Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction
The editors of The Modern Library were privileged to have the assistance of a distinguished Board made up of celebrated authors, historians, critics, and publishing luminaries. In 1998 and 1999, members of the Modern Library Board participated in the “100 Best” project, voting on the 100 Best Novels and 100 Best Non-fiction works, respectively.
- 1
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1965 · 16 lists
- 2
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson · 1962 · 9 lists
- 3
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley · 1968 · 9 lists
- 4
The Double Helix
James D. Watson · 1968 · 6 lists
- 5
The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams · 1777 · 6 lists
- 6
A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf · 1929 · 5 lists
- 7
Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen · 1937 · 5 lists
- 8
- 9
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes · 1986 · 5 lists
- 10
The Power Broker
Robert Caro · 1974 · 5 lists
- 11
The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe · 1979 · 5 lists
- 12
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn · 1962 · 5 lists
- 13
Black Boy
Richard Wright · 1945 · 4 lists
- 14
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903 · 4 lists
- 15
A Bright Shining Lie
Neil Sheehan · 1988 · 3 lists
- 16
Autobiographies
William Butler Yeats · 1791 · 3 lists
- 17
Battle Cry of Freedom
James M. McPherson · 1988 · 3 lists
- 18
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Rebecca West · 1941 · 3 lists
- 19
Children of Crisis
Robert Coles · 1967 · 3 lists
- 20
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell · 1938 · 3 lists
- 21
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Annie Dillard · 1974 · 3 lists
- 22
Samuel Johnson
Walter Jackson Bate · 1791 · 3 lists
- 23
Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov · 1951 · 3 lists
- 24
The Affluent Society
John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958 · 3 lists
- 25
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein · 1933 · 3 lists
- 26
The Civil War
Shelby Foote · 1958 · 3 lists
- 27
The Elements of Style
E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. · 1920 · 3 lists
- 28
The Mismeasure of Man
Stephen Jay Gould · 1981 · 3 lists
- 29
The Second World War
Winston Churchill · 1948 · 3 lists
- 30
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James · 1902 · 3 lists
- 31
An American Dilemma
Gunnar Myrdal · 1944 · 2 lists
- 32
Eminent Victorians
Lytton Strachey · 1918 · 2 lists
- 33
Good-Bye to All That
Robert Graves · 1929 · 2 lists
- 34
James Joyce
Richard Ellmann · 1959 · 2 lists
- 35
Jefferson and His Time
Dumas Malone · 1948 · 2 lists
- 36
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin · 1955 · 2 lists
- 37
Present at the Creation
Dean Acheson · 1969 · 2 lists
- 38
The Age of Jackson
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. · 1945 · 2 lists
- 39
The Ants
E. O. Wilson, Bert Hölldobler · 1990 · 2 lists
- 40
The City in History
Lewis Mumford · 1961 · 2 lists
- 41
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Richard P. Feynman · 1964 · 2 lists
- 42
The Frontier in American History
Frederick J. Turner · 1962 · 2 lists
- 43
The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels · 1979 · 2 lists
- 44
The Golden Bough
James George Frazer · 1890 · 2 lists
- 45
The Guns of August
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman · 1962 · 2 lists
- 46
The House of Morgan
Ron Chernow · 1990 · 2 lists
- 47
The Liberal Imagination
Lionel Trilling · 1950 · 2 lists
- 48
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Karl Popper · 1945 · 2 lists
- 49
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Morris · 1979 · 2 lists
- 50
West With the Night
Beryl Markham · 1942 · 2 lists
- 51
A Mathematician's Apology
G.H. Hardy · 1940 · 1 list
- 52
A Preface to Morals
Walter Lippmann · 1929 · 1 list
- 53
A Study of History
Arnold J. Toynbee · 1934 · 1 list
- 54
A Theory of Justice
John Rawls · 1971 · 1 list
- 55
Art and Illusion
Ernest H. Gombrich · 1960 · 1 list
- 56
Aspects of the Novel
E. M. Forster · 1927 · 1 list
- 57
Cadillac Desert
Marc Reisner · 1986 · 1 list
- 58
Contours of American History
William Appleman Williams · 1961 · 1 list
- 59
Darkness Visible
William Styron · 1990 · 1 list
- 60
Florence Nightingale
Cecil Woodham-Smith · 1931 · 1 list
- 61
Great Bridge
David McCullough · 1972 · 1 list
- 62
Ideas and Opinions
Albert Einstein · 1954 · 1 list
- 63
In the American Grain
William Carlos Williams · 1925 · 1 list
- 64
Melbourne
David Cecil · 1864 · 1 list
- 65
Nature and Destiny of Man
Reinhold Niebuhr · 1941 · 1 list
- 66
On Growth and Form
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson · 1917 · 1 list
- 67
Operating Instructions
Anne Lamott · 1993 · 1 list
- 68
Patriotic Gore
Edmund Wilson · 1962 · 1 list
- 69
Philosophy and Civilization
John Dewey · 1931 · 1 list
- 70
Principia Ethica
George Edward Moore · 1903 · 1 list
- 71
Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism
R. H. Tawney · 1926 · 1 list
- 72
Science and Civilization in China
Joseph Needham · 2007 · 1 list
- 73
Shadow and ACT
Ralph Ellison · 1964 · 1 list
- 74
Studies in Iconology
Erwin Panofsky · 1939 · 1 list
- 75
The American Language
H. L. Mencken · 1919 · 1 list
- 76
The American Political Tradition
Richard Hofstadter · 1948 · 1 list
- 77
The Art of Memory
Frances A. Yates · 1966 · 1 list
- 78
The Art of the Soluble
Peter B. Medawar · 1967 · 1 list
- 79
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Mark Twain · 1906 · 1 list
- 80
The Face of Battle
John Keegan · 1976 · 1 list
- 81
The Gate of Heavenly Peace
Jonathan Spence · 1982 · 1 list
- 82
The Great War and Modern Memory
Paul Fussell · 1975 · 1 list
- 83
The Journalist and the Murderer
Janet Malcolm · 1990 · 1 list
- 84
The Lives of a Cell
Lewis Thomas · 1974 · 1 list
- 85
The Making of the English Working Class
E.P. Thompson · 1963 · 1 list
- 86
The Mirror and the Lamp
Meyer Howard Abrams · 1918 · 1 list
- 87
- 88
The Promise of American Life
Herbert Croly · 1911 · 1 list
- 89
The Proper Study of Mankind
Isaiah Berlin · 1933 · 1 list
- 90
The Rise of the West
William H. McNeill · 1963 · 1 list
- 91
The Strange Career of Jim Crow
C. Vann Woodward · 1955 · 1 list
- 92
The Strange Death of Liberal England
George Dangerfield · 1935 · 1 list
- 93
The Sweet Science
A.J. Liebling · 1949 · 1 list
- 94
The Taming of Chance
Ian Hacking · 1990 · 1 list
- 95
Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington · 1900 · 1 list
- 96
Vermeer
Lawrence Gowing · 2004 · 1 list
- 97
Why We Can't Wait
Martin Luther King Jr. · 1964 · 1 list
- 98
Working
Studs Terkel · 1730 · 1 list