The 222 Greatest Works of Nonfiction
This is our first attempt at creating a list of the greatest nonfiction of all time. It's been the most difficult of our Greatest Literature lists to get just right. Frankly we're not confident we have got it just right. Nor are we sure it's possible to ever perfect such a list.
As with all our Greatest lists we have accommodated the suggestions and judgments of readers, writers, critics and scholars, as expressed individually or on their own lists. But for this Greatest list we have also had to consider the widest diversity of subject matters, including history, philosophy, science, economics, travel, sociology, psychology, biography, memoirs, plus many other hard-to-categorize genres or subgenres of nonfictional literature.
There's also the little problem of knowing what "greatest of all time" means in this context. Many factual works set milestones in human thought and were of earth-shaking importance in their own eras, only to be superseded by publications of more advanced knowledge in later years. Are they still to be considered great?
Some writings of enormous impact are presented in formats containing contain technical material sensible only to those with expertise in those disciplines. On the other hand, many popularizing works of nonfiction serve to educate the general reading public on the more esoteric fields without breaking any new ground themselves. Which kind of work is most important to be included in any "greatest" list?
We have tried to be as liberal as possible in balancing historical and modern assessments, as well as scholarly and popular assessments, to determine the works of most interest to all kinds of readers.
Having scoured the online and real worlds for other nonfiction lists as part of our greatest literature research, we are confident this may be the most authoritative nonfiction list available—so far.
As always, the research is ongoing. Watch for updates as we continue to seek the elusively perfect Greatest Works of Nonfiction list.
Latest update: January 2, 2025
c.1500–900 BCE
The Vedas
by Anonymous, India
Essay collection
c.500 BCE
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu, China
Nonfiction
431–404 BCE
Histories
by Herodotus, Greece
History
c.400 BCE
Tao Te Ching
by Laozi (Lao Tzu), China
Nonfiction
c.385–370 BCE
The Symposium
by Plato, Greece
Philosophy
c.380 BCE
The Republic
by Plato, Greece
Dialogue, also known as Plato's Republic
It is hard to know how to classify the philosophical classic The Republic, or any writing by Plato, as literature. Or to know even whether it is a literary work. It's published writing, so it is literature in the broadest sense. But.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy
c.380 BCE
History of the Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides, Greece
Nonfiction
c.370 BCE
Phaedrus
by Plato, Greece
Philosophy
c.370 BCE
Anabasis
by Xenophon, Greece
Nonfiction, also known as The March of the Ten Thousand
c.370 BCE
Cyropaedia
by Xenophon, Greece
Biography, also known as The Education of Cyrus
c.350 BCE
Nichomachean Ethics
by Aristotle, Greece
Philosophy
c.350 BCE
Metaphysics
by Aristotle, Greece
Philosophy
c.200 BCE
The Analects
by Confucius, China
Nonfiction, also known as Selected Sayings
c.50 BCE
On the Nature of Things
by Lucretius, Rome
Philosophy
46 BCE
Commentaries on the Civil War
by Julius Caesar, Rome
Nonfiction
27 BCE–9 CE
History of Rome
by Livy, Rome
History
65 CE
Letters from a Stoic
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Rome
Philosophy, also known as Moral Epistles
c.100
Parallel Lives
by Plutarch, Greece
Biography, also known as The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
108
Discourses
by Epictetus, Greece
Nonfiction
c.116
Annals
by Tacitus, Rome
History
121
The Twelve Caesars
by Suetonius, Rome
Biography, also known as Lives of the Caesars
175
Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius, Rome
Philosophy
397–0400
Confessions
by Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), Algeria
Memoir
c.1000
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
by Sei Shonagon, Japan
Diary
1298–1299
The Travels of Marco Polo
by Rustichello da Pisa, Italy
Travel, also known as Book of the Marvels of the World
1330–1332
Essays in Idleness
by Yoshida Kenkō, Japan
Essay collection, also known as The Harvest of Leisure
1511
In Praise of Folly
by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Netherlands
Essay, also known as The Praise of Madness
1532
The Prince
by Niccolo Machiavelli, Italy
Nonfiction
1543
On the Fabric of the Human Body
by Andreas Vesalius, Netherlands
Science
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
by Nicolaus Copernicus, Poland
Science
1550–1568
Lives of the Artists
by Giorgio Vasari, Italy
Biography, also known as The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
1568
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Spain
Memoir
1580
Essays
by Michel de Montaigne, France
Essay collection
1621
The Anatomy of Melancholy
by Robert Burton, England
Nonfiction
1624
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes
by John Donne, England
Nonfiction
1632
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
by Galileo Galilei, Italy
Science
1641
Meditations on First Philosophy
by René Descartes, France
Philosophy
1644
Areopagitica
by John Milton, England
speech, subtitled A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England
1651
Leviathan
by Thomas Hobbes, England
Philosophy
1660
Diary
by Samuel Pepys, England
diary
1665
