The Greatest Political 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
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
94 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
138 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 1839 French French
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
172 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
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
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
382 Parade's End Ford Madox Ford 1924 British English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
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
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
444 The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
470 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad 1907 British English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
492 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell, Peter Miles 1914 British English
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
527 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
530 The Red Room August Strindberg 1879 Swedish Swedish
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish 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
550 Max Havelaar Multatuli 1860 Dutch Dutch
553 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 American English
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
568 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954 French French
580 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
608 Canto General Pablo Neruda 1950 Chilean Spanish
614 Facundo Domingo Faustino Sarmiento 1845 Argentinian Spanish
616 The Rebel Albert Camus 1951 French French
635 Johnny Got His Gun Dalton Trumbo 1939 American English
637 The Quiet American Graham Greene 1955 British English
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
640 Black Boy Richard Wright 1945 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
664 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter 1942 Austrian English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
687 The Time of the Hero Mario Vargas Llosa 1963 Peruvian Spanish
701 The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa 2000 Peruvian Spanish
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
716 Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler 1925 German German
724 Michael Kohlhaas Heinrich von Kleist 1810 German German
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
757 The Adventures of Caleb Williams William Godwin 1794 British English
763 The Case of Comrade Tulayev Victor Serge 1949 French French
764 Mother Maxim Gorky 1906 Russian Russian
771 God's Bits of Wood Ousmane Sembène 1960 Senegalese French
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
776 War with the Newts Karel Čapek 1936 Czech Czech
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
799 Kaputt Curzio Malaparte 1944 Italian Italian
802 Romance of the Three Kingdoms Guanzhong Luo 1400 Chinese Chinese
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
819 Burmese Days George Orwell 1934 British English
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
838 The Book of Daniel E. L. Doctorow 1971 American English
848 Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl 1896 Austro-Hungarian German
850 The Revolt of the Masses José Ortega y Gasset 1930 Spanish Spanish
856 Conversation in the Cathedral Mario Vargas Llosa 1969 Peruvian Spanish
881 Utopia Thomas More 1516 British Latin
903 Wild Swans Jung Chang 1991 Chinese English
906 Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington 1901 American English
911 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber 1905 German German
913 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass 1845 American English
918 The Plot Against America Philip Roth 2004 American English
920 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Heinrich Böll 1974 German German
922 The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 American English
923 The World Of Yesterday Stefan Zweig 1942 Austrian German
934 The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen 1899 American English
938 Burger's Daughter Nadine Gordimer 1979 South African English
941 Collected Essays of George Orwell George Orwell 1968 British English
950 Richard III William Shakespeare 1592 British English
952 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
959 A Tomb for Boris Davidovich Danilo Kiš 1976 Serbian Serbo-croatian
961 The Manchurian Candidate Richard Condon 1959 American English
969 Storm of Steel Ernst Jünger 1920 German German
1003 A Dry White Season Andre Brink 1979 South African Afrikaans
1007 The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 American English
1027 Secondhand Time Svetlana Alexievich 2013 Belarusian Russian
1034 The Bostonians Henry James 1886 American English
1041 On War Carl Von Clausewitz 1832 German German
1059 The True History of the Conquest of New Spain Bernal Díaz del Castillo 1632 Spanish Spanish