The Essential Man's Library: 100 Must-Read Books

Given by Art of Manliness

99 Works 1,740,077 Books 25,741 Reviews 4.0
The Essential Man's Library was a top 100 list compiled by Jason Lankow, Ross Crooks, Joshua Ritchie, and Brett McKay for the website artofmanliness.com in 2008. The list is meant to be of the most show more important books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping to define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man. show less
Work
The Young Man's Guide (1833) by William A. Alcott
The Divine Comedy (1308) by Dante Alighieri
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996) by Stephen E. Ambrose
Politics (4 BCE) by Aristotle
The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It (1966) by Daniel Carter Beard
Boy Scouts Handbook: The First Edition, 1911 (1910) by Boy Scouts of America
The Master and Margarita (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov
Tarzan of the Apes (1914) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus
How to Win Friends & Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie
The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
The Crisis (1901) by Winston Churchill
The Red Badge of Courage (1894) by Stephen Crane
White Noise (1984) by Don DeLillo
The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot (1867) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
Foucault's Pendulum (1988) by Umberto Eco
Self-Reliance and Other Essays (1993) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) by Benjamin Franklin
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
King Solomon's Mines (1882) by H. Rider Haggard
The Federalist Papers (1787) by Alexander Hamilton
The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway
The Histories (420 BCE) by Herodotus
Steppenwolf (1927) by Hermann Hesse
Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes
The Iliad / The Odyssey (8 BCE) by Homer
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
The Dangerous Book for Boys (2007) by Conn Iggulden
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond (2001) by Denis Johnson
From Here to Eternity (1951) by James Jones
The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
The Metamorphosis (1912) by Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (1915) by Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories [Dover] (1915) by Franz Kafka
The Boys of Summer (1972) by Roger Kahn
The Dharma Bums (1958) by Jack Kerouac
On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
Fear and Trembling (1843) by Søren Kierkegaard
A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles
Into the Wild (1996) by Jon Krakauer
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1996) by Jon Krakauer
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
The Prince (1513) by Niccolò Machiavelli
A River Runs Through It {story} (1976) by Norman Maclean
The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
Lonesome Dove (1985) by Larry McMurtry
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) by Edmund Morris
Theodore Rex (2001) by Edmund Morris
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1885) by Friedrich Nietzsche
1984 (1949) by George Orwell
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
Hatchet (1987) by Gary Paulsen
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig
The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry: by Christine de Pizan (1988) by Christine de Pizan
The Republic (380 BCE) by Plato
Plutarch's Lives (100) by Plutarch
Essential Manners for Men: What to Do, When to Do It, and Why (2003) by Peter Post
Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) by Erich Maria Remarque
Another Roadside Attraction (1971) by Tom Robbins
The Rough Riders (1899) by Theodore Roosevelt
Strenuous Life (1992) by Theodore Roosevelt
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) by Edmond Rostand
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger
The Killer Angels (1974) by Michael Shaara
Hamlet (1603) by William Shakespeare
Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The Wealth of Nations: Books 1-3 (Penguin Classics) (Bks.1-3) (1776) by Adam Smith
East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
The Pearl (1947) by John Steinbeck
Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) by Paul Theroux
Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau
The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole
The Frontier in American History (1920) by Frederick Jackson Turner
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
The Art of War (500 BCE) by Sun Tzu
Holy Bible (1) by Unknown
Bluebeard (1987) by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by H. G. Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde
The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) by Johann David Wyss
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) by Malcolm X

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