The New York Public Library's Books of the Century
The following is a complete list of the titles included in the exhibition Books of the Century at The New York Public Library's Center for the Humanities, May 20, 1995-July 13, 1996, and in The New York Public Library's Books of the Century, published by Oxford University Press. In the original exhibition the books were divided in different categories such as "Popular Culture & Mass Entertainment", "Landmarks of Modern Literature" and "Utopias & Dystopias". https://www.nypl.org/voices/print-publications/books-of-the-century
- 1
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 2
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 3
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967 · 33 lists
- 4
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists
- 5
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 6
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 7
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 8
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust · 1913 · 29 lists
- 9
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 10
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 11
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 12
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 13
The Stranger
Albert Camus · 1942 · 23 lists
- 14
Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell · 1936 · 22 lists
- 15
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 20 lists
- 16
The Color Purple
Alice Walker · 1982 · 20 lists
- 17
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958 · 19 lists
- 18
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 19
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 20
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann · 1924 · 18 lists
- 21
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 22
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 23
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 24
Dracula
Bram Stoker · 1897 · 16 lists
- 25
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1965 · 16 lists
- 26
- 27
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison · 1977 · 14 lists
- 28
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · 13 lists
- 29
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey · 1962 · 13 lists
- 30
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler · 1939 · 13 lists
- 31
Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White · 1952 · 12 lists
- 32
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 1929 · 11 lists
- 33
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle · 1901 · 11 lists
- 34
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 35
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank · 1947 · 10 lists
- 36
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud · 2018 · 10 lists
- 37
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand · 1936 · 9 lists
- 38
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1953 · 9 lists
- 39
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad · 1900 · 9 lists
- 40
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley · 1968 · 9 lists
- 41
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 1915 · 9 lists
- 42
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith · 1943 · 8 lists
- 43
Kim
Rudyard Kipling · 1901 · 8 lists
- 44
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair · 1906 · 8 lists
- 45
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler · 1948 · 7 lists
- 46
Portnoy’s Complaint
Philip Roth · 1967 · 7 lists
- 47
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein · 1961 · 7 lists
- 48
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe · 1987 · 7 lists
- 49
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing · 1962 · 7 lists
- 50
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis · 1950 · 7 lists
- 51
The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot · 1991 · 7 lists
- 52
Winnie-the-Pooh
Christina Milner · 1926 · 7 lists
- 53
Goodnight Moon
Margaret Wise Brown · 1947 · 6 lists
- 54
The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West · 1939 · 6 lists
- 55
The Good Soldier Švejk
Jaroslav Hašek · 1921 · 6 lists
- 56
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 · 6 lists
- 57
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum · 1900 · 6 lists
- 58
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak · 1963 · 6 lists
- 59
Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912 · 5 lists
- 60
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
Benjamin Spock · 1946 · 5 lists
- 61
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1937 · 5 lists
- 62
The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran · 1923 · 5 lists
- 63
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895 · 5 lists
- 64
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James · 1898 · 5 lists
- 65
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett · 1989 · 5 lists
- 66
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1966 · 4 lists
- 67
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie · 1913 · 4 lists
- 68
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou · 1969 · 4 lists
- 69
Peter Pan
J. M. Barrie · 1911 · 4 lists
- 70
The Cat in the Hat
Dr. Seuss · 1957 · 4 lists
- 71
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin · 1962 · 4 lists
- 72
The Lover
Marguerite Duras · 1982 · 4 lists
- 73
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903 · 4 lists
- 74
Carrie
Stephen King · 1974 · 3 lists
- 75
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton · 1940 · 3 lists
- 76
Dispatches
Michael Herr · 1977 · 3 lists
- 77
Night
Elie Wiesel · 1958 · 3 lists
- 78
Peyton Place
Grace Metalious · 1956 · 3 lists
- 79
Platero and I
Juan Ramón Jiménez · 1983 · 3 lists
- 80
Romancero gitano
Federico García Lorca · 1928 · 3 lists
- 81
Season of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih · 1986 · 3 lists
- 82
