Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction

The Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction was created in 1998 by the Modern Library. The list is what it considers to be the 100 best non-fiction books published since 1900.

The list included memoirs, textbooks, polemics, and collections of essays. A separate list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century was created the same year.[1]

The following table shows the top ten books from the editors' list:[2]

# Year Title Author
1 1918 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Brooks Adams
2 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James
3 1901 Up From Slavery Booker T. Washington
4 1929 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf
5 1962 Silent Spring Rachel Carson
6 1932 Selected Essays, 1917–1932 T.S. Eliot
7 1968 The Double Helix James D. Watson
8 1951 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov
9 1919 The American Language H.L. Mencken
10 1936 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes

A list chosen by readers was published separately by Modern Library in 1999. With close to 200,000 votes,[3] The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand was selected as the best non-fiction book. Two other titles related to Rand – Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand and Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life – were No. 3 and No. 6, respectively. The Reader's Poll has been cited by Harry Binswanger, a longtime associate of Rand and promoter of her work, as representative of "the clash between the intellectual establishment and the American people."[4] However, Jesse Walker, writing in Reason magazine, has observed that the Reader's Poll is an example of the unreliability of internet polls and their tendency to overemphasize the opinions of small but especially devoted groups.[5]

References
  1. 100 Best Novels, Modern Library
  2. 100 Best Nonfiction, Modern Library
  3. 100 Best Nonfiction Books Archived March 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, modernlibrary.com. Retrieved September 18, 2015.
  4. Harry Binswanger (August 27, 1998). "A Tale of Two Novels". Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Archived from the original on October 23, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  5. Jesse Walker (May 17, 2007). "What Internet Polls Are Good For". Reason. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
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