The other day I came across a blog post by NY Times columnist Ross Douthat ranking the most influential books in his life. That’s not the question I’m asking, but it got me thinking…
Leaving out the major religious texts: What would you say was the most influential book of all time? On all of humanity? What book do you think had the biggest impact on the world?
Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
The Jungle?
Mein Kampf?
1984?
A Tale of Two Cities?
Herodotus’ Histories?
The Communist Manifesto?
The Little Engine That Could?
I'd vote for 'The Communist Manifesto' for forever changing the destiny (for good or bad) of humankind.
regards,
Bhushan Nigale, Bangalore.
From an Alaskan perspective I would say Going Rogue. I kid! I kid! If the same question was applied to an Alaskan work though, I would say Kantner's Ordinary Wolves.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is worth mentioning, as is Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, in terms of being influential for many who care about the direction of humanity.
Atlas Shrugged rocked my world!
Sometimes it's easy to think that maybe any Nobel Prize winning book would do, but then not everyone reads those. Shouldn't the question be: what book has gotten people reading again? In a world filled with the media and visual stimuli, a book that gets people to sit down and read is what's important.
The Art of War?
I have to agree with earlier posts and say…
THE ART OF WAR
The fight for power–the game–changed with the introduction of this knowledge.
Wow. I'm surprised The Lord of the Rings was only mentioned once… I think it is acknowledged as the bestselling NOVEL of all time. (Excluding religious texts).
It began fantasy as we know it today.
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. It reinvented Christmas. Amazing, really.
Definitely To Kill a Mockingbird.
I think the correct answer should actually be "can not determine from the information given". But I'll enter into the postulated framework of the question and say Plato's Republic.
-Steve
Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
To Kill a Mockingbird, In Cold Blood, The Catcher in the Rye.
The telephone book.
Excellent post, love all the books that have influenced everyone either from The Beginning of Recorded Time perspective, which is what I would have gone for (Homer, Plato, Aristotle…)
or moveable type, making the n book accessible to everyone, or even what has been most influential to everyone's life personally, or your own nation historically.
My thoughts were Homer, but I can see Shakespeare and Don Quixote, too.
Kristi
…throwing any and all statistics out the window, and basing the decision from personal opinion only…it's "Where the Red Fern Grows," by Wilson Rawls. (with a shout out to "Lord of the Flies."
Euclid's Elements
For the most influential book of ALL TIME I would have to say the first book ever set into type by Gutenburg – making the first book-as-portable-object-with-increased-availability-to-all paved the way for all books to come. At the risk of being deleted, I mean this as a "technology" comment. Not a content comment.
Clay – I LOVE Euclid. I will never forget the day that I got to and realized that I understood Euclid's 47th prop. It was a great epiphany.
The Twelve Tables, the first written account of Roman Law. By the end of the twentieth century, the influence of Roman law spread to every country in the world.
For me during a difficult time, it was Edgar Allen Poe, all of his works but definitely "The Raven". Their are plenty of influential works in my life but he stands out.
I'm with Phyllis on this one, any book that basically launched a genre.
Wilkie Collin's The Moonstone launched the detective/mystery genre.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings invented the modern, world-building epic fantasy series.
Or how about Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. He didn't even finish the thing and it's still required reading.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
I just finished reading my first Faulkner book, As I Lay Dying. While I initially hated some of the stream of consciousness in the book, particularly Vardaman's, it still resonates with me.
I've found myself going back to the classics now that I'm older and I think books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and A Handmaid's Tale seem to resonate with me the most.
That really is a great question. According to UNESCO 80% of the world's population over 15 can read. There is no figure for how many have actually read a book. But thinking about it, the most influential books influence more than just those who read them.
On a personal, subjective level I would probably pick The Power of One by Bryce Courtney. Objectively, I'd have to go with Darwin's Origin of The Species as the book that gave us the single biggest step forward in the process of understanding ourselves.
The Prophet
by
Khalil Gibran
–Jake
Man oh man oh man. Put up a blog post, establish some parameters for discussion, watch people jump the fence.
How about an extremely evil book that did an enormous amount of damage? A book that was a lie, purported to be a work of one dark conspiracy, but was in fact the work of another. Millions died, because of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
"The Wizard of Oz!" Hands down the best children's book I have ever read. That includes The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and Hans Christian Anderson.
