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 488 '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
59 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
68 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
72 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
74 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
118 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
120 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
154 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
163 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
170 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
173 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
175 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
184 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
200 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
203 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
212 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
215 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
216 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
229 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
234 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
245 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
248 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
260 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
276 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
287 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
289 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
290 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
294 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
296 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
311 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
313 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
316 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
319 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
325 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
328 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 1968 American English
329 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
331 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
338 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
353 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
355 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
358 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
362 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
369 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
371 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
372 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
384 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
385 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
401 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
405 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
406 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
409 Parallel Lives Plutarch -100 Greek Greek
425 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 Iranian French
430 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
434 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
435 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
437 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
445 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
448 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
449 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
458 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
459 Facundo Domingo Faustino Sarmiento 1845 Argentinian Spanish
460 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
461 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
464 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
475 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
486 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
487 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
490 Testament Of Youth Vera Brittain 1933 British English
493 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
500 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
503 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
505 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
511 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
521 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
529 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
532 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
533 The Rebel Albert Camus 1951 French French
534 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
535 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
536 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
541 The Book of the City of Ladies Christine De Pizan 1405 French French
562 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
564 Promise at Dawn Romain Gary 1960 French French
574 Henry James Leon Edel 1953 American English
575 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
583 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
589 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
590 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
597 The Power Broker Robert Caro 1974 American English
614 Good-Bye to All That Robert Graves 1929 British English
616 Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
622 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
623 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
639 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
640 Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes 1641 French Latin
645 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
648 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
652 The Golden Bough James George Frazer 1890 British English
663 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard 1974 American English
671 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
683 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Australian English
684 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
691 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
693 Letters from a Stoic Seneca 64 Roman Latin
696 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
703 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
705 The African Child Camara Laye 1953 Guinean French
711 The Warmth Of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson 2010 American English
715 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
716 Rights of Man Thomas Paine 1791 British English
720 The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 British English
726 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
736 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
737 Annals Cornelius Tacitus 109 Roman Latin
748 The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1948 American English
755 The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922 British English
763 The True History of the Conquest of New Spain Bernal Díaz del Castillo 1632 Spanish Spanish
765 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
770 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
771 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
773 The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 American English