# What Books have had the greatest effect in the Real World? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 24, 2016, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018 "2016-03-24T11:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/1 "2016-03-24T11:54:34Z")
In response to the thread on the effect of movies ( [What fiction films have had the greatest effects on the ‘real’ world? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=787175) ) in the Real World, I wondered about the effect of books and plays in the world before we had movies. I think they may have had a greater impact, especially because there was a much smaller media scene. A few examples: 1.) **Uncle Tom’s Cabin** – the case that prompted this thread. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel undoubtedly had a big impact in helping polarize opinion about slavery just prior to the Civil War. It became a huge bestseller, and had the effect of making people who had been apathetic or lukewarm about slavery more aware of it and its implications. It also angered the slave-holding states, who had gotten the Fugitive Slave Act passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, and were relying on people, especially those in non-slave-holding states, to return escaped slavges (or those suspected of being). Stowe wrote the original sketches that became this book in response to that Act. 2.) **Cato** a play by Joseph Addison, first produced in 1712. It’s surprising to see how many of the prominent characters in the American Revolution – on both sides – read this play, and quoted from it. A lot of those famous quotes that you learned in history class were ultimately derived from this work: > [@](#): > > Some scholars, including historian David McCullough—author of 1776—believe that the source of several famous quotations from the American Revolution came from, or were inspired by, Cato. These include: > Patrick Henry’s famous ultimatum: “Give me Liberty or give me death!” > (Supposed reference to Act II, Scene 4: “It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death.”). > > The actor John Kemble in the role of Cato in Addison’s play, which he revived at Covent Garden in 1816, drawn by George Cruikshank.Nathan Hale’s valediction: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” > (Supposed reference to Act IV, Scene 4: “What a pity it is/That we can die but once to serve our country.”).Washington’s praise for Benedict Arnold in a letter to him: “It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more—you have deserved it.” > (Clear reference to Act I, Scene 2: “'Tis not in mortals to command success; but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.”). > Not long after the American Revolution, Edmund Burke quotes the play as well in his Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont, expanded the following year into Reflections on the Revolution in France: “The French may be yet to go through more transmigrations. They may pass, as one of our poets says, ‘through many varieties of untried being,’ before their state obtains its final form.” The poet in reference is, of course, Addison and the passage Burke quoted is from Cato (V.i. II): "Through what variety of untried being,/Through what new scenes and changes must we pass [Cato, a Tragedy - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato,_a_Tragedy) 3.) **Ivanhoe** and other works by Sir Walter Scott – Mark Twain was of the opinion that too many Southern Gentlemen read these books and were both captivated and blinded by its vision of an aristocracy devoted to knightly virtues, particularly the defense of honor and belligerence, and that this helped inspire them to defend the South during the civil War, and to blind them to the realities of the North’s material advantages. I don’t know if he’s right, but if he is, the US owes the Civil war in part to the Scottish baronet. Here’s Twain in \*Life on the Mississippi: > [@](#): > > Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner–or Southron, according to Sir Walter’s starchier way of phrasing it– would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter. > > Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter’s influence than to that of any other thing or person. Comic History of the United States cartoonist Larry Gonick is skeptical of Twain’s claims – in his history of the US he draws a Civil War soldier in Ivanoe armor, saying “Forsooth!” But I can’t help but think there might be something to Twain’s argument. Any others? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/2 "2016-03-24T12:03:30Z")
**The Bible** , for the win. ---
**Author:** ![Sampsiceramos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Sampsiceramos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampsiceramos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/3 "2016-03-24T12:14:15Z")
Is this a question that pertains purely to literature, or does it extend to religious texts, manifestos, etc? If not, it’s hard to argue that the most impactful texts aren’t a variety of high-profile religious texts and political manifestos. **Ivanhoe** hardly stands to measure against, say, **The Communist Manifesto** , after all. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/4 "2016-03-24T13:08:20Z")
> [@Sampsiceramos](#): > > Is this a question that pertains purely to literature, or does it extend to religious texts, manifestos, etc? > > If not, it’s hard to argue that the most impactful texts aren’t a variety of high-profile religious texts and political manifestos. **Ivanhoe** hardly stands to measure against, say, **The Communist Manifesto** , after all. I had literature in mind. There’s no question that _The Wealth of Nations_ jhad a bigger impact overall than _Gulliver’s TRavels_, but that’s like comparing an educational film against an entertainment movie in the other thread. So The Bible, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, etc. are out of the running. So is Thomas Paine’s _Common Sense_. But if, say, Voltaire’s _Candide_ caused lots of people to drop what they were doing and plant gardens, that would be what we’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/5 "2016-03-24T13:16:36Z")
_The Jungle_, by Upton Sinclair—providing a key inspiration for the important, and certainly lifesaving changes in food and drug safety regulation in the United States. (Hey, better than nothin’.) ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/6 "2016-03-24T13:30:10Z")
JohnT is right with the Bible, particularly if you take an inclusive view of bible to include other religious texts. How about Principia Mathematica and On the Origin of the Species? I think this question is less interesting mostly because books have been so much more influential on the real world than movies. It’s interesting when a movie has any real-world effect, let alone a big one. The effect of movies on the world is both new and rare. Books have had this effect for centuries. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/7 "2016-03-24T13:34:38Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > JohnT is right with the Bible, particularly if you take an inclusive view of bible to include other religious texts. > > How about Principia Mathematica and On the Origin of the Species? > > I think this question is less interesting mostly because books have been so much more influential on the real world than movies. It’s interesting when a movie has any real-world effect, let alone a big one. The effect of movies on the world is both new and rare. Books have had this effect for centuries. Look up to my correction two posts above. In the same spirit as the thread on movies, I’m looking at fictional entertainment books, which disqualifies your examples. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/8 "2016-03-24T13:36:27Z")
Mao’s Little Red Book The Prince Emily Post’s books on manners Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet-(not exactly a book but…) Created the modern concept of “Love” for all practical purposes. Profiles in Courage- Hemingway’s early novels- created that weird culture of macho- Ned Buntline and his fellow dime novelists - For all practical purposes they created the “Old West.” Thus dragging people out there. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/9 "2016-03-24T14:37:50Z")
Roots The Color Purple 1984 Fahrenheit 451 Animal Farm (non-fiction - The Art of War) ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/10 "2016-03-24T14:46:29Z")
Didn’t **Charles Dickens’** books, like Oliver Twist, point out the plight of the underclasses in London/GB? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/11 "2016-03-24T15:02:16Z")
> [@TV\_time](#): > > Mao’s Little Red Book > > The Prince > > Emily Post’s books on manners > > Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet-(not exactly a book but…) Created the modern concept of “Love” for all practical purposes. > > Profiles in Courage- > > Hemingway’s early novels- created that weird culture of macho- > > Ned Buntline and his fellow dime novelists - For all practical purposes they created the “Old West.” Thus dragging people out there. Well, Mao’s book and The Prince aren’t fiction – one is propaganda and the other a practical treatise on politics. And Emily Post doesn’t fit, either. But can you say how the others had big effects (as you try to do with Ned Buntline and Hemingway)? I’d like to see some argument that Romeo and Juliet “created” modern love. I’ve never seen that suggested before, and I don’t buy it. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/12 "2016-03-24T16:15:19Z")
> [@TV\_time](#): > > …Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet…Created the modern concept of “Love” for all practical purposes. What a ridiculous claim. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/13 "2016-03-24T16:28:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Look up to my correction two posts above. In the same spirit as the thread on movies, I’m looking at fictional entertainment books, which disqualifies your examples. I’m sorry. I overlooked your clarification. Fiction books does make it more interesting but I’m having a more trouble coming up with good examples. I might have suggested Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle but I was beat to the punch. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/14 "2016-03-24T19:07:21Z")
> [@TV\_time](#): > > Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet-(not exactly a book but…) Created the modern concept of “Love” for all practical purposes. I think that dates back more to the French Arthurian legends. Speaking of which, the Arthurian legends. They created the idea of chivalry and England as its own country, separate from the Norse and French, besides creating a whole history of England (fictional though it may be). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/15 "2016-03-24T19:14:29Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Didn’t **Charles Dickens’** books, like Oliver Twist, point out the plight of the underclasses in London/GB? Dickens’ A Christmas Carol did a lot to establish traditions around the Christmas season. Remember that in the seventeenth century the Puritans ignored Christmas, because it’s not really mentioned in the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/16 "2016-03-24T19:19:56Z")
The Lord Of The Rings. It probably didn’t have much of an effect on things like politics, but the effects on culture include: Popularizing the whole fantasy literature genre (of course it existed beforehand, but it’s unlikely to have become as big without LOTR) D&D-style games and WoW-style videogames - there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have even existed without LOTR paving the way. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/17 "2016-03-24T19:26:29Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Roots > > **The Color Purple** I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I’m just not aware of any huge effect The Color Purple had on the world at large. Roots I agree with, since it was a huge phenomenon that personalized the slavery experience AND made genealogy a much bigger hobby. But I just remember The Color Purple as a fairly popular book and movie, not as something that caused any large-scale changes. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/18 "2016-03-24T19:31:06Z")
I was a grade school kid in a lily-white Connecticut suburb when Roots was published, and made into a monster miniseries on ABC. I remember that after that, all kinds of people were tracing their family roots. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/19 "2016-03-24T20:00:00Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Dickens’ A Christmas Carol did a lot to establish traditions around the Christmas season. Remember that in the seventeenth century the Puritans ignored Christmas, because it’s not really mentioned in the Bible. Arguably, Washington Irving’s Christmas stoiries did it earlier. Irving was widely read – including by Dickens. Nowadays, though, Irving’s Christmas sketches are completely unfamiliar to the general public, while Dickens’ _A Christmas Carol_ lives on. (Deservedly so – it’s my favorite Dickens work. But I wanted to point out that Dickens didn’t come out of nowhere and establish Christmas on his own.) Come to think of it, I could argue that Bram Stoker’s **Dracula** is powerfully important in its own way. “The T. Rex of the Vampire World”, as horror historian David J. Skal points out. And it was. Although the idea of vampires in the modern sense had been popular for almost a century, since polidori wrote _The Vampyre_, Stoker is the one who crystallized the legend, bring together odd bits of vampire folklore into an easy-to-find place, but _Inventing_ most of his traditions out of whole cloth. The idea of vampires being creatures of the night, sleeping in coffins, and being dispatched by a stake through the heart were there before. The idea of Transylvania as a vampire homeland just barely predates him. But he gave us: – Vampires avoiding garlic –Vampires not being visible in a mirror –Vampires “having to sleep in their native earth” – Vampires not being able to cross water –Vampires not being allowed in unless invited by the master of a house –Vampires having superhuman strength – Vampires vulnerable to holy water –Vampires vulnerable to communion wafer – Vampires being repelled by the cross. Stoker _didn’t_ give us vampires dissolving in daylight, but that notion derives from _Nosferatu_, an interpretation of his _Dracula_. It still would have been forgotten (Stoker’s widow, who didn’t get any royalties from this pirated work, went on a legal rampage to destroy all copies), had it not been remembered by screenwriter Curt Siodmak, who incorporated the idea into the script for _Son of Dracula_ (where Count Alucard dies this way) and for _House of Frankenstein_) where a resurrected Dracula – played by John Carradine – dies this way. It was then cemented in the public consciousness by the death of Dracula in the Hammer film _Horror of Dracula_. So Bram Stoker’s character and story were responsible for propagating that meme, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018/20 "2016-03-24T20:12:39Z")
In Japan, the legend of the [Forty-Seven Ronin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_Ronin) was fairly central to the creation of Bushido. (Technically, it was a historical event, but I doubt that the story was told with a historical eye.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-had-the-greatest-effect-in-the-real-world/750018.md?page=2)