# The Dope List of 100 books of the 20th Century **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 19, 2002, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639 "2002-08-19T20:21:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/61 "2002-08-20T21:41:58Z")
Another non-fiction nomination… **Man’s Search For Meaning** (Viktor Frankl) ::Algernon looks around:: Doesn’t _anyone_ else read business books??? They are quite influential within their own domain. I need to add… **The Peter Principle** (Laurence Peter) **A Passion For Excellence** (Tom Peters) ::slinks away:: ---
**Author:** ![Threadkiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@Threadkiller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Threadkiller)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/62 "2002-08-20T22:20:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Algernon \* > ::Algernon looks around:: > Doesn’t _anyone_ else read business books??? They are quite influential within their own domain. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People–Covey The Dilbert Principle–Adams ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/63 "2002-08-20T22:32:28Z")
Seconding or thirding some to get them on the list: Things Fall Apart – Achebe The Diary of Anne Frank – Frank The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood Goodnight Moon – Brown To Kill a Mockingbird – Lee How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Seuss The Cat In The Hat --Seuss Farenheit 451 – Bradbury ---
**Author:** ![Wearia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/13edae/32.png) [@Wearia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wearia)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/64 "2002-08-21T05:27:55Z")
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee ---
**Author:** ![pekkerwud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f8ce5/32.png) [@pekkerwud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pekkerwud)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/65 "2002-08-21T06:17:47Z")
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand Watership Down - Richard Adams Ender’s Game (& sequels) - Orson Scott Card Geek Love - Katherine Dunn Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald ---
**Author:** ![Gopher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gopher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gopher)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/66 "2002-08-21T07:56:58Z")
Repeats of what lots of people said. The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo Dune - Frank Herbert ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/67 "2002-08-21T14:06:39Z")
Has this one been nominated yet?.. **One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest** - Ken Kesey Also, I see that several “collected works” volumes have been nominated. If those are eligible, then I nominate: **The Complete Stories** - Flannery O’Connor More non-fiction: **Undaunted Courage** - Stephen Ambrose **Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn** - Evan S. Connell **The Civil War, A Narrative** (in three volumes) - Shelby Foote **With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln** - Stephen B. Oates **To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown** - Stephen B. Oates **D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II** - Stephen Ambrose And I’ll second (or third or whatever): **USA** - John Dos Passos **The Devil’s Dictionary** - Ambrose Bierce So anyone want to go back and do the math to see what our list looks like so far? ---
**Author:** ![stofsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dfb087/32.png) [@stofsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stofsky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/68 "2002-08-21T14:06:53Z")
Mostly repeats, some already thirded: **Slaughterhouse V** **Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance** **Gatsby** **Any Pynchon** (has _anyone_ been more influential post-WWII?) **Ulysses** **On the Road** **Lolita** (Nabokov is possibly more influential than Pynchon) **Portnoy’s Complaint** **Name of the Rose** And to add: **Sophie’s Choice** , Styron **Child of God** , McCarthy I can’t believe that nobody has mentioned the collection of stories that created the ubiquitous 3 Laws of Robotics: **I, Robot** , Asimov **As I Lay Dying** , Faulkner Lord, could I go on and on! ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/69 "2002-08-21T16:35:36Z")
And nobody has nominated Marcel Proust’s _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_? **Ulysses** , James Joyce \*\*Native Son \*\*, Richard Wright **Black Boy** Every William Faulkner novel, starting with **Light in August\*\*\*\*The Sun Also Rises** , Ernest Hemingway ---
