Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History - Hardcover

Taylor, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847242545 ISBN 13: 9781847242549

Publisher: Quercus, 2008

Synopsis

Books from every field of human creativity and intellectual endeavor - from poetry to politics, from fiction to philosophy, from theology to anthropology, and from economics to physics – have been selected to create a rounded and satisfying picture of how 50 towering achievements of the human intellect have built our societies, shaped our values, enhanced our understanding of the nature of the world, enabled technological advancements, and reflected our concerns and dilemmas, strengths and failings. In a series of engaging and lively essays, Andrew Taylor sets each work and its author firmly in historical context, summarizes the content of the work in question, and explores its wider influence and legacy. A fascinating and richly informative read.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Iliad, Homer. The Histories, Herodotus. The Analects, Confucius. The Republic, Plato. The Bible. Odes, Horace. Geographia, Ptolemy. Kama Sutra, Mallanaga Vatsyayana. The Qur'an. Canon of Medicine, Avicenna. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli. Atlas, Gerard Mercator. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes. First Folio, William Shakespeare. The Motion of the Heart and Blood, William Harvey. Two Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei. Principia mathematica, Isaac Newton. Dictionary, Samuel Johnson. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith. Common Sense, Thomas Paine. Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy. The Telephone Directory. The Thousand and One Nights, Sir Richard Burton. A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Poems, Wilfred Owen. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Albert Einstein. Ulysses, James Joyce. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes. If This is a Man, Primo Levi. Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson. Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling.

About the Author

Andrew Taylor has worked as a journalist in television, newspapers and magazines in Britain and the Middle East and is a regular columnist for the Sunday Times. His authorial credits include The World of Gerard Mercator and A Plum in Your Mouth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847242545
• ISBN 13: 9781847242549
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208