That damn tornado not only scared the hell out of me, (I'm thinking for the rest of my life) but, as a kid I used to roam the streets looking for underground shelter whenever the wind picked up. And I lived in a city that had never had a tornado touch down, in like, ever! Which is a good thing, since the houses didn't even have basements. So, in a thunderstorm, I was stuck like a truck going amuck!
What Peter Benchley did for the great white shark, Frank Baum did for tornadoes.
But Frank Baum also transported me into another world; a world of magic and enchantment, a world that said there's hope, there's goodwill, there's peace and happiness everywhere, if you look for it and not let adversity stand in the way. Just follow the yellow brick road, and, as an aside, avoid the wicked witch of the East.
I clearly remember pestering people all day long with questions, like, why are bricks red and not yellow? And they'd say, "because they aren't, or, because they aren't made that way, now go away and join the fly kingdom so I can swat you down." Ok, the last part was an exxxaggeration.
Then there was the ruby red shoes issue. (I had to have ruby red shoes!) The house dropping on a witch issue, (I cried seeing those wicked feet sticking out from under the house), and the, I really need to talk to the Good Witch of the North issue.
And then, of course, I had a lot in common with the munchkins. So I tried to dress like them and talk like them. Sounded like I swallowed my mouth.
Then I tried finding a wizard to stick a brain, a heart, and courage into my stupid, smileyface dolls.
Ah yes, childhood. Could not have done it without
Frank Baum!
I am FLOORED by how many people chose something less than one hundred years old. Even two hundred years old is shockingly short-sighted. Merciful heavens.
For me it would be a toss-up between 100 Years of Solitude, Atlas Shrugged, or Les Miserables…
Poor Nathan. Even with narrowing, too much ocean was left for so many disparate swimmers.
Sorry for being AWOL yesterday and late to the debate –
Novel – Don Quixote
Writing – Euclid's Elements
Story (epic) – Gilgamesh
Play – Richared III
I agree that nothing remotely modern could be the "most influential of all time" to this point. Those who suppose a far distant future changed by a modern author may have to post their view of that far distant world.
great topic. It all depends on how you measure influence of course. It'd be hard to come up with many definitions where Gutenberg's Bible didn't win hands down, though – both because of its knock-on effect on the Reformation, the treatment of the New World and so on, but also because of movable type itself.
I'd like to propose Epicurus' On Nature as an alternative for its impact on scientific method and, well, the whole of modernity really
Lord of the Rings…It is still one of the greatest stories ever told and if you really read it, it resinates a very much like our history with the Nazis,
The great battles that are raged…
or the way we are "killing" the planet…"His mind is made of metal"…the symbolisms still apply even today…just a thought…
As a bookoholic, a ravenous reader, I loved reading all the selections. I agree that one book is not reasonable. We are all different, we all live through difficult times. When I was 10, I received "Anne of Green Gables". She became an idol. She never gave up. In high school it was Geogette Heyer because at 19 she wrote a hilarious love story for her sick brother. Then before my husband died w/a brain tumor, someone thoughtfully gave me "For the Caregiver;" I didn't realize how much I needed that until I began to read. I've read all the books by the author of the Red Parachute books.Then my father died and the Garegiver book was pulled out again, my mother iis 91. I did that for another 12 years, then my daughter decided I should have a life of my own and take care of myself.
As a drama teacher, Shakespeare's Plays are fabulous, especially when you use the originals because they haven't been toned down for the 9th grade lit class. We did "Comedy of Errors" and over 500 people in a town of 35000 attended.
Now I'm retired, I'm returning to writing scifi romances. I had 4 books published in the late 70' but had to have some jobs to pay all the medical bills, and raise 3 teens:1 in college,11th, 9th. and I taught night classes at the jr. College with a Masters in Communication so I rather wished I'd had "Interpersonal Communication" classes before I got married or stepped out the front door. For my mother's generation here inthe southwest she read Zane Grey & Grace Livingston Hill. My kids loved all Dr Seuss books and find Waldo, the middle school are caught up in Harry Potter, StarWars.
The highschool: Twilight Series.The only books that have crossed all our lives to some extent are the Bible, either for or against and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" made thinking people realize that we are all equal and changed people's thinking except for those who thought they deserved to be waited on.
