What are the greatest NON-fiction works of the 20th century?

[WICKES]

Not just greatest but most influential/important as well?...I am thinking of stuff like

Stephen Hawking's Brief History Of Time
Foucault's Madness And Civilisation
Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene
Orwell's Homage To Catalonia ?
Wittgenstein's Tractatus ?
Bertrand Russell's History Of Western Philosophy ?
Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy/
Doors Of Perception
Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism
Freud's Interpretation Of Dreams
Nabokov: Speak Memory
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring
E F Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful
Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipeligo
Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic
Karl Popper: The Open Society
Evelyn Underhill: Mysticism



My personal favourites:

Robert Graves Goodbye To All That
Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections
E H Gombrich: The Story Of Art
Fritjof Capra: The Turning Point
Bertrand Russel: Autobiography
Siegfried Sassoon:Memoirs Of A foxhunting Man[U]
Philip Larkin: [U]Collected Letters
T E Lawrence: Seven Pillars Of Wisdom
Iris Murdoch: Existentialism and Mysticism
Ted Hughes: Birthday Letters

[Uberzensch]

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
Lacan's Ecrits
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Foucault's Other stuff!

I know there's more, which I'll add later...

[The Comedian]

Two truly beautiful works of non-fiction:

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I don’t know about greatest but here are some of the 20th century theorists who seem to crop up a lot on my degree from those not already mentioned:

*Saussure*
Roland Barthes
Derrida
Bakhtin
Fredric Jameson
Walter Benjamin
Roman Jakobson
Baudrillard
Julia Kristeva
Laura Mulvey

Pesonally I think Barthes "Death of the Author" is a must read as is the whole idea behind Saussure's system of signs.

[JBI]

The Art of T. S. Eliot by Helen Gardner is perhaps my favorite volume that I have read of literary criticism.

As for theory, The Great Code by Northrop frye is great for a pre-1980s look at literature, and then from there, well things get a little crazy, and I wouldn't consider Derrida's Of Grammatology to be the best at anything but confusing people, despite it being the most important book of literary theory in the last half of the 20th century.

I'm not even going to go into poetry right now, as I could spend several days listing good poetry books I have devoured.

Oh, and almost forgot, read Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the superb works of criticism and theory meshed together.

[Virgil]

I wouldn't count literary criticism as a great work of non-fiction. Frankly it should probably be some memoir or a biography or a work of history. Sorry criticism doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. And frankly who in God's name reads philosophy?

[mayneverhave]

I wouldn't count literary criticism as a great work of non-fiction. Frankly it should probably be some memoir or a biography or a work of history. Sorry criticism doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. And frankly who in God's name reads philosophy?

One could argue that Marx's economic ideas (which are directly related to his philosophical ideas) were of major influence on the events of the 20th century. These ideas were in turn influenced by Hegel and Kant - with Hegel, and later Neitzsche influencing German fascism. John Locke's liberalism influenced the foundation of the United States, and the government of his own nation.

At the very least, one can look to the philosophers as signs of the culture they are products of. The mere fact that you don't read them doesn't deny their influence, quality, or importance.

That aside, I would replace Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" with his "Principia Mathematica". The "History..", while good, wasn't necessarily a landmark work, and I'm not sure it stands out compared to other Histories of Philosophy other than in its brevity.

I would include Bergson's "Matter and Memory", William James's work on pragmatism, Ayer's "Language, Truth and Logic", and works by John Dewey.

Ah, and of course, Einstein's early papers on general and special relativity, which I know close to nothing about at the moment.

[JBI]

I wouldn't count literary criticism as a great work of non-fiction. Frankly it should probably be some memoir or a biography or a work of history. Sorry criticism doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. And frankly who in God's name reads philosophy?

Yes, but Gardner is a fantastic read. Let's be honest, humanity doesn't amount to much in the great scheme of the universe, but life is still pleasureful. The sense of greatness in books is problematic, since greatness cannot be calculated. I was just sharing some books I enjoyed. Biography, history, etc. are just other forms of text, if a text is good, genre doesn't matter.

[Mr_Rayber]

To the many great suggestions, I would have to add:

William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
Marcus Borg: Meeting Jesus again for the First Time ( I add this one because it bridged the chasm between intellectualism and faith for many people)
James Hillman: The Soul's Code

[Virgil]

Yes, but Gardner is a fantastic read. Let's be honest, humanity doesn't amount to much in the great scheme of the universe, but life is still pleasureful. The sense of greatness in books is problematic, since greatness cannot be calculated. I was just sharing some books I enjoyed. Biography, history, etc. are just other forms of text, if a text is good, genre doesn't matter.

True, and I didn't mean it to be an attack. Just an observation. I think we get caught up in our little worlds. I agree with your last sentence there. The only qualification of a great work is great writing.

[sixsmith]

The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
The opium of the intellectuals - Raymond Aron
The making of the English working class - E.P Thompson
The liberal imagination - Lionel Trilling
Goodbye to all that - Robert Graves
A theory of justice - John Rawls
Selected Essays - T.S Eliot
Anarchy, State and Utopia - Robert Nozick

[Mr_Rayber]

I assume that your last sentence there was made in jest. Personally, I love to read philosophy. :D



I wouldn't count literary criticism as a great work of non-fiction. Frankly it should probably be some memoir or a biography or a work of history. Sorry criticism doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. And frankly who in God's name reads philosophy?

