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The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual history written by Martin Seymour-Smith, a British poet, critic, and biographer.[1]

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today
Author(s) Martin Seymour-Smith United Kingdom English Citadel September, 1998 Print (hardcover and paperback) 978-0806520001 38258131 (http://worldcat.org/oclc/38258131) Country Language Publisher Publication date Media type ISBN OCLC Number

Chronological list
The one hundred most influential books, according to Seymour-Smith, in the approximate chronological order he gives:

# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Author or source Chinese classic texts Jewish scripture Homer Hindu scripture Lao Tsu Zoroastrian scripture Confucius Thucydides Hippocrates Aristotle Herodotus Plato Euclid Theravada Buddhist scripture I Ching Hebrew Bible

Title

Date 11th century BCE 8th early 7th century BCE 9th century BC 4th century BCE yes

Public domain?

8th4th century BCE yes yes yes yes

Iliad and Odyssey Upanishads Tao Te Ching Avesta Analects History of the Peloponnesian War Works Works Histories The Republic Elements

1st millennium BC yes 3rd century CE 5th4th century BCE yes 5th century BCE 400 BC 4th century BCE 5th century BCE 380 BCE 280 BCE yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
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Dhammapada (Path of the Dharma) 252 BCE

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Virgil Lucretius Philo of Alexandria Christian scripture Plutarch Cornelius Tacitus Valentinus Marcus Aurelius Sextus Empiricus Plotinus Augustine of Hippo Muslim scripture Moses Maimonides Text of Judaic mysticism Thomas Aquinas Dante Alighieri Desiderius Erasmus Niccol Machiavelli Martin Luther Franois Rabelais John Calvin Nicolaus Copernicus Michel de Montaigne Miguel de Cervantes Johannes Kepler Francis Bacon William Shakespeare Galileo Galilei Ren Descartes

Aeneid De Rerum Natura Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws New Testament Parallel Lives Annals, From the Death of the Divine Augustus Gospel of Truth (Gnostic text) Meditations Outlines of Pyrrhonism Enneads Confessions Quran Guide for the Perplexed Kabbalah Summa Theologiae The Divine Comedy In Praise of Folly The Prince On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church Gargantua and Pantagruel Institutes of the Christian Religion On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Essays Don Quixote Harmony of the Worlds Novum Organum First Folio

19 BCE 55 BCE 1st century CE ca. 50100 CE 120 CE 120 CE 2nd century 167 150210 CE 3rd century 400 CE 7th century 1190 12th century 12661273 1321 1509 1532 1520 1532 and 1534 1536 1543 1580 1605 and 1615 1619 1620 1623

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
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Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief 1632 World Systems Discourse on Method 1637

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44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Thomas Hobbes Gottfried Leibniz Blaise Pascal Baruch de Spinoza John Bunyan Isaac Newton John Locke George Berkeley Giambattista Vico David Hume Denis Diderot (ed.) Samuel Johnson Voltaire Thomas Paine Adam Smith Edward Gibbon Immanuel Kant

Leviathan Works Penses Ethics Pilgrim's Progress Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Essay Concerning Human Understanding Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge The New Science A Treatise of Human Nature Encyclopdie A Dictionary of the English Language Candide Common Sense The Wealth of Nations The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Critique of Pure Reason Reflections on the Revolution in France A Vindication of the Rights of Woman An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice An Essay on the Principle of Population Phenomenology of Spirit The World as Will and Idea The Course in Positive Philosophy On War Either/Or

1651 16631716 1670 1677 16781684 1687 1689 1710, revised 1734 1725, revised 1744 17391740 17511772 1755 1759 1776 1776 17761787 1781, revised 1787 1781 1790 1792 1793 1798, revised 1803 1807 1819 18301842 1832 1843

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau Confessions Edmund Burke Mary Wollstonecraft William Godwin Thomas Robert Malthus George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Arthur Schopenhauer Auguste Comte Carl von Clausewitz Sren Kierkegaard

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71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Henry David Thoreau Charles Darwin John Stuart Mill Herbert Spencer Gregor Mendel Leo Tolstoy James Clerk Maxwell Friedrich Nietzsche Sigmund Freud William James Albert Einstein Vilfredo Pareto Carl Jung Martin Buber Franz Kafka Karl Popper John Maynard Keynes Jean-Paul Sartre Friedrich von Hayek Simone de Beauvoir Norbert Wiener George Orwell George Gurdjieff Ludwig Wittgenstein Noam Chomsky Thomas Kuhn Betty Friedan Mao Zedong
(attributed)

Communist Manifesto Civil Disobedience The Origin of Species On Liberty First Principles War and Peace A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism Thus Spoke Zarathustra The Interpretation of Dreams Pragmatism Relativity The Mind and Society Psychological Types I and Thou The Trial The Logic of Scientific Discovery General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money Being and Nothingness The Road to Serfdom The Second Sex Cybernetics Nineteen Eighty-Four Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson Philosophical Investigations Syntactic Structures The Structure of Scientific Revolutions The Feminine Mystique Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (Little Red Book) Beyond Freedom and Dignity

1848 1849 1859 1859 1862 18681869 1873 18831885 1900 1908 1916 1916 1921 1923 1925 1934 1936 1943 1944 1948 1948, revised 1961 1949 1950 1953 1957 1962, revised 1970 1963 1966 1971

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

Experiments on Plant Hybridization 1866

yes

yes

B. F. Skinner

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See also
List of best-selling books The 100 Best Books of All Time

References
1. ^ Seymour-Smith, Martin (1998). The 100 most influential books ever written : the history of thought from ancient times to today. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publ. Group. ISBN 978-0806520001. OCLC 38258131 (//www.worldcat.org/oclc/38258131) .

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