100 Books that Changed the World

by Scott Christianson and Colin Salter

A chronological survey of the world's most influential books.



Many books have become classics, must-reads or overnight publishing sensations, but how many can genuinely claim to have changed the way we see and think?



In 100 Books that Changed the World, authors Scott Christianson and Colin Salter bring together an exceptional collection of truly groundbreaking books - from scriptures that founded religions, to scientific treatises that challenged beliefs, to novels that kick-started literary genres. This elegantly designed book offers a chronological survey of the most important books from around the globe, from the earliest illuminated manuscripts to the age of the ebook publication.



Entries include: The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer (750 BC), Gutenberg Bible (1450s), The Quran (AD 609-632), On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Nicolaus Copernicus (1543), Shakespeare's First Folio (1623), Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton (1687), The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776), The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792), On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (1859), Das Kapital, Karl Marx (1867), The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud (1899), The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1947), Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1964), A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (1988).

• ISBN13: 9781849944519
• Publish Date: 5 April 2018 (first published 6 March 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pavilion Books
• Imprint: Batsford Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I bought this on a whim, because it's just a gorgeous book, chock full of old book covers.  I figured I'd be interested in the contents too, of course, but was prepared, based on the title, for a lot of hyperbole.   Not so much really.  I'd say the editors did a fantastic job of choosing books that most people would agree significantly affected, if not changed, the course of society.  I enjoyed the narratives written for each one too; I learned at least a little something about each book, in spite of at least 95 of them being familiar to me already.   I knocked the rating back a little because some of the choices would have had a more localised influence than others (A Book of Mediterranean Food and The Cat in the Hat come most quickly to mind), and because there was a slight but noticeable political bias to the choices.  Whether that bias was the editors' or history's, I don't know, and I can't argue the impact most of these books had, so it's a pretty small quibble really.   A nice book for the bibliophile or the armchair historian who enjoys the trend of history through objects.