**Author:** ![Adam\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Adam\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adam_P)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/70 "2002-08-21T18:21:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > \*\*And nobody has nominated Marcel Proust’s _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_? I did. See above post. I used the english-translation title: IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. So that makes two votes. But how can poor Proust compete with Ayn freaking Rand? (just how many votes did that crypto-fascist nutjob get anyway?) ---
**Author:** ![Adam\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Adam\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adam_P)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/71 "2002-08-21T18:32:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by stofsky \* > \*\*Mostly repeats, some already thirded: > > [B **Any Pynchon** (has _anyone_ been more influential post-WWII?) > [ \*\* Nope. GRAVITY’S RAINBOW is hands-down the most influential post-WWII novel. But you should probably specify a particular book rather than his whole oeuvre. Pynchon’s most influential books are V, GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and THE CRYING OF LOT 49 but MASON & DIXON and VINELAND have had minimal influence and are usually regarded as Pynchon-lite, the work of a once-master whose creative powers seem to be dwindling in his old-age. BTW, I put V and GR on my list. But I vote for THE CRYING OF LOT 49 too. This amazing little novel single-handedly created the paranoia-genre familiar to readers of DeLillo, J.G Ballard and Neal Stephenson. ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/72 "2002-08-21T20:09:54Z")
Here are the votes so far (through Adam P’s post of 8-21-02 1:21 CDT). There are a total of 585 nominations, with the following 95 receiving at least 2 votes (the number of votes appears right before the title). 14 1984 - George Orwell 11 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 8 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 8 Lord of the Rings–Tolkien 7 Animal Farm by George Orwell. 6 Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger 6 In Cold Blood – Capote 6 On the Road, Kerouac 6 Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut) 6 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance–Pirsig 5 Brave New World - Huxley 5 Diary of Anne Frank – Frank 5 Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald 5 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 5 Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck 5 Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer 5 Stranger in a Strange Land, fiction, Robert A. Heinlein 5 The Sun Also Rises–Ernest Hemingway 5 Ulysses - James Joyce 4 Atlas Shrugged (Rand) 4 Catch 22 (Heller) 4 Demon Haunted World (Sagan) 4 Hobbit–Tolkien 4 Invisible Man (Ellison). 4 Lolita - Nabokov 4 Lord of the Flies–Golding 4 Night – Weisel 4 Silent Spring - Rachel Carson: 3 A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith 3 Farenheit 451 – Bradbury 3 Foundation Series–Isaac Asmiov 3 Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter) 3 Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood 3 Interpreation of Dreams, Freud 3 Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo 3 Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett 3 Mein Kampf - Hitler (indeed influential) 3 Name of the Rose (Eco). 3 Native Son – Wright 3 Portnoy’s Complaint - Roth 3 Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe 3 Second Sex (de Beauvoir) 3 USA - John Dos Passos 3 Winesburg Ohio - Sherwood Anderson 2 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 2 All Quiet on the Western Front – Remarque 2 An Incomplete Education (Jones, Wilson) 2 And The Band Played On (Randy Shilts) 2 As I Lay Dying, Faulkner 2 Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X/Alex Haley 2 Bonfire of Vanities - Tom Wolfe 2 Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson) 2 Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut 2 Civilization & Its Discontents Freud 2 Color Purple – Walker 2 Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy O’Toole 2 Devil’s Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce 2 Dr Spock’s Baby and Child Care by Dr. Spock 2 Dune - Frank Herbert 2 Elements of Style - William Strunk and E. B. White 2 Executioner’s Song Norman Mailer: 2 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson) 2 Feminine Mystique (Freidan) 2 First Three Minutes Steven Weissberg: 2 Fountainhead - Ayn Rand 2 Gone with the Wind - Mitchell 2 Goodnight Moon – Brown 2 Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon: 2 Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 2 Guns of August- Barbara Tuchman 2 Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond) 2 How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Seuss 2 If On A Winter’s Night… Calvino 2 Illuminatus - Wilson & Shea 2 IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME–Proust 2 Journey To the End Of the Night (Celine) 2 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - James Agee and Walker Evans: 2 Little Prince (Saint-Exupery) 2 Little Red Book (or whatever its real title is) Mao Zedong’s 2 Moviegoer (Percy) 2 Naked and the dead - Norman Mailer 2 Poisonwood Bible–Kingslover 2 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce: 2 Second World War - Winston Churchill: 2 Selfish Gene by Dawkins 2 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey) 2 Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman 2 The Trial (Kafka) 2 The Waste Land – Eliot 2 The World According to Garp by John Irving. 2 Things Fall Apart – Achebe 2 Tropic of Cancer (Miller) 2 Watership Down - Richard Adams 2 What to Expect When You’re Expecting–I don’t remember 2 White Noise - Don DeLillo: ---
**Author:** ![Tretiak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a88e57/32.png) [@Tretiak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tretiak)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/73 "2002-08-21T20:23:32Z")
Let’s see. An incomplete list… The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson Catch-22, Joseph Heller Heart of Darkenss, Joseph Conrad The Maltese Falcon, Dashiel Hammett Animal Farm, George Orwell Civil War: A Narative, Shelby Foote ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2002, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/74 "2002-08-22T04:27:33Z")
