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
1.78	3.33	The Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith
1.307	2.79	Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
1.276	3.95	Writer's Handbook by Sylvia Kamerman Burack
1.252	3.52	Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
1.217	3.9	Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
1.18	3.57	Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
1.165	3.39	Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence
1.147	3.86	Moby Dick by Herman Melville
1.144	3.7	The Golden Bowl by Henry James
1.116	4.07	Ulysses by James Joyce
1.109	3.42	The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.105	3.67	The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud by Sigmund Freud
1.103	3.7	The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
1.102	4.04	Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White
1.097	3.89	To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
1.097	3.8	The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination by Wallace Stevens
1.093	3.68	The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1.089	3.95	The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
1.084	3.83	Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle
1.081	3.87	The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
1.076	3.51	What Maisie Knew by Henry James
1.074	3.68	The Ambassadors by Henry James
1.074	3.71	Man's Fate by Andre Malraux
1.072	3.71	Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
1.072	3.92	King Jesus by Robert Graves
1.07	3.69	Pincher Martin by William Golding
1.068	3.91	Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1.065	3.19	Iphigenia in Tauris by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1.062	3.75	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
1.062	3.48	The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
1.06	3.64	Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
1.053	3.49	Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
1.052	3.93	Confessions by Saint Augustine
1.05	3.53	La Machine infernale by Jean Cocteau
1.046	4.21	Complete Poems of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
1.046	3.21	The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence
1.042	3.81	Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
1.041	3.63	Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
1.038	3.87	The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
1.037	4.11	The Crock of Gold by James Stephens
1.036	3.84	The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
1.033	3.88	Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
1.031	3.72	Bacchae by Euripides
1.031	3.78	Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb
1.03	3.85	The Republic by Plato
1.03	3.51	Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
1.03	3.9	Antigone by Jean Anouilh
1.029	3.91	The Red and the Black by Stendhal
1.029	3.98	Richard III by William Shakespeare
1.029	3.17	Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence
1.026	3.78	The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
1.026	3.85	Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
1.026	3.96	Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
1.025	3.83	The Enormous Room by e. e. cummings
1.023	3.6	The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
1.023	3.84	The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset
1.02	3.84	The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
1.018	3.91	The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1.018	3.89	Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
1.018	3.74	The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1.015	4.15	Emerson's Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
1.015	3.91	And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
1.014	3.59	The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
1.013	3.91	The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
1.012	4.01	The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
1.012	3.85	The White Goddess by Robert Graves
1.007	3.61	Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
1.007	4.15	The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume I: The Spell of Plato by Karl Popper
1.007	4.08	The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
1.006	4.01	City Of God by Augustine of Hippo
1.004	3.95	A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
1.002	4.09	The Waves by Virginia Woolf
1.002	4	The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1.001	3.59	The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
1	3.91	Culpeper's Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper
0.999	3.65	Politics by Aristoteles
0.998	3.67	Poetics by Aristoteles
0.997	4.11	Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
0.996	3.53	The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
0.994	3.74	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
0.992	3.88	James Joyce's Ulysses: a study by Stuart Gilbert
0.991	3.82	The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
0.99	3.9	On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
0.989	3.72	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
0.989	3.56	Contemporary American Poetry by Donald Hall
0.989	3.54	Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
0.989	4.05	The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
0.987	4.04	Paradise Lost by John Milton
0.987	3.8	The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
0.986	3.84	The Complete Plays of John M. Synge by J. M. Synge
0.986	3.99	Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
0.986	3.71	Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson
0.985	3.93	The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
0.984	3.82	Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachae) by Aristoteles
0.983	3.55	The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand
0.983	3.93	Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
0.983	3.93	Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
0.982	3.94	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
0.981	4.16	Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
0.981	3.86	In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

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