Newsweek's Top 100 Books

Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List

Declaring the best book ever written is tricky business. Who's to say what the best is? We went one step further: we crunched the numbers from 10 top books lists (Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more) to come up with The Top 100 Books of All Time. It's a list of lists — a meta-list. Let the debate begin.

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Jun 29, 2009 | Updated: 12:01  p.m. ET Jun 29, 2009

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Recommended By: Modern Library Newsweek NYPL Oprah's Book Club Radcliffe St. John's Readling List The Guardian The Telegraph Time Wikipedia

Recommended By:

• Recommended By:
• Modern Library
• Newsweek
• NYPL
• Oprah's Book Club
• Radcliffe
• St. John's Readling List
• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• Time
• Wikipedia

Fiction/NonFiction: Fiction NonFiction

Fiction/NonFiction:

• Fiction/NonFiction:
• Fiction
• NonFiction

Date Range: Pre-19th century 19th century 20th century 1900-1920 1921-1940 1941-1960 1961-1980 Post 1980

Date Range:

• Date Range:
• Pre-19th century
• 19th century
• 20th century
• 1900-1920
• 1921-1940
• 1941-1960
• 1961-1980
• Post 1980

Rank	Title	Author	Year	Recommended By
1.	War and Peace (F) War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in...	Leo Tolstoy	1869	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List, Wikipedia
2.	1984 (F) George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.	George Orwell	1949	The Telegraph, The Guardian, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library
3.	Ulysses (F) Written over a seven-year period, from 1914 to 1921, this book has survived bowdlerization, legal action and controversy. The novel...	James Joyce	1922	The Telegraph, The Guardian, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library
4.	Lolita (F) The hilarious and tragic story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged Russian man who feels passion only for young the "nymphet" Dolores...	Vladimir Nabokov	1955	The Guardian, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
5.	The Sound and the Fury (F) First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told...	William Faulkner	1929	The Guardian, Oprah's Book Club, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
6.	Invisible Man (F) Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A...	Ralph Ellison	1952	The Guardian, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
7.	To the Lighthouse (F) A landmark of modern fiction, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse explores the subjective reality of everyday life in the Hebrides...	Virginia Woolf	1927	The Guardian, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
8.	The Illiad and The Odyssey (F) Gripping listeners and readers for more than 2,700 years, The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles....	Homer	8th century B.C.	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
9.	Pride and Prejudice (F) Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet. Her early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy...	Jane Austen	1813	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
10.	Divine Comedy (F) Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the...	Dante Alighieri	1321	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
11.	Canterbury Tales (F) With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval...	Geoffrey Chaucer	15th century	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
12.	Gulliver's Travels (F) The voyages of an Englishman carry him to such strange places as Lilliput, where people are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a land of...	Jonathan Swift	1726	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
13.	Middlemarch (F) It was George Eliot's ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in...	George Eliot	1874	The Telegraph, The Guardian, St. John's Reading List
14.	Things Fall Apart (F) Chinua Achebe's tragic novel of pre-colonial Igbo society was a major literary and cultural event when it was published in 1958....	Chinua Achebe	1958	Newsweek, The Guardian, Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe, Time
15.	The Catcher in the Rye (F) Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story...	J. D. Salinger	1951	Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
16.	Gone with the Wind (F) Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of...	Margaret Mitchell	1936	The Telegraph, Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe, Time
17.	One Hundred Years of Solitude (F) One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the...	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	1967	The Telegraph, The Guardian, Oprah's Book Club, Wikipedia, NYPL
18.	The Great Gatsby (F) A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess,Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned...	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925	NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
19.	Catch-22 (F) Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even...	Joseph Heller	1961	Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time
20.	Beloved (F) Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and... 21. The Grapes of Wrath (F) Forced from their home, the Joad family is lured to California to find work; instead they find disillusionment, exploitation, and... John Steinbeck 1939 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 22. Midnight's Children (F) Winner of the Booker of BookersSaleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's... Salman Rushdie 1981 Newsweek, The Guardian, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 23. Brave New World (F) Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically... Aldous Huxley 1932 The Telegraph, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library 24. Mrs. Dalloway (F) This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life. Direct and vivid in her... Virginia Woolf 1925 The Guardian, St. John's Reading List, Radcliffe, Time 25. Native Son (F) Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was... Richard Wright 1940 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 26. Democracy in America (NF) In the mid-1800s, a French political scientist named Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States to appraise the meaning and... Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 27. On the Origin of Species (NF) In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a... Charles Darwin 1859 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 28. The Histories (NF) A Greek historian, Herodotus (c.485-425 BC) left his native town of Halicarnassus, a Greek colony, to travel extensively. He... Herodotus 440 B.C. The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 29. The Social Contract (NF) The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of... Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 30. Das Kapital (NF) One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, "Capital" is an incisive critique of... Karl Marx 1867 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 31. The Prince (NF) A new edition of the highly exalted and infamous discourse containing observations and instructions on the significance of a rise... Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 32. Confessions (NF) When Saint Augustine wrote his Confessions he was facing, and responding to, a growing spread of asceticism in the Roman world. St. Augustine 4th century The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 33. Leviathan (NF) The Leviathan is the vast unity of the State. But how are unity, peace and security to be attained' Hobbes' answer is sovereignty,... Thomas Hobbes 1651 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 34. The History of the Peloponnesian War (NF) Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the struggle between Athens and Sparta... Thucydides 431 B.C. The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 35. The Lord of the Rings (F) One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind themIn ancient times the... J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 The Telegraph, Wikipedia, Radcliffe, Time 36. Winnie-the-Pooh (F) Edward Bear acquires a new name, Winnie-the-Pooh, and a new life with the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Woods. A. A. Milne 1926 The Telegraph, Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe 37. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (F) They open a door and enter a world. C. S. Lewis 1950 The Telegraph, Wikipedia, NYPL, Time 38. A Passage to India (F) When Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular... E. M. Forster 1924 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 39. On the Road (F) First published in 1957, this novel epitomized to the world the Beat philosophy. It chronicles a spontaneous and wandering life... Jack Kerouac 1957 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 40. To Kill a Mockingbird (F) Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South -- and the heroism of one man in the face... 41. The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. The beloved and timeless King James Version is made available in an affordable edition for Sunday schools, Bible clubs, church... NA St. John's Reading List, Wikipedia, NYPL 42. A Clockwork Orange (F) Anthony Burgess's modern classic of youthful violence and social redemption, reissued to include the controversial last chapter not... Anthony Burgess 1962 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 43. Light in August (F) Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the... William Faulkner 1932 Oprah's Book Club, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 44. The Souls of Black Folk (NF) In this founding work in the literature of black protest, first published in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois (1868'1963) eloquently affirms... W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 St. John's Reading List, NYPL, Modern Library 45. Wide Sargasso Sea (F) A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into... Jean Rhys 1966 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 46. Madame Bovary (F) Set amid the stifling atmosphere of nineteenth-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovary is at once an unsparing depiction of a... Gustave Flaubert 1857 The Telegraph, The Guardian 47. Paradise Lost (F) Paradise Lost is the great epic poem of the English language, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery,... John Milton 1667 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 48. Anna Karenina (F) Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky.... Leo Tolstoy 1877 The Guardian, Oprah's Book Club 49. Hamlet (F) One of the greatest plays of all time, the compelling tragedy of the tormented young prince of Denmark continues to capture the... William Shakespeare 1603 The Guardian, St. John's Reading List 50. King Lear (F) A king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the daughter who loves... William Shakespeare 1608 The Guardian, St. John's Reading List 51. Othello (F) One of the most powerful dramas ever written for the stage, Othello is a story of revenge, illusion, passion, mistrust, jealousy,... William Shakespeare 1622 The Guardian, St. John's Reading List 52. Sonnets (F) Shakespeare's sonnets, the greatest of Elizabethan sonnet sequences, were first published in an unauthorized version in 1609.... William Shakespeare 1609 The Telegraph, St. John's Reading List 53. Leaves of Grass (F) I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite... Walt Whitman 1855 Newsweek, The Guardian 54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (F) The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. Mark Twain 1885 Newsweek, The Guardian 55. Kim (F) A white youth in India, becomes friends with an old ascetic priest, the lama. The boy juggles Imperialist life with his spiritual... Rudyard Kipling 1901 Newsweek, NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library 56. Frankenstein (F) Victor Frankenstein is consumed by his desire to discover the secrets of life. After several years of research, Victor feverishly... Mary Shelley 1818 Newsweek, The Telegraph 57. Song of Solomon (F) Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest... Toni Morrison 1977 Oprah's Book Club, NYPL, Radcliffe 58. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (F) Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that... Ken Kesey 1962 NYPL, Radcliffe, Time 59. For Whom the Bell Tolls (F) In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years... Ernest Hemingway 1940 The Telegraph, NYPL, Radcliffe 60. Slaughterhouse-Five (F) Launched in November, Dell's Kurt Vonnegut reissue program continues with one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the... 61. Animal Farm (F) Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the henhouses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the... George Orwell 1945 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 62. Lord of the Flies (F) The story that never grows old... Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954,... William Golding 1954 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 63. In Cold Blood (NF) On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts... Truman Capote 1965 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library 64. The Golden Notebook (F) Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the... Doris Lessing 1962 The Guardian, NYPL, Time 65. Remembrance of Things Past (F) Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic,... Marcel Proust 1913 The Telegraph, The Guardian, NYPL 66. The Big Sleep (F) When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds... Raymond Chandler 1939 The Telegraph, NYPL, Time 67. As I Lay Dying (F) One of William Faulkner's finest novels, As I Lay Dying was originally published in 1930, and remains a captivating and... William Faulkner 1930 Oprah's Book Club, Radcliffe, Modern Library 68. The Sun Also Rises (F) The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example... Ernest Hemingway 1926 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 69. I, Claudius (F) Considered an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survived the intrigues and poisonings of the reigns of Augustus,... Robert Graves 1934 The Telegraph, Modern Library, Time 70. