Our Will Susan Brownmiller 1975 American English
17160 Beyond The Fragments Lynne Segal, Sheila Rowbotham, Hilary Wainwright 1980 British English
4202 Ain't I A Woman? bell hooks 1981 American English
17160 Intercourse Andrea Dworkin 1987 American English
1655 The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf 1990 American English
5169 Bad Feminist Roxane Gay 2014 American English
17160 All Out War Tim Shipman 2016 British English
17160 Revolt On The Right Robert Ford, Matthew Goodwin 2014 British English
17160 Twilight Of The Elites Christophe Guilluy, Malcolm Debevoise 2019 French French
6605 Hillbilly Elegy J. D. Vance 2016 American English
17160 The Road To Somewhere David Goodhart 2017 British English
17160 Corbyn Richard Seymour 2016 British English
1209 Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 American English
14985 Adults in the Room Yanis Varoufakis 2017 Greek English
2627 Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty 2013 French French
17160 How Will Capitalism End? Wolfgang Streeck 2016 German English