Sunday, June 20, 2010

The Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, Part II

Yesterday, I gave you the first portion of a recommended reading list that I clipped out of the April 30, 1999 edition of USA Today, that is, the Modern Library’s selections for 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.
This list includes many of the most influential, award-winning books of the past century, and I’ve enjoyed the handful that I’ve read.
Without further ado, here are selections 34-66. Read yesterday’s post for the first 33 selections and visit the site tomorrow for selections 67-100.
34. On Growth and Form by D’Arcy Thompson
35. Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein
36. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
37. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
38. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
39. Autobiographies by W.B. Yeats
40. Science and Civilization in China by Joseph Needham
41. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
42. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
43. The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
44. Children in Crisis by Robert Coles
45. A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee
46. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
47. Present at the Creation by Dean Acheson
48. The Great Bridge by David McCullough
49. Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson
50. Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate
51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
52. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
53. Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
54. Working by Studs Terkel
55. Darkness Visible by William Styron
56. The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
57. The Second World War by Winston Churchill
58. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
59. Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone
60. In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
61. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
62. The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow
63. The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling
64. The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper
65. The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates
66. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R.H. Tawney
In the end, I’d like to know if you’ve read any of these, what you thought about them and which you’d recommend. I’ve denoted the few that I’ve had a chance to read with italics. Let me hear from you in the comments section below.

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