[higley]

Well Virg's username clearly indicates that he's the sort of reader who would disregard philosophical works for the subtle prose of James Patterson. ;)

I would add some of the works by CS Lewis. I don't think I've ever been so totally fascinated by an author's use of language.

[Don Quixote Jr]

What are the greatest NON-fiction works of the 20th century?

EINSTEIN: Theory of Special Relativity and Theory of General Relativity
FREUD & JUNG: I can't pinpoint any one essay or paper, but their collected works must certainly rank as highly influential on how we think about ourselves
HAWKINGS: A Brief History of Time

[stlukesguild]

Rilke- Letters to a Young Poet and Diaries of a Young Poet
J.L. Borges- Non Fictions, Other Inquisitions, Seven Nights
Camus- The Myth of Sisyphus, etc...
E.M. Cioran- The Trouble with being Born
T.S. Eliot- Essays
Robert Hughes- The Shock of the New

Just a few suggestions.

[sixsmith]

Rilke- Letters to a Young Poet and Diaries of a Young Poet
J.L. Borges- Non Fictions, Other Inquisitions, Seven Nights
Camus- The Myth of Sisyphus, etc...
E.M. Cioran- The Trouble with being Born
T.S. Eliot- Essays
Robert Hughes- The Shock of the New

Just a few suggestions.

The Shock of the New:thumbs_up

[JBI]

Lu Hsun's essays too. Very important works.

[Taliesin]

My suggestions:
Gödel, "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" - Boy, wasn't that a blow. Also, his work prepared the way for Turing and the other - i.e computer science.
Kolmogorov, "Foundations of the Theory of Probability" - Axiomatizing probability theory - how else could you build statistics without it?
I think there should be a note of Turing, Church or someone else, since they basically laid the foundations of modern computer science, but I can't think of a single work by them.
Lebesgue, "Sur une généralisation de l'intégrale définie" was published in 1901 so this counts - thanks to this we have the Lebesgue integral.

[pagebypage]

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes. Government economists are still under his spell.

Democracy and Education by John Dewey. The guiding light of the American public school system.

[WICKES]

I know it is an odd one, but what about Winston Churchill's speeches? He was arguably the great man of the 20th century and his speeches represent the stand of humane, good humoured, liberal democracy against the toxic insanity of Stalin and Fascism. More than that, it was a stand for civilisation, which came very close to being annihilated in 1940.

"Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose
the war...if we fail, then the world will sink into a new dark age,
let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty"

You can hear a thousand years of British literature and history in his words
(he knew several of Shakespeare's plays off by heart).

[Uberzensch]

Karl Marx wrote in the 19th Century.

[Tsuyoiko]

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Language, Truth, and Logic by A J Ayer

Relativity by Albert Einstein

Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B F Skinner

[lichtrausch]

I know it is an odd one, but what about Winston Churchill's speeches? He was arguably the great man of the 20th century and his speeches represent the stand of humane, good humoured, liberal democracy against the toxic insanity of Stalin and Fascism. More than that, it was a stand for civilisation, which came very close to being annihilated in 1940.


Are you joking? If not I invite you to read up on the fire bombing of Dresden.

[WICKES]

Are you joking? If not I invite you to read up on the fire bombing of Dresden.

I didn't say he was perfect. He was a bungler who came up with disasterous military adventures like Galipoli and was a bit of a reactionary who wanted to hold onto Britain's vast empire long after it was realistic. But in 1940 he embodied something- liberal democracy and freedom- in a world that was teetering on the edge of an abyss. Without Churchill the whole of continental Europe would have come under either Fascist control or the raping, looting armies of Stalin. The USA would have had to face the Nazi/Japanese or Stalin war machine alone. A war machine in control of the resources of a third of the globe. You can only judge people according to the time and place in which they lived. Amid the screaming and ranting of lunatics like the Japanese Generals, like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco or the cold blooded madness of Stalin, all of whom regarded compassion as a ridiculous weakness, Churchill did stand for humanitarianism and civilisation. He was a symbol, not only to the Brits, Americans, Australians, Canadians etc, but to intelligent, civlised German-speaking people like Jung (who greatly admired him), like Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann.

Having been the leader of a nation that came very close to being brutally invaded (in which case he would either have shot himself or been killed by the SS) and had suffered terribly, he might have been expected to want the German civilians in 1945 to be subjected to the rape, looting and violence that took place in the areas under Soviet control. Instead he declared his conviction that "in defeat defiance, in victory magnanimity" and that he had never hated the German people. He was also one of the earliest supporters of a European Union.


As for Dresden, that wasn't Churchill's personal idea. It was a result of poor intelligence, the brutalising effect of 4 years of total war, the British desire to get revenge for the annihilation of Coventry and the bombing of London (when Dresden took place the Germans were working on rocket attacks on London- the V1 and V2 rockets, capable of wiping out whole streets in a single explosion) and the cruelty of 'bomber Harris', a man with an intense hatred for Germany and an obsessive determination to destroy German cities. It was a terrible mistake and something the British and Americans should be ashamed of.