Modern Library’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Reads (with links)

I’ve been on the hunt for some good non-fiction reads for 2019 and realised in the rush with everyone else to read Sapiens or Sleep, I’m probably missing out on some classics.

The Modern Library has made a pretty good, if very American, list of its 100 best non-fiction titles. Some of them I’ve read for pleasure, some for studies, and some of them I’m not likely to because of dryness (Principia Mathematica) or expense (£165 for a book on ants…).

Still, as I was trawling through, I added some links to their list so that I could click back easily and think about buying. The list is below, and the links are all to smile.amazon.co.uk=style urls, in case anyone finds it useful.

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 Keynes
11. THE LIVES OF A CELL
    by Lewis Thomas
12. THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY
    by Frederick Jackson Turner
13. BLACK BOY
    by Richard Wright
14. ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL
    by E. M. Forster
15. THE CIVIL WAR
    by Shelby Foote
16. THE GUNS OF AUGUST
    by Barbara Tuchman
17. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND
    by Isaiah Berlin
18. THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN
    by Reinhold Niebuhr
19. NOTES OF A NATIVE SON
    by James Baldwin
20. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
    by Gertrude Stein
21. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE
    by William Strunk and E. B. White
22. AN AMERICAN DILEMMA
    by Gunnar Myrdal
23. PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
    by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
24. THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
    by Stephen Jay Gould
25. THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP
    by Meyer Howard Abrams
26. THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE
    by Peter B. Medawar
27. THE ANTS
    by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson
28. A THEORY OF JUSTICE
    by John Rawls
29. ART AND ILLUSION
    by Ernest H. Gombrich
30. THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS
    by E. P. Thompson
31. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
    by W.E.B. Du Bois
32. PRINCIPIA ETHICA
    by G. E. Moore
33. (Couldn’t find)PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION
    by John Dewey
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 OF 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
67. A PREFACE TO MORALS
    by Walter Lippmann
68. THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE
    by Jonathan D. Spence
69. THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
    by Thomas S. Kuhn
70. THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW
    by C. Vann Woodward
71. THE RISE OF THE WEST
    by William H. McNeill
72. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS
    by Elaine Pagels
73. JAMES JOYCE
    by Richard Ellmann
74. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
    by Cecil Woodham-Smith
75. THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY
    by Paul Fussell
76. THE CITY IN HISTORY
    by Lewis Mumford
77. BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM
    by James M. McPherson
78. WHY WE CAN’T WAIT
    by Martin Luther King Jr.
79. THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
    by Edmund Morris
80. STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY
    by Erwin Panofsky
81. THE FACE OF BATTLE
    by John Keegan
82. THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND
    by George Dangerfield
83. VERMEER
    by Lawrence Gowing
84. A BRIGHT SHINING LIE
    by Neil Sheehan
85. WEST WITH THE NIGHT
    by Beryl Markham
86. THIS BOY’S LIFE
    by Tobias Wolff
87. A MATHEMATICIAN’S APOLOGY
    by G. H. Hardy
88. SIX EASY PIECES
    by Richard P. Feynman
89. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
    by Annie Dillard
90. THE GOLDEN BOUGH
    by James George Frazer
91. 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