1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pessimism and nostalgia at the bright dawn of the twentieth century must have seemed bizarre to contemporaries. After a century of war, mass murder, and fanaticism, we know that Adams's insight was keen indeed.

 

2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)

Preferable to Lewis's other remarkable books simply because of the title, which reveals the true intent of liberalism.

 

3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)

The haunting, lyrical testament to truth and humanity in a century of lies (and worse). Chambers achieves immortality recounting his spiritual journey from the dark side (Soviet Communism) to the-in his eyes-doomed West. One of the great autobiographies of the millennium.

 

4. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)

Here, one of the century's foremost literary innovators insists that innovation is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition. Every line of Eliot's prose bristles with intelligence and extreme deliberation.

 

5. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1934-1961)

Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious historians. Though ignored by academic careerists, Toynbee is still read by those whose intellectual horizons extend beyond present fashions.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

A very big brain and not without flaws. Still, her account of the peculiarly modern phenomenon of "totalitarianism" forced many liberals to consider the sins of communism in the same category as those of fascism, and that is no small achievement.

 

Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (1945)

Barzun fought a heroic struggle against the Germanization of the American university.

 

Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1975)

The most psychologically astute biography of one of the most psychologically astute writers who ever lived. In an age of debunking and trivializing biographies, Bate's beautifully written book stands out as a happy exception.

 

Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (1938)

Interpreting literature in the style of the New Criticism was the vehicle by which a half-century of Americans gained access to the intellectual life. This textbook by two of the brightest lights of the most important literary group in America this century-the Vanderbilt agrarians-has never been out of print.

 

Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography.

LINK

1. THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams



2. THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James



3. UP FROM SLAVERY by Booker T. Washington



4. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf



5. SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson



6. SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot



7. THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson



8. SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov



9. THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by H. L. Mencken



10. THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard



11. Keynes



12. THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas



13. THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Frederick Jackson Turner



14. BLACK BOY by Richard Wright



15. ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL by E. M. Forster



16. THE CIVIL WAR by Shelby Foote



17. THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara Tuchman



18. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Isaiah Berlin



19. THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr



20. NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin



21. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein



22. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by William Strunk and E. B. White



23. AN AMERICAN DILEMMA by Gunnar Myrdal



24. PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell



25. THE MISMEASURE OF MAN by Stephen Jay Gould



26. THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP by Meyer Howard Abrams



27. THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE by Peter B. Medawar



28. THE ANTS by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson



29. A THEORY OF JUSTICE by John Rawls



30. ART AND ILLUSION by Ernest H. Gombrich



31. THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by E. P. Thompson



32. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W.E.B. Du Bois



33. PRINCIPIA ETHICA by G. E. Moore



34. PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION by John Dewey



35. ON GROWTH AND FORM by D'Arcy Thompson



36. IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein



37. THE AGE OF JACKSON, Arthur Schlesinger by Jr.



38. THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes



39. BLACK LAMB and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West



40. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by W. B. Yeats



41. SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA by Joseph Needham



42. GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves



43. HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell



44. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain



45. CHILDREN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles



46. A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee



47. THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY by John Kenneth Galbraith



48. PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson



49. THE GREAT BRIDGE by David McCullough



50. PATRIOTIC GORE by Edmund Wilson



51. SAMUEL JOHNSON by Walter Jackson Bate



52. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X



53. THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe



54. EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey



55. WORKING by Studs Terkel



56. DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron



57. THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION by Lionel Trilling



58. THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston Churchill



59. OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen



60. JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME by Dumas Malone



61. IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN by William Carlos Williams



62. CADILLAC DESERT by Marc Reisner



63. THE HOUSE OF MORGAN by Ron Chernow



64. THE SWEET SCIENCE by A. J. Liebling



65. THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES by Karl Popper



66. THE ART OF MEMORY by Frances A. Yates



67. RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM by R. H. Tawney



68. A PREFACE TO MORALS by Walter Lippmann



69. THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE by Jonathan D. Spence



70. THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas S. Kuhn



71. THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW by C. Vann Woodward



72. THE RISE OF THE WEST by William H. McNeill



73. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels



74. JAMES JOYCE by Richard Ellmann



75. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE by Cecil Woodham-Smith



76. THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY by Paul Fussell



77. THE CITY IN HISTORY by Lewis Mumford



78. BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson



79. WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King by Jr.



80. THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris



81. STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY by Erwin Panofsky



82. THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan



83. THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND by George Dangerfield



84. VERMEER by Lawrence Gowing



85. A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan



86. WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham



87. THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff



88. A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY by G. H. Hardy



89. SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman



90. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard



91. THE GOLDEN BOUGH by James George Frazer SHADOW AND ACT by Ralph Ellison



92. THE POWER BROKER by Robert A. Caro



93. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION by Richard Hofstadter



94. THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY by William Appleman Williams



95. THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE by Herbert Croly



96. IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote



97. THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm



98. THE TAMING OF CHANCE by Ian Hacking



99. OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS by Anne Lamott



100. MELBOURNE by Lord David Cecil

Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html