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (F) With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary ... Carson McCullers 1940 Oprah's Book Club, Modern Library, Time 71. Sons and Lovers (F) Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence, and the price of family bonds.... D. H. Lawrence 1913 The Guardian, Radcliffe, Modern Library 72. All the King's Men (F) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on american politics. It... Robert Penn Warren 1946 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 73. Go Tell It on the Mountain (F) James Baldwin's portrayal of black people in Harlem caught up in a dramatic struggle, and of a society confronting inevitable change. James Baldwin 1953 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 74. Charlotte's Web (F) Beloved by generations, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little are two of the most cherished stories of all time. Now, for the first... E. B. White 1952 Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe 75. Heart of Darkness (F) A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness (1902) exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together... Joseph Conrad 1902 St. John's Reading List, Radcliffe, Modern Library 76. Night (NF) Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager... Elie Wiesel 1958 Oprah's Book Club, Wikipedia, NYPL 77. Rabbit, Run (F) Harry Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school and that was the best time of his life. Now in his mid-20s, his work is... John Updike 1960 The Telegraph, Radcliffe, Time 78. The Age of Innocence (F) Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic novel of passion and desire. The beautiful Countess Ellen Olenska, fleeing her brutish... Edith Wharton 1920 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library 79. Portnoy's Complaint (F) Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are... Philip Roth 1969 NYPL, Modern Library, Time 80. An American Tragedy (F) The classic depiction of the harsh realities of American life, the dark side of the American Dream, and one man's doomed pursuit of... Theodore Dreiser 1925 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 81. The Day of the Locust (F) "Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,' " observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death... Nathanael West 1939 NYPL, Modern Library, Time 82. Tropic of Cancer (F) Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of... Henry Miller 1934 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 83. The Maltese Falcon (F) Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, stars in Hammett's detective fiction, a novel... Dashiell Hammett 1930 The Telegraph, Radcliffe, Modern Library 84. His Dark Materials (F) Published in 40 countries, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy ' The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber... Philip Pullman 1995 The Telegraph, Wikipedia 85. Death Comes for the Archbishop (F) Willa Cather's best known novel; a narrative that recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. Willa Cather 1927 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 86. The Interpretation of Dreams (NF) Freud's Revolutionary Theory: This ground-breaking work, which Freud considered his most valuable, forever changed the way we... Sigmund Freud 1900 The Telegraph, NYPL 87. The Education of Henry Adams (NF) A scion of the famous Adams family of American statesmen, historian Henry Adams was more drawn to scholarship than to politics. His... Henry Adams 1918 NYPL, Modern Library 88. Quotations from Chairman Mao (NF) Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era. He has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism with... Mao Zedong 1964 Wikipedia, NYPL 89. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (NF) After completing his monumental work, The Principles of Psychology, William James turned his attention to serious consideration of... William James 1902 NYPL, Modern Library 90. Brideshead Revisited (F) Evelyn Waugh's best-loved novel and the basis for the PBS television production, Brideshead Revisited, the epic story of a great... Evelyn Waugh 1945 Radcliffe, Modern Library, Time 91. Silent Spring (NF) First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of... Rachel Carson 1962 NYPL, Modern Library 92. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (NF) Keynes profoundly influenced the New Deal and created the basis for classic economic theory. 'I can think of no single book that... John Maynard Keynes 1936 NYPL, Modern Library 93. Lord Jim (F) A bold young English sailor has despised himself ever since an impulsive moment of cowardice. Jim moves East to Patusan, where... Joseph Conrad 1900 NYPL, Radcliffe, Modern Library 94. Goodbye to All That (NF) In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that... Robert Graves 1929 The Telegraph, Modern Library 95. The Affluent Society (NF) Galbraith's classic on the "economics of abundance" is, in the words of the New York Times, "a compelling challenge to conventional... John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 NYPL, Modern Library 96. The Wind in the Willows (F) This is the much-loved classic tales of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. When Mole goes boating with Ratty instead of doing his... Kenneth Grahame 1908 The Telegraph, Wikipedia, Radcliffe 97. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (NF) If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was... Alex Haley and Malcolm X 1965 NYPL, Modern Library 98. Eminent Victorians (NF) An unparalleled manifesto for the modern biographer, Strachey's razor-sharp essays about 4 prominent Victorians brought him... Lytton Strachey 1918 The Telegraph, Modern Library 99. The Color Purple (F) Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and... Alice Walker 1982 NYPL, Radcliffe 100. The Second World War (The Gathering Storm; Their Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; (NF) Churchill's six-volume history of World War II -- the definitive work, remarkable both for its sweep and for its sense of personal... Winston Churchill 1948 NYPL, Modern Library Kurt Vonnegut Harper Lee 1960 Wikipedia, NYPL, Radcliffe, Time	Toni Morrison	1987	The Telegraph, The Guardian, Radcliffe, Time

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