Micrographia
by Robert Hooke, England
Science
1672
The Life Written by Himself
by Avvákum Petróv, Russia
Biography, also known as The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, by Himself
1677
Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order
by Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Republic
Nonfiction
1687
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
by Isaac Newton, England
Science
1689
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An
by John Locke, England
Philosophy
1693
Brief Lives
by John Aubry, England
Biography
1710
The Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
by George Berkeley, Ireland
Philosophy
1729
A Modest Proposal
by Jonathan Swift, England
Essay with full title: A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick
1739
A Treatise of Human Nature
by David Hume, Scotland
Philosophy
1762
The Social Contract
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Switzerland
Philosophy
1776
Common Sense
by Thomas Paine, United States
Nonfiction
1776–1789
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
by Edward Gibbon, England
Nonfiction:history
1778
The Diary of Fanny Burney
by Fanny Burney, England
Memoir
1782
Confessions
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Switzerland
Memoir
1789
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
by Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), Benin
Memoir
1790
Reflections on the Revolution in France
by Edmund Burke, Ireland
Nonfiction
1791
Life of Samuel Johnson
by James Boswell, England
Biography
1792
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
by Mary Wollstonecraft, England
Nonfiction
1793
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin, United States
Memoir
1807
The Phenomenology of Spirit
by G.W.F. Hegel, Germany
Philosophy, also known as The Phenomenology of Mind
1814
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
by Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, United States
Nonfiction
1821
Rameau's Nephew
by Denis Diderot, France
Philosophy
1821
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
by Thomas De Quincey, England
Memoir
1835–1840
Democracy in America
by Alexis de Tocqueville, France
Nonfiction
1840
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., United States
Memoir
1843
Fear and Trembling
by Søren Kierkegaard, Denmark
Nonfiction
1845
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism
by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Argentina
Nonfiction
The Voyage of the Beagle
by Charles Darwin, England
Science
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
by Frederick Douglass, United States
Memoir
1848
The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Germany
Polemics
1849–1850
Memoirs from Beyond the Grave
by Francois René de Chateaubriand, France
Memoir
1854
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau, United States
Nonfiction
1859
On the Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin, England
Science
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
by Elizabeth Gaskell, England
Biography
1859
On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill, England
Philosophy
1860
The Civilization of The Renaissance In Italy
by Jacob Burckhaardt, Switzerland
Nonfiction
1861
Utilitarianism
by John Stuart Mill, England
Philosophy
1883
Life on the Mississippi
by Mark Twain, United States
Memoir
1897
De Profundis
by Oscar Wilde, Ireland
Nonfiction
1899
The Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Freud, Austria
Psychology
1902
The Varieties of Religious Experience
by William James, England
Nonfiction
1903
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois, United States
Essay collection
1905
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
by Max Weber, Germany
sociology
1912
Psychology of the Unconscious
by Carl Jung, Switzerland
Nonfiction
1916
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
by Albert Einstein, Germany
Science
The Course In General Linguistics
by Ferdinand de Saussure, Switzerland
Nonfiction
1918
Eminent Victorians
by Lytton Strachey, England
Biography
1919
Ten Days That Shook the World
by John Reed, United States
History
1921
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austria
Nonfiction
1922
The Enormous Room
by e.e. cummings, United States
Nonfiction novel
1926
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by T.E. Lawrence, Wales
Memoir, also known as Revolt in the Desert
1927
Being and Time
by Martin Heidegger, Germany
Nonfiction
1929
Good-Bye to All That
by Robert Graves, England
Memoir
Room of One's Own,A
by Virginia Woolf, England
Essay
1930
Civilization and Its Discontents
by Sigmund Freud, Austria
Nonfiction
1933
Testament of Youth
by Vera Brittain, England
Memoir
Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell, England
Memoir
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein, United States
Memoir
1936
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
by John Maynard Keynes, England
Economics
1937
Out of Africa
by Isak Dinesen, Denmark
Memoir
1941
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia
by Rebecca West, England
Travel
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
by James Agee, Walker Evans, United States
Nonfiction
1942
The Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus, Algeria
Essay
The World of Yesterday
by Stefan Zweig, Austria
Memoir
West with the Night
by Beryl Markham, Kenya
Memoir
1943
Being and Nothingness
by Jean-Paul Sartre, France
Nonfiction:philosophy
1944
What Is Life?
