The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
Image by John Overholt (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Best Books: Top 100 Nonfiction list is a concise selection of books that provides the reader with an understanding of the social and natural world.
It teaches world civilisation - East and West - from the beginning to the present, including history, economics, sociology, literature, science, philosophy, and religion.
All the texts were chosen for their importance and their accessibility, finishing them gives at least a glimmering of what our race is all about.
This list is best read in conjunction with the 100 best short nonfiction books list.
1. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991
By Eric Hobsbawm | Used Price: 80% Off
Dividing the century into the Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1950, the Golden Age, 1950-1973, and the Landslide, 1973-1991, Hobsbawm marshals a vast array of data into a volume of unparalleled inclusiveness, vibrancy, and insight, a work that ranks with his classics The Age of Empire and The Age of ... More »
2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
By Thomas Kuhn | Used Price: 60% Off
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once ... More »
3. The Guns of August
By Barbara Tuchman | Used Price: 70% Off
The Pulitzer Prize winning, The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, is focussed on the first month of World War I. Tuchman explains in detail the events that led to the war. The book was featured in the Modern Library's Top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century. More »
4. Eichmann in Jerusalem
By Hannah Arendt | Used Price: 80% Off
The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the Holocaust Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that ... More »
5. A History of Western Philosophy
By Bertrand Russell | Used Price: 70% Off
Hailed as “lucid and magisterialâ€Â by The Observer, this book is universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject of Western philosophy.Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique ... More »
6. The Story of Art
By E. H. Gombrich | Used Price: 50% Off
The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, ... More »
7. The Lonely Crowd
By David Riesman | Used Price: 80% Off
The Lonely Crowd is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the 'new middle class' in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that ... More »
8. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
By Richard Feynman | Used Price: 60% Off
Celebrated for his brilliantly quirky insights into the physical world, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the general public. Here Feynman provides a classic and definitive introduction to QED (namely, quantum electrodynamics), that part of quantum field theory describing the ... More »
9. Discourses on Livy
By Niccolo Machiavelli | Used Price: 70% Off
Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli ... More »
10. Guns, Germs, and Steel
By Jared Diamond | Used Price: 80% Off
The Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel looks over the entirety of human history and explains why geography and available resources are determining factors in the success of any given civilisation. As such Diamond shows that race is not a determining factor in the success or failure ... More »
11. American Power and the New Mandarins
By Noam Chomsky | Under $1.00
Back in print, the seminal work by "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). American Power and the New Mandarins is Noam Chomsky's first political book, widely considered to be among the most cogent and powerful statements against the American war in Vietnam. Long ... More »
12. Silent Spring
By Rachel Carson | Used Price: 80% Off
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our ... More »
13. The Radicalism of the American Revolution
By Gordon S. Wood | Used Price: 80% Off
Awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History, The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood argues that the American Revolution by rights deserves a place among the French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions as one of the great events in history. Wood synthesizes all the pertinent issues ... More »
14. Eros and Civilization
By Herbert Marcuse | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
 In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological ... More »
15. The Black Jacobins
By C.L.R. James | Used Price: 70% Off
The Black Jacobins is the authoritative history of the Haitian Revolution of 1794, the first revolution in the Third World."The prospect of a Black Republic is equally disturbing to the Spanish, the English and the Americans. Jefferson has promised that on the instant the French army has arrived ... More »
16. Microbe Hunters
By Paul de Kruif | Used Price: 80% Off
This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Â Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented ... More »
17. The Wretched of the Earth
By Frantz Fanon; Jean-Paul Sartre | 50% Off
A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon’s masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said’s Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it ... More »
18. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
By Sarah Pomeroy | Used Price: 70% Off
"The first general treatment of women in the ancient world to reflect the critical insights of modern feminism. Though much debated, its position as the basic textbook on women's history in Greece and Rome has hardly been challenged."--Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement. Illustrations. More »
