Monday, January 08, 2007

100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

I found this interesting list last night. I hadn't seen this before, but it's been around for a while now (2002). The author doesn't want anyone posting the whole list, so here are the top ten most influential books of all time.
100 Most Influential Books Ever Written
by Martin Seymour-Smith
  1. The I Ching
  2. The Old Testament
  3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
  4. The Upanishads
  5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu
  6. The Avesta
  7. Analects, Confucius
  8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
  9. Works, Hippocrates
  10. Works, Aristotle

You'll have to go to the site to see the rest of 100, but it's worth the visit.

I'd like to hear what anyone else thinks of this list. It seems plausible, but the list was published by Citadel Press, which I think is a Catholic press, so there might be some hidden bias. It seems to be part of some Great Books program.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Influential? HistoricallY or at the present moment? From this point of view (western, early 21st century looking easterly and backwards in time) or from a global, ahistorical point of view? Hard to tell, reading that list. After the first 15 or so, everything was written in the west; so there's definitely a bias. Both the New Testament and the Koran look to be placed awfully low if we're talking about present-day relevance: countless millions of people read one of the those two books and only one of the those two books, ever, daily. But interesting.

Kai in NYC