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":
- Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
- Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (1935)
- Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)
- Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964)
- 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":
- Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
- C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)
- Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
- T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)
- 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:
“The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)