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Andrew Taylor, Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History [2008]

86 entries: 83 monographical, 3 otherwise

Unranked—arranged chronologically

One of the simplest lists, except that one of these 50 is Shakespeare's First Folio.

  1. Homer

  2. Iliad
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  3. Herodotus

  4. Historiē>
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek


  5. Confucius (Kǒng Zǐ) (Kǒng Fūzǐ) (K'ung Fu-tzu)

  6. Analects>
    Lún Yǔ
    written and compiled by the author's pupils; ca. Fifth Century B C-Second Century—Chinese


  7. Plato

  8. Politeia>
    The Republic
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek


    --
  9. The Bible

  10. —Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

  11. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

  12. Carmina
    Odes
    originally published in four volumes: first-third, 23 B C; fourth, 13 B C—Latin


  13. Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus)

  14. Geographike Hyphegesis>
    Geography
    Second Century—Greek


  15. Vatsayana

  16. Kama Sutra>
    ca. Fourth-Third centuries B C—Sanskrit

    --
  17. Quran

  18. Koran
    Seventh Century—Arabic


  19. Avicenna

  20. Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb>
    The Canon of Medicine
    1025—Arabic


  21. Geoffrey Chaucer

  22. Canterbury Tales
    1478—English

  23. Niccolò Machiavelli

  24. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian


  25. Gerardus Mercator

  26. Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura>
    Atlas, or, Cosmographic Meditations on the Creation of the World and the Form of Creation
    originally published in three volumes: 1585, 1589, and 1595—Latin


  27. Miguel de Cervantes
    El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
    Don Quixote
    originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615—Spanish


    William Shakespeare
    • Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies

  28. The First Folio
    1623; includes 36 of the author's plays—English


  29. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

  30. ca. 1590-94—English

  31. Romeo and Juliet

  32. ca. 1591-97—English

  33. The First Part of Henry VI

  34. ca. 1592—English

  35. The Second Part of Henry VI

  36. ca. 1592—English

  37. The Third Part of Henry VI

  38. ca. 1592—English

  39. The Taming of the Shrew

  40. ca. 1592-94—English

  41. Richard III

  42. ca. 1592-7—English

  43. Titus Andronicus

  44. 1594—English

  45. The Comedy of Errors

  46. 1594—English

  47. A Midsummer Night's Dream

  48. ca. 1595-1600—English

  49. The Merchant of Venice

  50. ca. 1596-98—English

  51. The Merry Wives of Windsor

  52. ca. 1597-1602—English

  53. The First Part of Henry IV

  54. 1597—English

  55. Richard II

  56. 1597—English

  57. Love's Labour Lost

  58. 1598—English

  59. King John

  60. ca. 1598—English

  61. Much Ado About Nothing

  62. ca. 1598-99—English

  63. Julius Caesar

  64. 1599—English

  65. Henry V

  66. 1599—English

  67. The Second Part of Henry IV

  68. 1600—English

  69. Twelfth Night; or, What You Will

  70. 1602—English

  71. Hamlet

  72. 1602—English

  73. Troilus and Cressida

  74. ca. 1602-09—English

  75. As You Like It

  76. 1603—English

  77. Measure for Measure

  78. 1604—English

  79. Othello

  80. ca. 1604—English

  81. Coriolanus

  82. written ca. 1605-08—English

  83. King Lear

  84. 1606—English

  85. All's Well That Ends Well

  86. ca. 1606-08—English

  87. Macbeth

  88. ca. 1607—English

  89. Timon of Athens

  90. written ca. 1607—English

  91. The Tempest

  92. 1611—English

  93. The Winter's Tale

  94. ca. 1611—English

  95. Henry VIII

  96. ca. 1613—English

  97. Antony and Cleopatra

  98. ca. 1606-08—English

  99. Cymbeline

  100. written ca. 1609—English

  101. William Harvey

  102. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus>
    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
    1628—Latin


  103. Galileo

  104. Dialogo Sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo>
    Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
    1632—Italian


  105. Isaac Newton

  106. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica>
    The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
    1687; revised 1713 and 1726—Latin


  107. Samuel Johnson

  108. A Dictionary of the English Language>
    1755—English

  109. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  110. Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers>
    The Sorrows of Young Werther
    1774; revised 1787—German


  111. Adam Smith

  112. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
    1776; revised through third edition, 1784—English

  113. Thomas Paine
    Common Sense; Addresed to the Inhabitants of America
    1776—English

    • William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  114. Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems>
    1798; expanded 1800 and 1802—English

  115. Jane Austen

  116. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  117. Charles Dickens

  118. A Christmas Carol
    1843—English

  119. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  120. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
    The Communist Manifesto
    1848—German


  121. Herman Melville

  122. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  123. Harriet Beecher Stowe

  124. Uncle Tom's Cabin
    1852—English

  125. Gustave Flaubert

  126. Madame Bovary
    originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  127. Charles Darwin

  128. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life>
    1859—English

  129. John Stuart Mill

  130. On Liberty>
    1859—English

  131. Leo Tolstoy
    Voyna i Mir"
    War and Peace
    originally entitled 1805, published in part, 1865 and 1867; retitled and published in its entirety, 1869—Russian


    • The New Haven District Telephone Company

  132. The Telephone Directory
    1878—English

    --
  133. Kitab alf Laylah Wa-Laylah

  134. The Thousand and One Nights; The Arabian Nights
    Ninth-Fifteenth centuries; Taylor specifies Richard Burton's version—Arabic


  135. Arthur Conan Doyle

  136. A Study in Scarlet>
    originally published 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual—English

  137. Sigmund Freud

  138. Die Traumdeutung>
    The Interpretation of Dreams
    1899—German


    --
  139. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

  140. published in part serially 1903 in Znamya; in its entirety, 1905, as part of Sergei Nilus's Velikoe v" Malom" i Antihrist" (The Great Within the Miniscule and Antichrist)—Russian

  141. Wilfred Owen

  142. Poems>
    1920; four poems previously published; 'Memoir' by Edmund Blunden added for 1931 edition; revised 1933; retitled The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, 1963, with a new introduction and notes by C Day Lewis plus four drafts of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and an unfinished poem, 'Wild With All Regrets'—English

  143. Albert Einstein

  144. Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Gemeinverständlich>
    Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition
    1917; revised through fourteenth edition, 1922—German


  145. James Joyce

  146. Ulysses>
    published in part serially Mar. 1918-Dec. 1920 in the Little Review; in its entirety, 1922—English

  147. D H Lawrence

  148. Lady Chatterley's Lover
    abridged version, 1928; complete work, 1960—English

  149. John Maynard Keynes

  150. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money>
    1936—English

  151. Primo Levi

  152. Se Questo è un Uomo
    Survival in Auschwitz
    1947—Italian


  153. George Orwell

  154. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    1949—English

  155. Simone de Beauvoir

  156. Le Deuxième Sexe>
    The Second Sex
    published in part serially in Les Temps Modernes; in its entirety in two volumes, 1949—French


  157. J D Salinger

  158. Catcher in the Rye
    1951—English

  159. Chinua Achebe

  160. Things Fall Apart
    1958—English

  161. Rachel Carson

  162. Silent Spring
    originally published Jun. 1962 in the New Yorker—English

  163. Máo Zédōng

  164. Máo Zhuxí Yulù
    Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung
    1966—Chinese


  165. J K Rowling

  166. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
    1997—English