Lord of the Rings
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. If we exempt religious books, then it is difficult to think of any other single book that has had as much impact. The Communist governments of the Soviet Union, China, and other countries came about in large part because of the ideas of that book. Those governments in turn have had significant influence on the entire planet.
In contrast, I don’t believe democracy can be traced to any one single book or author.
As far as American history goes, I think Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin were extremely influential. Common Sense helped bring about the American Revolution, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped to bring about the American Civil War.
The Alchemist, By Paul Cohelo and The Illiad and the Odyssey.. I did my first "serious" drawings as illustrations…
Jane Eyre.
Not a lot of people have read "Earth and High Heaven" by Gwethalyn Graham. It tells the story of an unlikely romance between Marc Reiser, a Jew from a small mining town in northern Ontario, and Erica Drake from a well-respected family in Montreal Society. Their romance is met with resistance from all sides. The author absolutely captures how underlying racism dictates the boundaries of our worlds. It FORCES the reader to look honestly at the prejudices still lurking in even the most liberal hearts. This book totally opened my eyes to my own and shaped the rest of my life. I still go back to it the way some people go to Scripture passages. It keeps me true
Catcher and the Rye – no doubt!
Of fiction I would say the Lord of the Rings but I'm just a Ring Nut so my opinion there might not have any sway. lol.
Perhaps the fence wasn't high enough, Nathan. I preferred to look at modern times rather than 'anything older than 100 years' as one commenter said. Reason: availability of books to the masses.
Books weren't available to the majority of people for a hell of a long time, so their influence, regardless of type of book, came from the elite who could read and usually were in positions of power.
Everyone interprets things differently, and depending on age, generation, etc., we will base our answers on our own background and reading experience.
Tolerance is a virtue, and perhaps some of the commenters need to be reminded of that.
Well, maybe that book they mention in Amazing Grace. It seemed to have made the abolitionist movement a big deal instead of a fringe idea.
I was most influenced by Jack Kerouac's books.
First off, the telephone book is obsolete.
Second, any book from the last 100 years is uber precocious.
So…
Most Influential Book of All Time: the 1st book off the printing press. That rattled the world. Go Gutenberg!
RUNNERS UP:
Politics: Marx's Communist Manifesto
Science: Darwin's Origin of the Species
English departments: Shakespeare's King Lear or Melville's Moby Dick
Y.A.: Hinton's The Outsiders
Influence = change. What one book has created an actual perceivable change? One that many have not read, but from its pages a religion was formed and new thought patterns blossomed. That book would be "Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East" by Baird T. Spalding. However, since it is a 6 volume text, it may not qualify. It is also a spiritual book so that may disqualify it as well. However, it is not a major religious text.
We have a running bet in our house which is this: You have to be in a spiritually sound place to read this book. I have yet to meet someone who has read all six volumes. Time and time again I have been told of the fascination that people have with it, but for some reason people cannot finish it. I would love to know if anyone here has read it in its entirety. Anyways, I believe it is the most influential book, outside of major religious texts, of all time.
I'll have to say the one that I'm reading right now and that's Mountains Beyong Mountains. Nothing has made me think so much on topics such as class struggles, liberation theology, and what mankind is capable of doing until I've begun reading this book. I recommend it to whoever is looking for a great read!
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It's going to be different for everybody. The books that have influenced me the most aren't even on the list. For me, it's an e-book – Kal Bashir's HERO'S JOURNEY AND TRANSFORMATION THROUGH A NEW WORLD / STATE. I'm a writer and it's a story structure book.
I think most people are posting the most influential books their lives, and not as requested, of all time.
Having said that, The Odyssey for me qualified as both. My mother read that to my brother and I at an early age, it has stuck with me as the most thrilling book I’ve (almost) read as well as the most influential of all time.
More recently:
Western world: Don Quixote,
English Language: Shakespeare
America: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird
I think most people are posting the most influential books their lives, and not as requested, of all time.
Having said that, The Odyssey for me qualified as both. My mother read that to my brother and I at an early age, it has stuck with me as the most thrilling book I’ve (almost) read as well as the most influential of all time.
More recently:
Western world: Don Quixote,
English Language: Shakespeare
America: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird