New York Public Library
Books of the Century
Page 2

Women Rise
Economics & Technology
Utopias & Dystopias
War, Holocaust, Totalitarianism
Optimism, Joy, Gentility
Favorites of Childhood and Youth



Women Rise:

Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence (1920) - Conflicting worldviews -- respectable, straitlaced New York society versus passionate, emotional Europeanism -- embodied in contrasting heroines.

Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (1923) - A chronicle of 72 years of grassroots struggle in America.

Margaret Sanger. My Fight for Birth Control (1931) - The nurse-midwife's selfless fight for women's reproductive rights.

Zora Neale Hurston. Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) - An autobiography by one of the key writers of the Harlem Renaissance movement.

Simone de Beauvoir. Le deuxième sexe [The Second Sex] (1949) - A demonstration of women's secondary status in a world ruled by men: the book that reignited the feminist movement.

Doris Lessing. The Golden Notebook (1962) - A woman's struggle to integrate the disparate parts of herself into one all-embracing "golden notebook": a landmark novel.

Betty Friedan. The Feminine Mystique (1963) - The groundbreaking articulation of the malaise affecting middle-class, educated American women at mid-century.

Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) - The first volume of Angelou's four-part life story, from poverty in rural Arkansas to acclaim and respect as a writer and performer.

Robin Morgan, editor. Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement (1970) - Testimony from the "second wave" of the American women's liberation movement.

Susan Brownmiller. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975) - A history of rape from a feminist perspective, urging women to fight back, in their own way.

Alice Walker. The Color Purple (1982) - A poor black woman's odyssey, told in letters, from rape and self-hatred to love and self-discovery with another woman.

Economics & Technology:

Thorstein Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) - A devastating critique of American capitalism, skewering "conspicuous consumption."

Max Weber. Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus [The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism] (1904) - The spread of Calvinism throughout Europe as an explanation for the rise of capitalism.

Henry Adams. The Education of Henry Adams (1907) - An exploration of an issue that still haunts industrialized societies: Can spiritual and humane values survive in a world dominated by technology?

John Maynard Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) - Keynes's advocacy of spending as a stimulant to a sluggish economy guided the New Deal and established macroeconomics.

Friedrich A. von Hayek. The Road to Serfdom (1944) - The ideas of this Nobel prizewinner greatly influenced the free market policies of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Milton Friedman. A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957) - A laissez-faire approach to economics that celebrates individual freedom.

John Kenneth Galbraith. The Affluent Society (1958) - An economics "page-turner," praised not only for its analysis but also for its "charm, wit, and bite."

Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) - A sardonic critique of mid-20th-century city planning.

Helen Leavitt. Superhighway - Super Hoax (1970) - An indictment of the environmental degradation, strangled cities, and ruined public transportation systems that followed in the superhighway's wake.

E. F. Schumacher. Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) - A call for "technology with a human face": an influence on both the counterculture and the "green" movement.

Ed Krol. The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog (1992) - One of the first guides to the Internet, written from a desire to open up to the curious the world of networking.

Utopias & Dystopias:

H. G. Wells. The Time Machine (1895) - A subtle prophecy concerning the effects of rampant industrialization and continuing class discrimination.

Theodor Herzl. Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896) - The manifesto of Zionism, the modern political movement to establish a Jewish homeland.

L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) - The adventures of Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin woodman, the cowardly lion, and, of course, Toto, as they follow the yellow brick road.

J. M. Barrie. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) - The story of a boy who won't grow up.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland (1915) - Three young male adventurers encounter the inhabitants of a prosperous county inhabited only by mothers and daughters: a feminist classic, rediscovered in the 1970s.

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World (1932) - An archetypal dystopian novel, many of whose predictions have come eerily true.

James Hilton. Lost Horizon (1933) - In an exotic place where time stands still, a stranded traveler tries to escape the anxieties and evils of the modern world.

B. F. Skinner. Walden Two (1948) - A fictional community in which positive and negative reinforcements are used to program the behavior of its members, imagined by the chief proponent of "radical behaviorism."

George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) - The seminal novel of the dangers of totalitarianism: "Big Brother is watching."

Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) - A classic dystopian novel, conjuring a world where books are outlawed and burned.

Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged (1957) - A dark vision of a United States where industrial leaders have succumbed to strangulating government control: an attack on both religious altruism and collectivist thought.

Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange (1962) - The signature work by an important contemporary novelist.

Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1985) - In the Republic of Gilead, common prescriptions for gender-appropriate behavior proceed to their logical, dystopian conclusion.

