The Greatest Nonfiction 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 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
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
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
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 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
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
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
369 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
371 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
374 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
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
395 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
403 The Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
416 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
431 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
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
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
458 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
485 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
505 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
514 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
515 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
517 Being and Time Martin Heidegger 1927 German German
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 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
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
540 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 1968 American English
541 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
543 Discourse on Method Rene Descartes 1637 French French
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
558 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
559 Christ Stopped at Eboli Carlo Levi 1945 Italian Italian
580 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
582 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
585 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu -300 Chinese Classical chinese
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
597 The Years Annie Ernaux 2008 French French
598 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
610 Requiem Anna Akhmatova 1963 Russian Russian
614 Facundo Domingo Faustino Sarmiento 1845 Argentinian Spanish
616 The Rebel Albert Camus 1951 French French
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
624 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
634 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
638 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
640 Black Boy Richard Wright 1945 American English
642 Testament Of Youth Vera Brittain 1933 British English
645 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
646 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
653 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
654 The Praise of Folly Erasmus 1511 Dutch Latin
659 Mythologies Roland Barthes 1957 French French
664 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter 1942 Austrian English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
675 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
690 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
714 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
716 Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler 1925 German German
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
756 The Labyrinth of Solitude Octavio Paz 1950 Mexican Spanish
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
780 Maxims François duc de La Rochefoucauld 1665 French French
783 Anabasis Xenophon -390 Greek Ancient greek
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
806 The Story of Art Ernest H. Gombrich 1950 British English
807 The Book of the City of Ladies Christine De Pizan 1405 French French
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
844 Civilization and Its Discontents Sigmund Freud 1930 Austrian German
848 Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl 1896 Austro-Hungarian German
850 The Revolt of the Masses José Ortega y Gasset 1930 Spanish Spanish
851 Essays, First And Second Series Ralph Waldo Emerson 1841 American English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
863 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo 1632 Italian Italian
865 The Pillow Book Sei Shōnagon 1002 Japanese Japanese
868 Henry James Leon Edel 1953 American English
870 Economy and Society Max Weber 1922 German German
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English