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
1.178	4.09	Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch
1.165	3.56	Piers Plowman by William Langland
1.147	3.86	Moby Dick by Herman Melville
1.126	3.63	The Eclogues by Virgil
1.123	3.91	The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
1.104	3.66	A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions by Peter Robb
1.054	3.85	Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
1.03	3.85	The Republic by Plato
1.017	3.61	Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into The Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System by Roberto Saviano
1.012	4.01	The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
1.003	4.08	Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
0.989	3.56	Contemporary American Poetry by Donald Hall
0.984	3.82	Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachae) by Aristoteles
0.972	3.7	The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg
0.97	4	A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy
0.967	3.58	Ice by Vladimir Sorokin
0.965	3.61	Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life by Herman Melville
0.957	4.16	The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald
0.951	4.08	The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
0.948	3.98	The Symposium by Plato
0.947	3.79	Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
0.945	3.81	Inverted World by Christopher Priest
0.935	3.85	The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels
0.93	3.99	Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon
0.928	3.88	Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
0.919	3.68	The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis
0.918	4.04	Midnight In Sicily by Peter Robb
0.917	3.83	Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward N. Luttwak
0.912	3.78	Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
0.911	4.04	Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
0.898	4.1	Metamorphoses by Ovidius
0.889	4.13	Warlock by Oakley Hall
0.887	3.7	Dead Lucky: Life after Death on Mount Everest by Lincoln Hall
0.88	3.82	Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens
0.877	3.82	The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard
0.868	3.67	Anarchism: From Theory to Practice by Daniel Guérin
0.856	3.67	Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich by Joachim Fest
0.854	4.4	Stoner by John Williams
0.843	4.24	The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
0.841	3.82	The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski
0.838	3.96	Great Short Works of Herman Melville by Herman Melville
0.837	3.93	Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
0.835	4.12	Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower
0.833	4.46	If this is a man and The truce by Primo Levi
0.827	3.73	Documents of the Christian Church by Henry Bettenson
0.82	4.14	A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman
0.812	4.04	A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White
0.81	3.88	Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare
0.808	4.24	A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
0.79	3.98	Blake by Peter Ackroyd
0.789	3.85	The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor
0.788	3.79	Aspects of the novel by E. M. Forster
0.785	4.07	The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor
0.78	4.3	The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis
0.765	4.33	Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
0.758	4.28	Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
0.756	3.95	The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning
0.72	3.82	The Slynx by Татьяна Толстая
0.71	4.39	Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg
0.689	3.97	Cross of Iron by Willi Heinrich
0.661	4	The Master Plan Himmler's Scholars And the Holocaust by Heather Pringle
0.509	3.94	Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead

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