Intercollegiate Studies Institute - Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of The Century

Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of The Century

ISI published in 1999 a list of the fifty books that they consider the worst and the fifty that they consider the best, among the nonfiction books of the 20th century originally published in English. ISI defined the "worst" books as those that were "...widely celebrated in their day," but on reflection are "...foolish, wrong-headed, or even pernicious." The list of worst books has several books in common with the list of harmful books published by the conservative magazine Human Events.

The top five "very worst":

  1. Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
  2. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (1935)
  3. Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)
  4. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964)
  5. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)

ISI defined "best" as "volumes of extraordinary reflection and creativity in a traditional form, which heartens us with the knowledge that fine writing and clear-mindedness are perennially possible."

The top five "very best":

  1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
  2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)
  3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
  4. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)
  5. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (1934-1961)

Read more about this topic:  Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Famous quotes containing the words fifty, worst, books and/or century:

    “Let it not your wonder move,
    Less your laughter, that I love.
    Though I now write fifty years,
    I have had, and have, my peers;
    Poets, though divine, are men:
    Some have loved as old again.
    And it is not always face,
    Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
    Or the feature, or the youth;
    But the language, and the truth,
    With the ardour and the passion,
    Gives the lover weight and fashion.”
    —Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    “The conclusion has never changed: the worst sort of people come here for the worst sort of reasons and put upon those of us who have conveniently forgotten where we came from and how we got here.”
    —Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    ““The life of reason”Ma phrase once used by people who thought that reading books would deliver them from their passions.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.”
    —Anzia Yezierska (1881?–1970)