19. The Shock of the New
By Robert Hughes | Used Price: 70% Off
A beautifully illustrated hundred-year history of modern art, from cubism to pop and avant-guard. More than 250 color photos. More »
20. Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
By Paul Goodman | Used Price: 70% Off
Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd was a runaway best seller when it was first published in 1960, and it became one of the defining texts of the New Left. Goodman was a writer and thinker who broke every mold and did it brilliantly—he was a novelist, poet, and ... More »
21. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
By Mary Beard
Covering nearly 1,000 years of Roman history, Mary Beard brings the subject to life. SPQR is a broad modern history covering subjects neglected for centuries and with a detailed understanding of the democratic struggles of Rome. More »
22. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By Michelle Alexander | Used Price: 60% Off
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges ... More »
23. The Interpretation of Dreams
By Sigmund Freud | Used Price: 50% Off
What are the most common dreams and why do we have them? What does a dream about death mean? What do dreams of swimming, failing, or flying symbolize?First published by Sigmund Freud in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams considers why we dream and what it means in the ... More »
24. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
By John J. Mearsheimer | Used Price: 80% Off
"A superb book....Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—The National Interest, Barry R. Posen A decade after the cold war ended, policy makers and academics foresaw a new era of peace and prosperity, an era in which democracy and open ... More »
25. Stonewall
By Martin Duberman | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
"As scholars we should read Stonewall, and as teachers we should assign it. All of us will be challenged to build on it."—Michael Sherry, Northwestern Univ. "Both a fascinating account of the birth of gay liberation and a replay of the turbulent, society-changing 60s."—San Francisco Chronicle. More »
26. The Affluent Society
By John Kenneth Galbraith | 80% Off
John Kenneth Galbraith's classic investigation of private wealth and public poverty in postwar America  With customary clarity, eloquence, and humor, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith gets at the heart of what economic security means in The Affluent Society. Warning against individual and societal complacence about economic inequity, ... More »
27. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
By Richard G. Wilkinson; Kate Pickett | 60% Off
It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree ... More »
28. The Power Elite
By C. Wright Mills | Used Price: 70% Off
First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The ... More »
29. What Evolution Is
By Ernst Mayr | Under $1.00
At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern ... More »
30. Studies in Iconology
By Erwin Panofsky | Used Price: 80% Off
In Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies. More »
31. China Along the Yellow River: Reflections on Rural Society
By Cao Jinqing
This text had a major impact in its original Chinese version. Reviewed in the Far East Economic Review as 'one of the richest portraits of the Chinese countryside published in the reform era', it charts a long journey through the hinterland region of the Yellow River undertaken by ... More »
32. The Greeks and the Irrational
By E R Dodds
In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E. R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from ... More »
33. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
By Rebecca West | Used Price: 70% Off
"Rebecca West's magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time." —The New Yorker Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of ... More »
34. Republicanism: An Introduction
Republicanism is a centuries-old political tradition, yet its precise meaning has long been contested. The term has been used to refer to government in the public interest, to regimes administered by a collective body or an elected president, and even just to systems embodying the values of liberty ... More »
35. Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition
By Alastair McIntosh | Used Price: 80% Off
Climate change is the greatest challenge that the world has ever faced. In this groundbreaking new book, Alastair McIntosh summarises the science of what is happening to the planet - both globally and using Scotland as a local case study. He moves on, controversially, to suggest that politics ... More »
36. Against Method
Paul Feyerabend’s globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy ... More »
37. Mythologies
“No denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis,â€Â Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers ... More »
38. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
By Barrington Moore | Used Price: 70% Off
A landmark in comparative history and a challenge to scholars of all lands who are trying to learn how we arrived at where we are now. -New York Times Book Review More »
39. Coming of Age in the Milky Way
By Timothy Ferris | Used Price: 70% Off
From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those ... More »
40. Godel, Escher, Bach
By Douglas R. Hofstadter | 60% Off
Douglas Hofstadter’s book is concerned directly with the nature of “mapsâ€Â or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if ... More »
41. Democracy And Education
By John Dewey | Used Price: 50% Off
