The Greatest History Books of All Time

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 467 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
42 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 British, Indian English
73 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
77 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
105 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
114 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
136 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
186 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
200 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
230 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
247 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
281 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
284 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
295 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
298 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 1951 British English
309 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
313 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
326 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
318 The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey 1951 British English
319 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
327 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
340 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
349 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
354 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
356 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
362 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
373 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
378 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
387 Life, a User's Manual Georges Perec 1978 French French
394 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
396 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
428 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
441 Parallel Lives Plutarch -100 Greek Greek
452 Facundo Domingo Faustino Sarmiento 1845 Argentinian Spanish
456 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
472 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
483 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
491 Poems of W. H. Auden W. H. Auden 1930 British English
496 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
510 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
514 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
522 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
530 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
538 The Book of the City of Ladies Christine De Pizan 1405 French French
558 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
561 Requiem Anna Akhmatova 1963 Russian Russian
591 Four Quartets T. S. Eliot 1943 British English
594 Anniversaries Uwe Johnson 1970 German German
614 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
613 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
625 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
637 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
664 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
672 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
694 V Thomas Pynchon 1963 American English
698 Rights of Man Thomas Paine 1791 British English
700 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 1971 American English
701 The Plot Against America Philip Roth 2004 American English
705 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
718 The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 British English
719 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
725 The Lusiad Luís Vaz Camões 1572 Portuguese Portuguese
740 The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922 British English
746 The Bridge on the Drina Ivo Andrić 1945 Bosnian Serbo-croatian
749 The True History of the Conquest of New Spain Bernal Díaz del Castillo 1632 Spanish Spanish
759 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
760 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
774 Economy and Society Max Weber 1922 German German
776 The Warmth Of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson 2010 American English
785 The Unknown Soldier Väinö Linna 1954 Finnish Finnish
787 Disraeli Robert Blake 1966 British English
790 Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 1955 American English
819 Orientalism Edward W. Said 1978 Palestinian English
825 Fateless or Fatelessness Imre Kertész 1975 Hungarian Hungarian
838 Kindred Octavia E. Butler 1979 American English
836 Kaputt Curzio Malaparte 1944 Italian Italian
858 The Captive Mind Czesław Miłosz 1953 Polish Polish
859 Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt 1963 German English
882 Lives of the Caesars Suetonius 121 Roman Latin
892 The World Of Yesterday Stefan Zweig 1942 Austrian German
909 The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 1986 American English
908 And the Band Played On Randy Shilts 1987 American English
913 The Life Written By Himself the Archpriest Avvakum 1666 Russian Russian
922 Venice Jan Morris 1960 British English
934 The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright 2006 American English
936 Danube Claudio Magris 1986 Italian Italian
943 Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 American English
946 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
968 The Years Annie Ernaux 2008 French French
969 Outlander Diana Gabaldon 1991 American English
972 The Road to Oxiana Robert Byron 1937 British English
976 The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa 2000 Peruvian Spanish
980 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
984 West With the Night Beryl Markham 1942 British English
989 Wild Swans Jung Chang 1991 Chinese English
994 Max Havelaar Multatuli 1860 Dutch Dutch
1004 Postwar Tony Judt 2005 British English
1020 Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome 1889 British English
1035 The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis José Saramago 1984 Portuguese Portuguese
1049 Long Walk To Freedom Nelson Mandela 1994 South African English
1051 The Mediterranean And The Mediterranean World In The Age Of Philip Ii Fernand Braudel 1949 French French
1055 Poems Of C. P. Cavafy C. P. Cavafy 1935 Greek Greek
1064 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo 1632 Italian Italian
1066 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot 2010 American English
1108 The Idea of History R. G. Collingwood 1946 British English
1113 The Unwomanly Face Of War Svetlana Alexievich 1985 Russian Russian
1119 Ways Of Seeing John Berger 1972 British English
1123 Time and Again Jack Finney 1970 American English
1124 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William L. Shirer 1960 American English
1125 Corregidora Gayl Jones 1975 American English
1135 The Mismeasure of Man Stephen Jay Gould 1981 American English
1141 Hawksmoor Peter Ackroyd 1985 British English
1157 The Forbidden Kingdom Jan Jacob Slauerhoff 1932 Dutch Dutch
1199 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs 1861 American English
1206 Down There J. K. Huysmans 1891 French French
1237 Fantasia Assia Djebar 1985 French French
1240 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 2003 American English
1264 Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed 1919 American English
1278 Family Sayings Natalia Ginzburg 1963 Italian Italian
1282 Secondhand Time Svetlana Alexievich 2013 Belarusian Russian