Today the Corner
linked to a
National Review piece from 1999 listing their choices for the best non-fiction books of that century. I'm quite surprised to know that I own 7 of these books.
Here is how the panel defined their choices:
We have used a methodology that approaches the scientific. But-certainly beyond, say, the first 40 books-the fact of the books' presence on the list is far more important than their rankings. We offer a comment from a panelist after many of the books; but the panel overall, not the individual quoted, is responsible for the ranking. So, here is our list, for your enjoyment, mortification, and stimulation.
Typically amusing National Review Writing, wouldn't you say? :)
Now 7 out of 100 is probably not a great score...but I'm young and my book buying tastes have not always fallen along the lines of the non-fiction, far reaching, world-changing and extraordinary. (I still have my childhood collection of Baby-sitter Club and Nancy Drew Books). But I would say that 7% is a respectable score, given that I'd never heard of many of the books on the list.
Here are my 7 selections:
The Second World War, Winston S. Churchill
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Modern Times, Paul Johnson
The Diary of a Young Girl, The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Relativity, Relativity, Albert Einstein
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard Phillips Feynman
Just don't ask me how many of them I've read in their entirety :)