**Tretiak,** thank you for seconding Mr. Greene. I was beginning to worry that Graham wouldn’t make it. In the true spirit of the pusuit of excellence, I’ll second **The Killer Inside Me,** which I find to be slightly superior to **The Getaway, Pop. 1280, A Hell of a Woman** and **A Swell-Lookin’ Babe.** Seriously, though, Thompson was a terrific writer who still managed to embody the “Pulp Fiction” of midcentury America. Also, I don’t know how I could have missed these: **Invisible Man,** Ellison **Night,** Weisel **The Naked and the Dead,** Mahler **U.S.A.,** Dos Passos and \*\*The Devil’s Dictionary, \*\* by Ambrose Bierce ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2002, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/75 "2002-08-22T20:24:50Z")
I’d like to extend a huge “thank you” to **Algernon** for that compilation (how _did_ you do that, anyway? Jut plenty of free time?), and in the interest of making things simpler, I’d like to make a few requests: Let’s try to have a semi-standard format. Name of book first, then name of author. Put comments separately. If a title starts with “the” or “a”, list it with that word at the end. Example: “_Lord of the Rings, the_”. One book per line. If a book has multiple forms of the title, use the form used previously in the thread, if any. These suggestions should make it much easier to copy/paste and tabulate the results. Also, to add a few more myself: _To Kill a Mockingbird_, Harper Lee _Brave New World_, Aldous Huxley _Diary of Anne Frank_, Anne Frank _Catch-22_, Joseph Heller _Mein Kampf_, Adolf Hitler _Brief History of Time, a_, Stephen Hawking _Autobiography of Malcolm X_, Malcom X and Alex Haley _Dune_, Frank Herbert _Little Red Book, the_, Mao Zedong _Wasteland, the_, T. S. Eliott _Watership Down_, Richard Adams _Animal Farm_, George Orwell _2001: A Space Odyssey_, Arthur C. Clarke _Silent Spring_, Rachel Carson _Catcher in the Rye, the_, J. D. Salinger _Heart of Darkness_, Joseph Conrad _Winnie the Pooh_, A. A. Milne _Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the_, C. S. Lewis Yes, this is mostly things nominated by others, but there are a lot of things I didn’t think of until seeing them on the list. ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/76 "2002-08-23T15:05:51Z")
You’re welcome **Chronos**. (for the reader’s edification, I replied to his inquiry on the _how_ via email). I’d like to reiterate his request for standardization of nominations. It was the only “painful” part of the compilation process (for example, in order to sort all the duplicate nominations together I had to swap the title and author when the author was listed first, and people were very inconsistent about whether or not “The” appeared in the title, so I simply eliminated it from most titles). And I really didn’t intend for my preliminary results to be a thread killer. It seems the rate of nominations has dropped substantially since I posted them. Keep 'em coming folks. We have a long way to go before we get 100 titles with three votes. ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/77 "2002-08-23T15:11:42Z")
> [@](#): > > But how can poor Proust compete with Ayn freaking Rand? (just how many votes did that crypto-fascist nutjob get anyway?) ~grin~ **Adam P** , I know you already have the answer from my preliminary results, but to make it official, she has six nominations, four for Atlas Shrugged and two for The Fountainhead. ---
**Author:** ![Tretiak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a88e57/32.png) [@Tretiak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tretiak)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/78 "2002-08-23T16:32:37Z")
**saoirse** The only other Jim Thompson I have read is **Pop. 1280** , and **The Killer Inside Me** is superior. But it is a hard book, not hard like **Gravity’s Rainbow** , I think, more like a punch in the stomach. After reading it I didn’t want to read another Thompson book right away. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/79 "2002-08-23T17:21:59Z")
Point of order: Didn’t we determine that The Interpretation of Dreams didn’t qualify? I move to strike it from the list. I’ll cast a few more votes for books nominated by others, but which I omitted from my earlier posts: **As I Lay Dying** - Faulkner **The World According to Garp** - Irving **Trial, The** - Kafka **Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care** - Dr. Spock **Waste Land, The** - T.S. Eliot **Power and the Glory, The** - Greene **Gone With the Wind** - Mitchell **Guns, Germs and Steel** - Diamond **East of Eden** - Steinbeck **Gulag Archipelago** - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn **Little Red Book** - Mao **Angela’s Ashes** - McCort ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/80 "2002-08-23T17:41:10Z")
Good point **spoke-**. (regarding _Interpretations of Dreams_). **Chronos** , this should be disqualified due to the fact it wasn’t originally published in the 20th century. (I was mistaken to keep it on my preliminary voting list). I’ll take this opportunity to vote for additional deserving books I have not yet voted for (even though they have plenty of votes to make the final list)… **Gulag Archipelago** - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn **Little Red Book** - Mao **1984** - George Orwell **To Kill a Mockingbird** - Harper Lee **Grapes of Wrath** - John Steinbeck **Animal Farm** by George Orwell. **Catcher in the Rye** - J. D. Salinger **On the Road** , Kerouac [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639.md?page=5)