Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "50 Best Books of the 20th Century" (Non-fiction)

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Earlier this year, the Modern Library published a list styled The Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century. A list of significant books can make a compelling statement about how we are to understand an age. In judging the quality of a book, one necessarily judges the perception and the profundity which the book displays, as well as the character of the book’s influence.

Yet many were dissatisfied with the several "Best" lists published in the past year, finding them biased, too contemporary, or simply careless. So the Intercollegiate Review (IR) set out to assemble its own critically serious roster of the Best—and the Worst—Books of the Century. To assist us in this task, we relied on the advice of a group of exceptional academics from a variety of disciplines.

  1. 1.
    The Education of Henry Adams (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Henry Adams

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  2. 2.
    The Origins of Totalitarianism
    by Hannah Arendt

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  3. 3.
    Teacher in America
    by Jacques Barzun

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  4. 4.
    Samuel Johnson
    by Walter Jackson Bate

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  5. 5.
    Understanding Poetry
    by Cleanth Brooks

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  6. 6.
    Whig Interpretation of History
    by Herbert Butterfield

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  7. 7.
    Witness
    by Whittaker Chambers

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  8. 8.
    Orthodoxy
    by G. K. Chesterton

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  9. 9.
    The Second World War (Six Volume Boxed Set)
    by Winston S. Churchill

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  10. 10.
    History of Philosophy, Volume 1 (History of Philosophy)
    by Frederick Copleston

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  11. 11.
    Religion and the Rise of Western Culture
    by Christopher Dawson

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  12. 13.
    Selected Essays
    by T. S. Eliot

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  13. 14.
    Civil War: A Narrative (3 Vol. Set)
    by Shelby Foote

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  14. 15.
    ?
    R. E. Lee
    by Douglas Southall Freeman

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  15. 16.
    Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition
    by Milton Friedman

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  16. 17.
    Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
    by Eugene D. Genovese

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  17. 18.
    ?
    The Constitution of Liberty
    by Friedrich A. Hayek

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  18. 20.
    The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage)
    by Jane Jacobs

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  19. 23.
    The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
    by Russell Kirk

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  20. 24.
    The Abolition of Man
    by C. S. Lewis

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  21. 26.
    After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
    by Alasdair C. MacIntyre

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  22. 27.
    ?
    Jefferson & His Time (History United States)
    by Dumas Malone

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  23. 28.
    Prejudices
    by H. L. Mencken

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  24. 29.
    The Seven Storey Mountain
    by Thomas Merton

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  25. 32.
    The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
    by Flannery O'Connor

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  26. 33.
    Homage to Catalonia (Harvest Book)
    by George Orwell

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  27. 34.
    ?
    Lost in the Cosmos
    by Walker Percy

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  28. 35.
    The Making of the Atomic Bomb
    by Richard Rhodes

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  29. 36.
    The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud
    by Philip Rieff

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  30. 37.
    ?
    Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography
    by George Santayana

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  31. 38.
    Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
    by Joseph A. Schumpeter

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  32. 39.

  33. 40.
    The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
    by William Strunk Jr.

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  34. 42.
    ?
    Study of History: The Geneses of Civilizations
    by Arnold J. Toynbee

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  35. 43.
    The Frontier in American History
    by Frederick Jackson Turner

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  36. 44.
    The New Science of Politics (Walgreen Foundation Lectures)
    by Eric Voegelin

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  37. 45.
    Up from Slavery (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Booker T. Washington

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  38. 46.
    Double Helix (Scribner Classics)
    by J. Watson

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  39. 48.
    ?
    Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
    by George Pitcher

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  40. 49.
    The Right Stuff
    by Tom Wolfe

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  41. 50.
    Autobiography of Malcolm X
    by Malcolm X

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Created by Robot Co-op on Nov 30, 2005.
 

Comments

Battle Cry of Freedom — 2 years ago

James McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book of the Civil War is a northern companion to Shelby Foote’s work.