The Greatest Books of All Time on History

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 '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
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
168 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
216 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843 British English
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
276 Life, a User's Manual Georges Perec 1978 French French
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
307 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
325 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 1951 British English
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
371 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
374 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
375 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
388 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
419 The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey 1951 British English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
430 The Bridge on the Drina Ivo Andrić 1945 Bosnian Serbo-croatian
431 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
437 Passing Nella Larsen 1929 American English
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
455 V Thomas Pynchon 1963 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
458 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
477 Fateless or Fatelessness Imre Kertész 1975 Hungarian Hungarian
479 Four Quartets T. S. Eliot 1943 British English
481 The Lusiad Luís Vaz Camões 1572 Portuguese Portuguese
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
485 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
490 Ethan Frome Edith Wharton 1911 American English
491 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
503 Pamela Samuel Richardson 1740 British English
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
512 The Golden Ass Apuleius 158 Roman Latin
513 Kindred Octavia E. Butler 1979 American English
515 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
519 Call It Sleep Henry Roth 1934 American English
524 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
525 Family Sayings Natalia Ginzburg 1963 Italian Italian
527 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
536 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 1929 American English
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
541 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
543 Discourse on Method Rene Descartes 1637 French French
550 Max Havelaar Multatuli 1860 Dutch Dutch
552 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895 American English