An Expert's 200-Book List

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

About this list

The Detroit Free Press, 196 Books

Digby Diehl, chief book editor of the Los Angeles Times, chose 200 of his favorite books for prospective readers. The New York Times described Diehl as a prolific literary critic and writer (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/obituaries/digby-diehl-collaborator-on-memoirs-of-the-famous-dies-at-76.html).

**"The Last Whole Earth Catalog" was not included here because it is a magazine.**

This list was originally published in 1973 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
1255 Jonathan Livingston Seagull Richard Bach 1970 American English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
15588 Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex David Reuben 1969 American English
14066 Games People Play Eric Berne 1964 American English
13359 The First Folio Of Shakespeare William Shakespeare 1623 English Early modern english
1009 Love Story Eric Segal 1970 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
415 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth 1971 British English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
15661 The Nick Adams Stories Ernest Hemingway 1972 American English
12178 The Centaur John Updike 1963 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
690 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
2798 Goodbye, Columbus Philip Roth 1959 American English
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
15561 Airport Arthur Hailey 1968 Canadian English
1398 The Exorcist William Peter Blatty 1971 American English
281 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
567 The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles 1969 British English
2923 The African Queen C. S. Forester 1935 British English
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
7147 Captains And The Kings Taylor Caldwell 1972 American English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
14553 Love And Death In The American Novel Leslie Fiedler 1960 American English
14629 The Gutenberg Galaxy Marshall McLuhan 1962 Canadian English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
240 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
6502 The End Of The Road John Barth 1958 American English
226 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
15636 The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Jimmy Breslin 1971 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
15588 The Peter Principle Laurence J. Peter 1969 Canadian English
14389 Let's Eat Right To Keep Fit Adelle Davis 1954 American English
13758 The Art Of Loving Erich Fromm 1956 Unknown German
13553 The Power Of Positive Thinking Norman Vincent Peale 1952 American English
14730 The Book Alan Watts 1966 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
15661 Supermoney George Goodman 1972 American English
10417 Eleanor and Franklin Joseph P. Lash 1971 American English
15680 Places Where I’ve Done Time William Saroyan American English
15588 Jennie Ralph G. Martin 1969 American English
10449 Luce and His Empire W. A. Swanberg 1972 American English
14457 Clarence Darrow For The Defense Irving Stone 1957 American English
9545 Stilwell and the American Experience in China Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 1971 American English
15636 The Game Of The Foxes Ladislas Farago 1971 American English
15588 The Making Of A Counter Culture Theodore Roszak 1969 American English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
15610 The Greening Of America Charles A. Reich 1970 American English
1345 The Naked Ape Desmond Morris 1967 British English
15610 The Primal Scream Arthur Janov 1970 American English
15680 Knots R.D. Laing Scottish English
15588 The Sensuous Woman Terry Garrity 1969 American English
15680 According To Hoyle Edmond Hoyle English English
14519 The Status Seekers Vance Packard 1959 American English
14180 Male And Female Margaret Mead 1949 American English
14730 The Territorial Imperative Robert Ardrey 1966 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
11879 The Sea Around Us Rachel Carson 1951 American English
6436 History Of The Conquest Of Mexico William H. Prescott 1843 American English
1212 A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis Sigmund Freud 1920 Austrian German
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
372 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
1954 They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Horace McCoy 1935 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
15680 The Making Of A Surgeon William A. Nolen, M.D. American English
2176 Hawaii James A. Michener 1959 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
15610 Zelda Nancy Milford 1970 American English
14831 Listen To The Warm Rod McKuen 1967 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
681 Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 1963 American English
15610 Going All The Way Dan Wakefield 1970 American English
1181 The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosinski 1965 Polish English
14697 The Looking Glass War John le Carré 1965 British English
233 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
1309 The Member Of The Wedding Carson McCullers 1946 American English
14410 Dylan Thomas In America John Malcolm Brinnin 1955 American English
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
15680 The Oxford Book Of English Verse John Malcolm Brinnin Unknown English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
15610 The Hawaiians Gavan Daws, Robert B. Goodman, Ed Sheehan 1970 American English
5680 The Illustrated Man Ray Bradbury 1951 American English
1681 The Teachings Of Don Juan Carlos Castaneda 1968 American English
15680 The Human Agenda Roderic Gorney Unknown English
15636 Honor Thy Father Gay Talese 1971 American English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
1092 Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata 1937 Japanese Japanese
207 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
14122 The Mask Of Apollo Mary Renault 1966 British English
685 Them Joyce Carol Oates 1969 American English
433 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 1970 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
552 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
645 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
13359 Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving 1819 American English
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
9055 The Late George Apley John P. Marquand 1937 American English
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
297 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
926 Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne 1864 French French
886 Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Grey 1912 American English