by Erwin Schrödinger, Austria
Science
1945
The Open Society and Its Enemies
by Karl Popper, Austria
Nonfiction
A History of Western Philosophy
by Bertrand Russell, England
Nonfiction with original full title A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
The Crack-Up
by F. Scott Fitzgerald, United States
Essay collection
Black Boy
by Richard Wright, United States
Memoir, subtitled A Record of Childhood and Youth
1946
Man 's Search for Meaning
by Victor Frankl, Austria
Nonfiction
Hiroshima
by John Hersey, United States
Nonfiction novel
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
by Benjamin Spock, United States
Nonfiction
1947
The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank, Germany
Diary, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank
If This Is a Man
by Primo Levi, Italy
Memoir, also known as Survival in Auschwitz
One Two Three... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science
by George Gamow, United States
Science
1948
Journey to the Alcarria
by Camilo José Cela, Spain
Nonfiction
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin, United States
Science
1948–1949
Journal
by Franz Kafka, Bohemia
diary
1948–1953
The Second World War
by Winston Churchill, England
Nonfiction
1949
The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir, France
Nonfiction
1950
The Labyrinth of Solitude
by Octavio Paz, Mexico
Essay collection
1951
The Rebel
by Albert Camus, Algeria
Essay
The Origins of Totalitarianism
by Hannah Arendt, Germany
Nonfiction
1953
Philosophical Investigations
by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austria
Philosophy
Captive Mind,The
by Czesław Miłosz, Poland
Nonfiction
1954
The Doors of Perception
by Aldous Huxley, England
Nonfiction
My Left Foot
by Christy Brown, Ireland
Memoir
1955
Triste Tropiques
by Claude Lévi-Strauss, France
Memoir
Notes of a Native Son
by James Baldwin, United States
Nonfiction
1956
Night
by Elie Wiesel, United States
Memoir
1957
Mythologies
by Roland Barthes, France
Essay collection
1958
Borstal Boy
by Brendan Behan, Ireland
Memoir
The Affluent Society
by John Kenneth Galbraith, United States
Economics
1959
Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft
by Thor Heyerdahl, Norway
Nonfiction
Down Second Avenue
by E'skia Mphahlele's, South Africa
Memoir
1960
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
by William L. Shirer, United States
Nonfiction
1961
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs, Canada
Nonfiction
1962
The Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson, United States
Science
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas Kuhn, United States
Nonfiction
1963
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
by Richard P. Feynman, United States
Science
The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan, United States
Nonfiction
The Making of the British Working Class
by E.P. Thompson, United States
Nonfiction
1964
Understanding Media
by Marshall McLuhan, Canada
Nonfiction, subtitled The Extensions of Man
Quotations from Chairman Mao
by Mao Zedong, China
Nonfiction
A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway, United States
Memoir
Man and His Symbols
by Carl Jung, Switzerland
Psychology
1965
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by as told to Alex Haley, United States
Biography
1966
The Order of Things
by Michel Foucault, France
Philosophy
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote, United States
Nonfiction novel
Against Interpretation
by Susan Sontag, United States
Nonfiction
1967
Capital
by Karl Marx, Germany
Economics
Nicholas and Alexandra
by Robert K. Massie, United States
Biography
Hell's Angels
by Hunter S. Thompson, United States
Nonfiction novel
The Double Helix
by James Watson, United States
Science
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe, United States
Nonfiction
1969
Here's to You, Jesusa
by Elena Poniatowska, Mexico
Nonfiction novel
1970
The Female Eunuch
by Germaine Greer, Australia
Nonfiction
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou, United States
Memoir
1971
The Insect Societies
by Edward O. Wilson, United States
Science
1973
Awakenings
by Oliver Sacks, England
Science
The Gulag Archipelago
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russia
Nonfiction
The Cosmic Connection
by Carl Sagan, United States
Science
1974
All the Presidents' Men
by Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, United States
Nonfiction
1975
The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi, Italy
Memoir
1976
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins, England
Science
The Hite Report
by Shere Hite, United States
Nonfiction
The Woman Warrior
by Maxine Hong Kingston, United States
Memoir
1977
Dispatches
by Michael Herr, United States
Memoir
The First Three Minutes
by Steven Weinberg, United States
Science
1979
Gaia
by James Lovelock, England
Science
The Executioner's Song
by Norman Mailer, United States
Nonfiction novel
The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe, United States
Journalism
1980
Cosmos
by Carl Sagan, United States
Science
1981
The Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould, United States
Science
1982
Schindler's Ark
by Thomas Keneally, Australia
Nonfiction novel, also known as Schindler's List
Wittgenstein's Nephew
by Thomas Bernhard, Austria
Memoir
Summer in Baden-Baden
by Leonard Tsypkin, Russia
Biography
1983
Gorillas in the Mist
by Dian Fossey, United States
Science
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens
by Alice Walker, United States
Essay
1984
Flaubert's Parrot
by Julian Barnes, England
novel
1985
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks, England
Science
1986
Kaffir Boy
by Mark Mathabane, South Africa
Memoir
1988
Manufacturing Consent
by Noam Chomsky, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled The Political Economy of the Mass Media
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking, England
Science
1989
This Boy's Life
by Tobias Wolff, United States
Memoir
1989
The Emperor's New Mind
by Roger Penrose, England
Science
1991
Wild Swans
by Jung Chang, China
Nonfiction novel
1994
Long Walk to Freedom
by Nelson Mandella, South Africa
Memoir
1995
The Liar's Club
by Mary Karr, United States
Memoir
1996
Angela's Ashes
by Frank McCourt, Ireland
Memoir
1997
Falling Leaves
by Adeline Yen Mah, China
Memoir
I Have Lived a Thousand Years
by Livia Bitton-Jackson, Israel
Memoir
1999
No Logo
by Naomi Klein, Canada
Nonfiction
2000
On Writing
by Stephen King, United States
Memoir
2000–2001
Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi, Iran
Graphic memoir
2002
A Tale of Love and Darkness
by Amos Oz, Israel
Memoir
The Bookseller of Kabul
by Åsne Seierstad, Norway
Nonfiction novel
2003
Reading Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafisi, Iran
Memoir
2005
The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion, United States
Memoir
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls, United States
Memoir
2006
The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins, England
Nonfiction
Fun Home
by Alison Bechdel, United States
Graphic memoir
What Is the What
by Dave Eggers, United States
Nonfiction novel
2007
The Shock Doctrine
by Naomi Klein, Canada
Nonfiction
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah, Sierra Leone
Memoir
Three Cups of Tea
by Gregory Mortenson, David Oliver Rehn, United States
Memoir
2009
My Struggle: A Death in the Family
by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norway
Memoir
2010
The Hare with Amber Eyes
by Edmund de Waal, England
Memoir
The Emperor of All Maladies
by Siddhartha Mukherjee, United States
Nonfiction
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot, United States
Nonfiction
Just Kids
by Patti Smith, United States
Memoir
2011
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson, England
Memoir
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari, Israel
Nonfiction
Thinking Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman, Israel
Nonfiction
2013
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
by Svetlana Alexievich, Belarus
Nonfiction
2014
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, United States
History
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert, United States
Nonfiction
2015
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates, United States
Nonfiction
Negroland: A Memoir
by Margo Jefferson, United States
Memoir
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