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello · 1921 · 3 lists
- 83
The Complete Poems
Elizabeth Bishop · 1981 · 3 lists
- 84
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter · 1900 · 2 lists
- 85
A Field Guide to the Birds
Roger Tory Peterson · 1980 · 0 lists
- 86
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold · 1964 · 0 lists
- 87
A Theory Of The Consumption Function
Milton Friedman · 1957 · 0 lists
- 88
Against Our Will
Susan Brownmiller · 1975 · 0 lists
- 89
And the Band Played On
Randy Shilts · 1987 · 0 lists
- 90
Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation
Arnold J. Toynbee · 2018 · 0 lists
- 91
Ball Four
Jim Bouton · 1970 · 0 lists
- 92
Best of Simple
Langston Hughes · 1961 · 0 lists
- 93
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Alexander Brown · 1970 · 0 lists
- 94
Charter of the United Nations
United Nations · 1937 · 0 lists
- 95
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead · 1928 · 0 lists
- 96
Der Judenstaat
Theodor Herzl · 1896 · 0 lists
- 97
Dust Tracks on a Road
Zora Neale Hurston · 1942 · 0 lists
- 98
Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home
Emily Post · 1922 · 0 lists
- 99
Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges · 1973 · 0 lists
- 100
Growing Up Absurd
Paul Goodman · 1960 · 0 lists
- 101
Guerrillas
V.S. Naipaul · 1960 · 0 lists
- 102
Herland
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1915 · 0 lists
- 103
Hiroshima
John Hersey · 1946 · 0 lists
- 104
- 105
King Solomon's Ring
Konrad Lorenz · 1952 · 0 lists
- 106
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
James Agee · 1941 · 0 lists
- 107
Lost Horizon
James Hilton · 1666 · 0 lists
- 108
Maus
Art Spiegelman · 1986 · 0 lists
- 109
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler · 1925 · 0 lists
- 110
My Fight for Birth Control
Margaret Sanger · 1931 · 0 lists
- 111
On Death and Dying
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross · 1969 · 0 lists
- 112
Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw · 1912 · 0 lists
- 113
Quotations from Chairman Mao
Anonymous · 1972 · 0 lists
- 114
Relativity
Albert Einstein · 1925 · 0 lists
- 115
Renascence and Other Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1917 · 0 lists
- 116
Requiem
Anna Akhmatova · 1960 · 0 lists
- 117
Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey · 1912 · 0 lists
- 118
Sarah, Plain and Tall
Patricia MacLachlan · 1985 · 0 lists
- 119
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gandhi · 1928 · 0 lists
- 120
Shadows on the Rock
Willa Cather · 1931 · 0 lists
- 121
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson · 1962 · 0 lists
- 122
Sisterhood Is Powerful
Robin Morgan · 1970 · 0 lists
- 123
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
E. F. Schumacher · 1975 · 0 lists
- 124
Smoking and Health
Surgeon General · 1959 · 0 lists
- 125
Strange Fruit
Lillian Smith · 1944 · 0 lists
- 126
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
Havelock Ellis · 1896 · 0 lists
- 127
Suicide
Emile Durkheim · 1975 · 0 lists
- 128
Superhighway--superhoax
Helen Leavitt · 1970 · 0 lists
- 129
Ten Days That Shook the World
John Reed · 1919 · 0 lists
- 130
Tender Buttons
Gertrude Stein · 1914 · 0 lists
- 131
The Affluent Society
John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958 · 0 lists
- 132
The Age of Anxiety
W. H. Auden · 1947 · 0 lists
- 133
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens · 1931 · 0 lists
- 134
The Battle with the Slum
Jacob A. Riis · 1902 · 0 lists
- 135
The Bride Price
Buchi Emecheta · 1976 · 0 lists
- 136
The Country of the Pointed Firs
Sarah Orne Jewett · 1896 · 0 lists
- 137
The Courage to Be
Paul Tillich · 2018 · 0 lists
- 138
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs · 1961 · 0 lists
- 139
The Diversity of Life
E. O. Wilson · 1992 · 0 lists
- 140
The Double Helix
James D. Watson · 1968 · 0 lists
- 141
The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams · 1777 · 0 lists
- 142
The Emperor
Ryszard Kapuscinski · 2010 · 0 lists
- 143
The Family of Man
Edward Steichen · 1955 · 0 lists
- 144
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan · 1963 · 0 lists
- 145
- 146
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 147
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1973 · 0 lists
- 148
The House on Henry Street
Lillian D. Wald · 1915 · 0 lists
- 149
The Inimitable Jeeves
P. G. Wodehouse · 1931 · 0 lists
- 150
The Innocence of Father Brown
G.K. Chesterton · 1911 · 0 lists
- 151
- 152
The Life of the Bee
Maurice Maeterlinck · 2000 · 0 lists
- 153
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie · 1920 · 0 lists
- 154
The Politics of Ecstasy
Timothy Leary · 1968 · 0 lists
- 155
The Portable Faulkner
William Faulkner · 1950 · 0 lists
- 156
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber · 2013 · 0 lists
- 157
The Road to Serfdom
Friedrich von Hayek · 1944 · 0 lists
- 158
The Second World War
Winston Churchill · 1948 · 0 lists
- 159
The Snowy Day
Ezra Jack Keats · 1962 · 0 lists
- 160
The Story of My Life
Helen Keller · 1903 · 0 lists
- 161
The Theory of the Leisure Class
Thorstein Veblen · 1899 · 0 lists
- 162
The Uses of Enchantment
Bruno Bettelheim · 1976 · 0 lists
- 163
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James · 1902 · 0 lists
- 164
The Whole Internet: Users Guide & Catalog
Ed Krol · 1995 · 0 lists
- 165
The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats · 1917 · 0 lists
- 166
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon · 2017 · 0 lists
- 167
There Are No Children Here
Alex Kotlowitz · 1991 · 0 lists
- 168
Three Sisters
Anton Chekhov · 1914 · 0 lists
- 169
Treatise on Radioactivity
Marie Curie · 1910 · 0 lists
- 170
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Jane Addams · 1945 · 0 lists
- 171
U.S.A. Trilogy
John Dos Passos · 1960 · 0 lists
- 172
Walden Two
B. F. Skinner · 1969 · 0 lists
- 173
- 174
Why I Am Not a Christian
Bertrand Russell · 1927 · 0 lists
- 175
