Request for recommendations: nonfiction "must reads"

For my own edification, and possibly for infliction on my classics book group, I'm looking for suggestions to add to my list of influential/seminal titles.

Some of the titles I have read or feel I must read to consider myself truly educated (yes, it is a fairly US-centric and human rights-centric list -- and a secular one):

* The Debate on the Constitution, 2 vols.

* Democracy in America by de Tocqueville

* Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels

* The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

* Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

* Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller

* History of Woman Suffrage, in multiple volumes, produced by members of the movement

* Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

* On the Origin of Species and Descent of Man by Charles Darwin

* Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Anybody want to play? What would you have on your own list? What should I add to mine?

Merci.

What about The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir? That's pretty seminal.

Then there's Taylor Branch's books about the struggle for civil rights, Parting the Waters, etc...

I'm lousy at this, much preferring social histories to the canon.

The de Beauvoir would probably fit in my list. But the Branch books are secondary sources, so would be more like the social histories you (and I, too) like.

I did think of several more titles:

* The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu

* Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke

* The Republic by Plato

* The Prince by Machiavelli

* Nicomachean Ethics and Poetics by Aristotle

I guess I don't really do 'must reads'. I just read what I really want to, and don't worry about lists. That being said, these are all old books. What about something from the last 100 years?

Freud, Jung, Kirkegaard, Sartre, Einstein? Hawking probably is not considered classic yet, but I'll bet he will be.

Perhaps Utopia by Sir Thomas More? Common Sense by Thomas Paine? The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar? The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth? Maybe Churchill, or would that be secondary (his history anyway, but I think he wrote a bunch of other things)? I'm not sure if these are what you're looking for, but they certainly were influential.

I've read only a (very) few of the books mentioned in this thread. They seem to tend toward the philosophical, and I've always been more interested in people (and fiction). And like Cindy, I don't feel the need to read the classics... unless I want to, of course, which does happen from time to time.

But good luck with this list, ReneeMarie. It is, to say the least, impressive!

If I consider something a "must read," I guess I read it because I want to read it. And my list *is* for the classics book group I'm in. I don't want to limit myself to 19th and 20th century fiction. Other members of the group pick enough of that. I only remember one other person in the group picking a nonfiction work (Rousseau, after I picked Wollstonecraft).

The documents on my list may be "old," but they are foundational to our society (i.e., people) and governments and scientific knowledge and ethical beliefs and are still being used and misused today.

For me, it's important to know what they truly say, to recognize if not combat the lies. And I agree with the statement that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I see evidence of that in the news every day.

I think reading the thoughts of people who came before us helps us to see how we have changed and how we have not. And I think it's smart not to spend all my time trying to work out on my own what smarter people have already figured out before me.

The design of this Web page is crap, but it says what I want to better than I can: Why Read the Classics.

Thanks for the reminder of More and Paine, of whom I've only read Age of Reason. I do want to read more of the ancient texts, like Xenophon and Julius Caesar, Herodotus and Thucydides.

I'll probably cross-post my original question. I'm still looking for other people's lists to steal ideas from.

If I read all those books clear through I think I would expect a degree when finished. ;) I did read The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought From Ancient Times to Today in the past year or so. It wasn't bad. The list of 100 is like a lot of lists. Seventy-five are solid picks and the rest could be quibbled over.

The Modern Library published a list of 100 best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. It can be accessed here.

A few months ago I picked up this book from a sale table: Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. It includes a chapter on each of the 13 books on the list. You've already mentioned some of the books on the list. The 13 are:

Of Plymouth Plantation
The Federalist Papers
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Walden
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Souls of Black Folk
The Promised Land
How to Win Friends and Influence People
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
On the Road
The Feminine Mystique

I've only read two of them myself, Of Plymouth Plantation and Huckleberry Finn. I plan to get around to several of the others "some day"!

>6 ReneeMarie: I totally agree with you, ReneeMarie, that it's important to read the primary source rather than the secondary glosses. What I was trying to say (and not doing it very well) was that some of those books don't particularly interest me right now (for example, Adam Smith and Darwin), and therefore I don't feel any need to read them.

>9 cbl_tn: Interesting list! Though some of those books were widely read (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, Dr Spock), it seems to me that others are probably more known about than actually read at the time (Of Plymouth Plantation, Thoreau, Friedan).

What about some John Stuart Mill? On Liberty or something. And how classic is classic? I'm thinking maybe The Souls of Black Folk (oh, I just saw someone else wrote that too) or some of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches. Or The Interpretation of Dreams, or Coming of Age in Samoa.

Over in the Nonfiction group, there is a thread called "1001 non fiction books to read before you die" that has a similar list, heavy on the classics. It's here.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I just picked up The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written at the library tonight.

Thanks for the reminder of Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini. I remember seeing that come through the bookstore.

I also clicked through to the Modern Library list. I think I'll go by the board's list if I go by either of them. The reader's list looks like it was hijacked by special interest groups. Freakish.

And I clicked through to read the 1001 thread. I think that's where I ran across, either directly or tangentially, another book I checked out from the library tonight: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

So many ideas, so little time...

As a member of your classics book group, I'm veeeery suspicious of your use of the word "inflict" - is this another de Tocqueville sabotage? Just kidding!

Actually, this question is timely for me since I'm trying to read more non-fiction in general. I always feel like I'm too much of a dunce to even attempt reading anything "fact-y", but I know that's not true. I just strolled through the "New Non-Fiction" shelves at the library on Wednesday and picked up 6 books that I really wanted to read. Hey, any step is a step in the right direction in this case!