War, Holocaust, Totalitarianism:

Arnold Toynbee. Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (1915) - A documentation of the brutalities suffered by the Armenians at the hands of the Turks in 1915, and an indictment of Turkish policy.

John Reed. Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) - A pro- Bolshevik account of the Russian Revolution.

Siegfried Sassoon. The War Poems (1919) - Poems portraying the futility of war, but demonstrating too how its victims endeavor to transcend its horror.

Jaroslav Hasek. Osudy dobrého vojáka Svejka za svetové války [The Good Soldier Schweik] (1920- 23) - A satire of police-state tactics and of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army.

Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf (1925-26) - Hitler's autobiography: the blueprint for the Third Reich.

Erich Maria Remarque. Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front] (1928) - An indictment of war and of a civilization that could descend to warfare.

Anna Akhmatova. Rekviem [Requiem] (1935-40) - A record of personal suffering during the Stalinist Terror: one of the century's great poems of witness.

Ernest Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) - Hemingway's greatest popular success, a novel of the Spanish American War.

Arthur Koestler. Darkness at Noon (1941) - An interpretation of the Moscow Trials, fueled by Koestler's experience as a foreign correspondent and a member of the German Communist party.

John Hersey. Hiroshima (1946) - A simply written account of the lives of six survivors of the first atomic bomb explosion.

Anne Frank. Het Achterhuis [The Diary of a Young Girl] (1947) - The testimony of a young girl hiding from the Nazis, capturing human loss as well as hope.

Winston Churchill. The Gathering Storm (1948) - The first installment of Churchill's monumental six-volume history, The Second World War.

Elie Wiesel. La nuit [Night] (1958) - A memoir of the author's experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Mao Zedong. Quotations from Chairman Mao (1966) - The "Little Red Book," which heralded Mao Zedong's return from semi- seclusion.

Dee Alexander Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970) - The story, written from the Indians' point of view, of the defeat of the last resisting tribes in the worst Indian wars fought for possession of land.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. Arkhipelag GULag, 1918-1956 [The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation] (1973-75) - A historical account of imprisonment in Stalin's labor camps.

Michael Herr. Dispatches (1977) - A war correspondent depicts the day-to-day reality of America's young fighting force, many of them teenaged draftees, in Vietnam.

Art Spiegelman. Maus: A Survivor's Tale (2 vols., 1986-91) - A unique tale in the literature of the Holocaust: a comic-strip account in which the Jews are depicted as mice, the Germans as cats.

Optimism, Joy, Gentility:

Sarah Orne Jewett. The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) - A masterpiece of "local color" and regionalism affirming the dignity and integrity of all its characters, especially the isolated rural people.

Helen Keller. The Story of My Life (1903) - Keller's early life and, especially, her work with her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

G. K. Chesterton. The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) - The first of Chesterton's stories featuring the unassuming crime-solving priest.

Juan Ramón Jiménez. Platero y yo [Platero and I; An Andalusian Elegy] (1914) - A prose-poem masterpiece, a profound meditation on death, rebirth, and resurrection.

George Bernard Shaw. Pygmalion (1914) - One of Shaw's most popular plays, the story of the flower girl who becomes a lady.

Emily Post. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home (1922) - The "Blue Book" of etiquette, stressing simplicity, consideration, and common sense.

P. G. Wodehouse. The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) - The first of Wodehouse's droll tales featuring Bertie Wooster and his truly inimitable butler Jeeves.

A. A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) - Solemn whimsy for young and old alike, inspired by the stuffed toys of Milne's son Christopher.

Willa Cather. Shadows on the Rock (1931) - Set in Quebec in 1697, a novel depicting a year in the life of a 12- year-old girl and her father: Cather's first best-seller.

Irma S. Rombauer. The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat (1931) - The best-selling cookbook in publishing history.

J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit (1937) - Tolkien's fully realized fantasy world, which dazzled adults with its deft interweaving of medieval legend and made-up languages, maps, and creatures, and won over generations of children.

Margaret Wise Brown. Goodnight Moon (1947) - The poetry of a world at rest, with vivid illustrations by Clement Hurd.

Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) - A story of heroism and unsuspected courage in a segregated Alabama town.

Langston Hughes. The Best of Simple (1961) - The humorous sayings and trenchant views of Jesse B. Semple, a simple man speaking simple truths.

Elizabeth Bishop. The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983) - Poems by a uniquely reticent and private Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

Favorites of Childhood and Youth: