Controversial Books

This page shows your 100 most controversial books, as measured by the standard deviation of members star ratings. (This is also the source of the Zeitgeist category "25 Books People Can't Agree on.") To be included, a book must have been rated at least 20 times. Work titles are given.

Standard Deviation	Rating	Title
1.18	3.57	Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
1.178	3.53	The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
1.173	3.46	The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
1.165	3.56	Piers Plowman by William Langland
1.13	3.61	Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
1.117	3.17	Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
1.109	3.42	The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.103	3.79	Experience And Education by John Dewey
1.086	3.48	William Golding's Lord of the Flies (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) by Harold Bloom
1.085	3.67	Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
1.082	3.42	King John by William Shakespeare
1.081	3.56	The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
1.071	3.68	The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom
1.068	3.91	Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1.064	3.77	American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
1.062	3.75	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
1.057	3.58	What Is to Be Done? by V. I. Lenin
1.048	3.91	Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare
1.044	3.7	Richard II by William Shakespeare
1.04	3.83	North by Seamus Heaney
1.029	3.98	Richard III by William Shakespeare
1.026	3.96	Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
1.02	3.84	The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
1.018	3.91	The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1.018	3.74	The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1.012	3.86	Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare
1.01	3.95	A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
1.001	3.59	The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
0.998	3.92	Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
0.994	3.74	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
0.99	3.94	Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville
0.989	3.72	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
0.986	3.84	The Complete Plays of John M. Synge by J. M. Synge
0.986	3.66	A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
0.983	3.77	A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
0.981	4.16	Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
0.981	3.65	Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
0.977	3.85	Modern Ireland 1600-1972 by R. F. Foster
0.975	3.93	Candide and Other Romances by Voltaire by Voltaire
0.971	3.49	Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
0.971	4.09	The Road by Cormac McCarthy
0.971	3.8	Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
0.967	3.94	Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine by Thomas Paine
0.959	3.91	Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
0.954	3.93	Dubliners by James Joyce
0.94	3.6	Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
0.939	4.09	A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
0.938	3.8	District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
0.933	2.99	Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
0.932	4.11	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
0.932	3.77	The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
0.927	3.71	Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
0.923	3.99	A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich
0.922	3.65	Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
0.919	3.83	Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
0.918	3.71	The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
0.916	3.99	Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
0.916	3.85	Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
0.912	4.25	Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
0.911	4.15	The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
0.91	4.04	Wheelock's Latin by Frederic M. Wheelock
0.907	4.23	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
0.905	4.02	Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland by Tim Pat Coogan
0.902	4.02	The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
0.9	3.98	James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
0.899	3.95	Dracula by Bram Stoker
0.893	4.01	Animal Farm by George Orwell
0.893	4.29	The Poetical Works of John Keats by John Keats
0.888	4.01	Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
0.888	3.73	Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
0.888	4.08	The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
0.886	3.98	A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works by Jonathan Swift
0.884	3.81	George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl
0.881	4.15	Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
0.875	4.3	Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
0.874	4.07	A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
0.873	3.8	The Van by Roddy Doyle
0.861	4.09	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
0.858	4.17	The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
0.858	3.75	Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
0.857	4.12	Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
0.848	3.97	The Poetical Works of Lord Byron by Lord Byron
0.842	4.15	The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
0.84	4	Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
0.836	4.26	1984 by George Orwell
0.832	3.88	The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
0.831	3.96	A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro
0.823	4.19	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
0.812	4.38	The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
0.811	3.91	The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
0.81	3.91	The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
0.793	4.09	The Tain by Anonymous
0.785	3.51	Three Plays by Seán O'Casey
0.785	4.37	The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats
0.767	3.75	The Snapper by Roddy Doyle
0.764	3.79	Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
0.758	4.53	The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
0.715	4.29	Opened Ground: Poems, 1966—1996 by Seamus Heaney
0.71	4.59	The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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