John Dewey's best-known and still-popular classic, Democracy and Education, is presented here as a new edition in Volume 9 of the Middle Works. Sidney Hook, who wrote the introduction to this volume, describes Democracy and Education: It illuminates directly or indirectly all the basic issues that are central ... More »
42. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
By Bruno Bettelheim | Used Price: 60% Off
Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development.Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of ... More »
43. The Second Sex
By Simone de Beauvoir | Used Price: 50% Off
Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,â€Â and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness.  This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in ... More »
44. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
By Malcolm X; Alex Haley | 70% Off
From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct ... More »
45. War Against Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the Global Spread of Vaccination
Michael Bennett provides the first history of the global spread of vaccination during the Napoleonic Wars, offering a new assessment of the cowpox discovery and Edward Jenner's achievement in making cowpox inoculation a viable and universally available practice. He explores the networks that took the vaccine around the ... More »
46. Hidden From History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It
By Sheila Rowbotham | Under $1.00
Hidden From History is a study of women in Britain from the 1600s to the 1930s. It demonstrates how class, gender, work, family life, personal life and social pressures have interacted in women's endeavours for equality. More »
47. The Varieties of Religious Experience
By William James | Used Price: 80% Off
'Is life worth living? Yes, a thousand times yes when the world still holds such spirits as Professor James.' - Gertrude Stein A classic of American thought, William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience is an extraordinary study of human spirituality in all its forms and one ... More »
48. The Great War and Modern Memory
By Paul Fussell | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
The Great War and Modern Memory is a book that describes the literary works by English participants in World War I to their experiences in trench warfare. Fussell describes how the futility and insanity of war defined the thinking of a generation and led England away from Romantacism. The book won the ... More »
49. Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present
A "brilliant and sobering" (Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal) look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaks As seen on "60 Minutes" The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks ... More »
50. Orientalism
By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 70% Off
Orientalism examines how the West has historically perceived the East and how Western imperialism has shaped these perceptions. Published in 1978, Said's work is a landmark in post-colonial studies. More »
51. Democracy
By Charles Tilly | Used Price: 80% Off
Charles Tilly's Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centers ... More »
52. Illuminations
By Walter Benjamin; Hannah Arendt | 70% Off
Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included ... More »
53. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
By Rosalind E. Krauss | Used Price: 60% Off
Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major ... More »
54. The Basic Works of Aristotle
By Aristotle; Richard McKeon | 60% Off
Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle–constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years–has long ... More »
55. Man, the State, and War
By Kenneth N. Waltz | Used Price: 60% Off
What are the causes of war? To answer this question, Professor Waltz examines the ideas of major thinkers throughout the history of Western civilization. He explores works both by classic political philosophers, such as St. Augustine, Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, and by modern psychologists and anthropologists to discover ... More »
56. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
By Peter Kropotkin | Used Price: 50% Off
In this cornerstone of modern liberal social theory, Peter Kropotkin states that the most effective human and animal communities are essentially cooperative, rather than competitive. Kropotkin based this classic on his observations of natural phenomena and history, forming a work of stunning and well-reasoned scholarship. Essential to the ... More »
57. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
By Fernand Braudel | Used Price: 60% Off
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II is the most influencial work of the great 20th century historian Fernand Braudel, a leader of the Annales School. This work perfectly demonstrates Braudel’s l'histoire totale, writing history from as many perspectives as possible, including ... More »
58. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
By John Maynard Keynes | Used Price: 90% Off
In 1936 Keynes published the most provocative book written by any economist of his generation. Arguments about the book continued until his death in 1946 and still continue today. This new edition, published 70 years after the original, features a new introduction by Paul Krugman which discusses the ... More »
59. Democracy in America
By Alexis de Tocqueville | 80% Off
 Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that polit?ical commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the soci?ety of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the ... More »
60. Knowledge and Wonder: Natural World as Man Knows it
By Victor Weisskopf | Under $1.00
More than 100,000 copies of the first edition of Knowledge and Wonder have been sold, both in the U.S. and abroad. Written expressly for ... More »
61. Tristes Tropiques
By Claude Levi-Strauss | Used Price: 60% Off
A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology. This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found ... More »
62. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
By Chris Hadfield | Used Price: 50% Off
Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging ... More »
63. The City in History
By Lewis Mumford | Used Price: 80% Off
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, by Lewis Mumford, charts the rise of various types of cities throughout human history. The text won the National Book Award in 1961 and was included on the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction books list. More »
64. Imagined Communities
By Benedict Anderson | Used Price: 60% Off
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is the most read book on nationalism. It's a historical, political and sociological analysis of nations which are really imagined communities or socially constructed communities. More »
65. Aztecs: An Interpretation
Inga Clendinnen explores the everyday lives of Aztec warriors, priests and women in their most important city, Tenochtitlan. She delivers a picture of a sophisticated, rich culture, one with savage ritual sacrifice. More »
66. Count Down
By Shanna H. Swan; Stacey Colino
In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing-and endangering-human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale, from renowned epidemiologist Shanna Swan. In 2017, author Shanna Swan ... More »
67. King Solomon's Ring
By Konrad Lorenz | Used Price: 80% Off
Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. ... More »
68. The Psychology of Intelligence
By Jean Piaget
Think of developmental psychology, and the name of Jean Piaget immediately springs to mind. His theory of learning lies at the very heart of the modern understanding of the human learning process, and he is celebrated as the founding father of child psychology. A prolific writer, is ... More »
69. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
By Matthew Desmond | Used Price: 60% Off
WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted ... More »
70. Notes of a Native Son
By James Baldwin | Used Price: 50% Off
A new edition of the book many have called James Baldwin’s most influential workWritten during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn ... More »
71. The Origin of Species
By Charles Darwin | Used Price: 70% Off
In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an ... More »
72. The Story of Egypt
The story of the world's greatest civilization spans 4,000 years of history that have shaped the world. It is full of spectacular cities and epic stories-an evolving society rich in inventors, heroes, heroines, villains, artisans, and pioneers. Professor Joann Fletcher pulls together the complete story of Egypt, charting ... More »
73. The Sources of Social Power
By Michael Mann
While Marx considered economics to be the driving force in the evolution of societies, and Weber believed religion played a role, with his protestant ethic theory, In the Sources of Social Power, Mann identifies 4 different forces - economic, military, ideological and political - and demonstrates their role ... More »
74. Science and the Modern World
By Alfred North Whitehead | 70% Off
Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science. Presaging by more than half a century most of today's cutting-edge thought on the cultural ramifications of science and technology, Whitehead demands that readers understand and celebrate the contemporary, ... More »
75. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
By Marc Reisner | Used Price: 90% Off
"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --NewsweekThe story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological ... More »
76. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
Here the famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe offers Israeli archival evidence that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949. More »
77. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
By Tony Judt | Used Price: 70% Off
Tony Judt's Postwar is an inimitable history of Europe since 1045. Postwar ties together the histories of over 40 European nations, both Eastern and Western, in a grand narrative that also serves as a history of the development of the European Union. More »
78. The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II
By Svetlana Alexievich | Used Price: 50% Off
A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia-from the winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Guardian • NPR • The Economist • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • Kirkus ReviewsFor more than three ... More »
79. News of a Kidnapping
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Under $1.00
In 1990, fearing extradition to the United States, Pablo Escobar – head of the MedellÃn drug cartel – kidnapped ten notable Colombians to use as bargaining chips. With the eye of a poet, GarcÃa Márquez describes the survivors’ perilous ordeal and the bizarre drama of the negotiations for ... More »
80. The Origins of The Second World War
The Origins of the Second World War is a history book by A.J.P. Taylor. In it he looks at the causes of World War II. It was controversial at the time for holding all sides to account for the outbreak of war, but has since been recognised as ... More »
81. The Contours of American History
By William Appleman Williams | 70% Off
William Appleman Williams was one of the greatest opponents of US imperialism. The Modern Library chose The Contours of American History as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the Twentieth Century. More »
82. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
By Emile Durkheim | Used Price: 50% Off
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. ... More »
83. Working
By Studs Terkel | Used Price: 80% Off
Perhaps Studs Terkel's best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless snapshot of people's feelings about their working lives, as ... More »
84. This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright
By Emma Smith
A THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 'The best introduction to the plays I've read, perhaps the best book on Shakespeare, full stop' Alex Preston, Observer 'It makes you impatient to see or re-read the plays at once' Hilary Mantel A genius and prophet ... More »
85. The Making of the English Working Class
By E. P. Thompson | Used Price: 60% Off
This book transformed our understanding of English social history. Thompson revealed how working class people were not merely victims of history, moved by powerful forces outside of themselves, but were also active in creating their own culture and future, during the degradation of the industrial revolution. More »
86. The Education of Henry Adams
By Henry Adams | Used Price: 60% Off
As a journalist, historian, and novelist born into a family that included two past Presidents, Henry Adams was forever focused on the experiences and expectations unique to America. A prompt bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) recounts his own and his country's development from ... More »
87. The Selfish Gene
By Richard Dawkins | Used Price: 60% Off
Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands ... More »
88. Against Interpretation
By Susan Sontag | Used Price: 50% Off
Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well ... More »
89. The Kingdom of God Is Within You
By Leo Tolstoy | Used Price: 60% Off
"The Kingdom Of God Is Within You" is one of the most provocative anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian pieces of literature ever written. In the context of a sincere and scathing account of what is living and dead in modern Christianity, Tolstoy presents a view of history and society that ... More »
90. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution
By Jonathan Spence | Used Price: 90% Off
"A milestone in Western studies of China." (John K. Fairbank) In this masterful, highly original approach to modern Chinese history, Jonathan D. Spence shows us the Chinese revolution through the eyes of its most articulate participants—the writers, historians, philosophers, and insurrectionists who shaped and were shaped by the turbulent ... More »
91. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
By Eduardo Galeano | Used Price: 60% Off
Eduardo Galeano's classic account of five centuries of exploitation that Latin America has suffered at the hands of the imperial powers. More »
92. On War
By Carl von Clausewitz | Used Price: 60% Off
On War is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832, it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of soldiers, statesmen, and intellectuals. More »
93. The Mismeasure of Man
By Stephen Jay Gould | Used Price: 80% Off
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of ... More »
94. The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies
By E. O. Wilson; Bert Holldobler | 60% Off
The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume.The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands ... More »
95. The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria
By Janine di Giovanni | Used Price: 70% Off
A New York Post Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 2016 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award Winner of the 2016 Hay Festival Medal for Prose "Destined to become a classic." -Lisa Shea, ElleA masterpiece of war reportage, The Morning They Came for Us ... More »
96. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
By Karl Polanyi | Used Price: 50% Off
In Polanyi's classic work of economic history and sociology, he examines societal changes since the Industrial Revolution and expertly explains the inadequacies of the free market. Published in 1944, it is as relevant as today as ever, with Harvard Professor Stephen Walt recommending it in his Top 10 ... More »
97. The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism
By Daniel Bell | Used Price: 70% Off
With a new afterword by the author, this classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism—and the culture it creates—harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification—a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their ... More »
98. A People's History of the United States
By Howard Zinn | Used Price: 70% Off
A People's History of the United States is an attempt by Howard Zinn to present an alternative history of America from below. It's a view of US history from the perspective of ordinary and oppressed people. It's extremely popular and - in addition to being on many high ... More »
99. The Periodic Table
By Primo Levi | Used Price: 50% Off
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community ... More »
100. The Talented Women of the Zhang Family
By Susan Mann
Susan Mann illuminates a history of China that's largely been hidden. By exploring the memoirs of three generations of educated women from one Chinese family, Mann transforms our understanding of everyday life for women during the late imperial period. More »
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